The Perfect Sinner (cake boyxboy)

(VII) Come Hell Or High Water (E)

This time it came like a fever. It came like a storm--rapid and vastly destructive. He felt destructive:

Calum was no stranger to depression. He'd seen it all his life; since he was a babe at arms he didn't belong. As a kid, people often thought him odd and uncomfortable and steered away from him and Cal got comfortable being the outcast. Calum remembered his parents' executive friends and the neighbours, keeping their kids away from him because he was "strange" and "unpredictable." Calum was different, and different didn't fit in in high society. Calum Hood had always been troubled, that was known, but people didn't know the extent of how Calum battles with himself everyday on the playing field that is his head, aiming all weapons to the enemy; his mind--himself.

This mind of his played tricks. It made him see things that weren't there with just the right nudge, and it could make him see things too clearly. Either way, it was a draining. But never had Calum battled his own mind like the past few days.

Calum had always made sure that his mind and soul remained intact from outside forces, he always made sure that he confided only in himself so this mind of his didn't play tricks once more. But just as that psychic had predicted, Calum's final fate would be Luke. Our doom's always seem to creep up on us when we least expect it.

Calum had seen many things, but never had he seen the fear of being shattered to pieces. He'd never felt this way because he'd never known rejection; and it felt terrible. He felt like a hole had grown over his chest, it felt like the sun had set to never rise again, like all class had been taken out of life.

He'd left the windows open, and the mighty sea was gathering up a big roar of wind, making his windows burst open. As Calum sat still in his hotel bed, surrounded by linen sheets, he could feel the wind passing through his limbs--he could actually feel so empty that wind was able to surpass his mortal coil, like he wasn't even there.

As he sat there, in the dark green room with low lights and white windows, he could see the grimness of his life, the loneliness. It was more evident now than it ever was before. Calum could swear that once he looked off into the wall too long, the green wall would turn into grass, dancing with the gentle sway of wind. There was nothing there. Calum could get as high as he wanted, he could laugh and hallucinate things that weren't there to get him out of his mind, but when he came down, all he wanted was Luke. He simply wanted to hold him. When he came down, a sudden impenetrable emptiness set in like the sun; a darkness shaded way too dark to please his tempers; a loneliness that could cover the world whole laying right on his shoulders, and a nothingness that felt understanding.

He could feel stability settling back into his system, the rush of the high passing. His stomach turned upside down as his feet started to touch the ground again, and everything suddenly became heightened.

The walls whispered incoherent things with slithery, ghostly, deep voices that were coming for him. He could hear sharp nails and claws screeching against the grim walls. This effect, however, it wasn't the drugs anymore, it was that same darkness that taunted him. He felt trapped, he felt like he was on a boat surrounded by sharks and deadly waters. When depressed, Calum always had little panic attacks. Sometimes they were mild, sometimes more severe and sometimes even fatal. He was scared to death that one day, his mind might just be invaded by those attacks, and it might just be enough to drive him over the edge. And he'd seen that eve, he'd seen the face of death. No matter how much Cal pushed people out, someone was always there to drag him back from that dark place and to the land of the living and the unhappy, but this time Calum had no one. He didn't have his parents to send him to yet again another rehab, his sister wasn't snooping on his affairs anymore and she was half a world away, and Luke... he chose Sid over him. If Calum reminisced on his loss and the blood on his hands, a certain darkness would begin to cover his body and swallow him whole. Drowning seemed like a good death to him. Drowning in a pool of himself.