The Delivery Boy(boyxboy)

Chapter 14: Daddy Issues and Movie Nights.

Take you like a drug
I taste you on my tongue
You ask me what I'm thinking about
I'll tell you that I'm thinking about
Whatever you're thinking about
Tell me something that I'll forget
But you might have to tell me again
It's crazy what you do for a friend

Go ahead and cry little girl
Nobody does it like you do
I know how much it matters to you
I know that you got daddy issues
And if you were my little girl
I'd do whatever I could do
I'd run away and hide with you
I love that you got daddy issues
And I do too

-

Xavier

Moon light poured in through the foggy windows, partially illuminating the side of my room. I lay still in my bed, trying my best not to move.

It hurt a bit too much to move. I felt like my knuckles were on fire, my heart thumped under my eyelids. When I breathed, the terrible tingling in my lower rib caused me to gasp. There was a heavy weight on my chest, almost as if someone had their hands around my throat, but they just weren't squeezing hard enough. I was trapped in the horrible state between conscious and unconscious and it was driving me insane.

It was too quiet for me to bear. Too quiet, too dark, too cold, and too lonely. I closed my eyes, willing myself to go to sleep. But it seemed like sleep brought its own kind of darkness and its own kind of demons, so instead I opened my eyes and allowed myself to stare at the ceiling above and try to find my way through the shades of black.

I used to love staring at the ceiling as a child. It was painted black and blue, with splashes of white here and there – the stars in the space, the light amongst the darkness, the good within the bad. I used to love believing that whenever the darkness would stretch, light would push it back. I used to love believing that even when the sky grew black, the stars burned. I used to love believing that even when everything was lost, there was still hope.

I stopped believing it the first time my father hit me when I was thirteen.

The most painful part about growing up hadn't been realizing that the world was a horrible place; it had been realizing that I was supposed to survive in this horrible place. It had been realizing that things weren't like they seemed, it had been understanding that nobody really cared, it had been trying to cope with the fact that I was all alone and nobody was going to come and save me. It had been betrayal and heart break and nothing but a constant cycle of pain that never seemed to stop, endless suffering from which there was no escape. It had been understating that there was no goodness and no hope and no light and no heroes, that there was just reality and reality was nothing short of cruel. Absolutely fucking cruel.

Sighing, I shook my head to diminish my useless thoughts, trying to shift so I could open my drawer. Stretching my hand so much it hurt, I managed to slightly crack it open, hoping to find the cigarettes that lay inside. Internally, I was screaming at myself to stop, reminding myself that I was better than what I was doing. Reminding myself I was better than making false promises to the woman who had raised me, better than everything my father had been.

But that was the fact. I wasn't better.

I was just like him. He was in my blood; he was printed upon my skin. Of course I was like him. Of course, of course, of course.

And in that instant, which was as long as a thought, need and guilt and pain grew to such an enormous proportion that it muscled reason out of the way and I found myself inhaling the poison to kill what was on the inside.