L'Appel du Vide (Nocebo Effect P3)

wholesome as a bald man

All I can think about is Dallon fucking Weekes. Just Dallon Weekes. Just Dallon Weekes and his pearly smile, his blue jay eyes, his blatant homoeroticism, everything that I love and will never stop loving, everything with which I had to part for the period when he was gone, when I thought he was fucking dead and in the cold, hard dirt but was just recovering from the acceptance that he was so messed up that he decided to try and kill himself before asking his best friend for help.

Things are looking up now that Dallon is back in my pathetic little life, without any placebo pills to harm both him and his cognition, and he's all that's on my mind since he departed, though I'm not really sure if that's a fruitful or unfruitful thing. It feels nice anyway, and I've been coating myself in the pleasure for a while.

In fact, ever since he left at the urgent request of his guardian (whom I think is named Kenneth Harris and whom I know was uncertain of where Dallon has been for the past hour or so), I've been positioned on the couch with my focus beaming towards the wall, a wall that possesses nothing special about it yet serves as a place to channel my thoughts of this godforsaken man who has stumbled back into my godforsaken life to implement some godforsaken art like he always did.

I love that damn art he's been creating since before he could even grasp what art is, and I love the few occasions when he shares that art with me, as it's like glimpsing a fragment of his soul, of a mind spinning with millions of ideas and colors and the imagination of a child that we teenagers wish we could be forever, but he holds that in his delicate hands like it's something as mundane as the cycle in which we are trapped.

The cycle commands that when it rains on the hair I styled that morning, I will reflect on the sun's ability to dry it. When the sun shines on me and pollutes my eyes with blindness, I will reflect on the shadows the rain plants upon the ground. I will bask in the lies that only seem real because I am being tortured by an alternate force. I will never be happy, only snared in the loop that is life, and I will eventually die from it, cold in the dirt with no one to remember my illegitimate struggles, except Dallon will be there to laugh at me, at my foolishness for believing that people care if I once lived and if I once breathed and if I once died, when in reality we are all doomed to the same fate, the same cycle of life, and we humans are much more focused on our own trials, such as why we are suffocating and cascading towards the same place as me, until only one of the three motions is veritable. And that is what Dallon understands, and that is why Dallon remains to be a child, and that is why seeing him return to me is so painful, because there is another side of children that festers into rage and tears and miscomprehension of emotional situations to the point where they just shut down completely and won't uncurl from their ball of solitude to sort through their feelings, the chemicals in their brains, the complications of their actions and their thought process and their existence, and that is very much why I had no idea that Dallon was on the edge of killing himself, and he would've, no doubt, succeeded with that plan were it not for a miscalculation in how powerful the drug was, but maybe he knew all along that the drugs would not prevail and he was merely scared of dying and leaving me to my anger that may be more childlike than Dallon ever was, and for that I'm only partially thankful.

Because as far as I know, Dallon spent a month influencing the minds of those who were dear to him, influencing them to believe that he was dead, that he left them like they never mattered a thing to him in his vivid expanse of art and psychology, and perhaps they didn't, because he didn't allow us so much as a warning of what he was going to do, and if he ever did consider it before he tried to kill himself, it would be like the Sussex pledge, 'cause he never kept his promise forever if he ever promised anything at all.

And Kara, my sister of all people, realized that Dallon was a scam, and she was fucking devastated by what happened to her friend, and now she's quieter and writes poetry whenever she snags the chance, but she ends up lighting a fire just to burn her words, because if you burn your words you can never speak them, and that was enough like Dallon's mindset to be satisfying.

No one needs to know if someone said something, because most of the time people are trying to cover up their regretful words anyway, and Kara might as well be Yoda or some shit with her wise thinking that contradicted the mainstream of broadcasting one's phony words to the public just to hate them later and wish they had never done something so foolish, as Kara is more intelligent than anyone could ever determine, and as a reward I need to inform her of today's pivotal event.

"Kara! I have some news!" I burst through the front door to discover Kara on the couch, writing poetry like she's been doing for the past month but has never shown me any fruit of her labors.

My sister is unfazed. She has been unfazed since Dallon tried to kill himself, and for all she knows he's still dead. In fact, until this morning I thought he was dead, and I'm here to relay the message that a new faith is on the horizon for the both of us, that Dallon Weekes is alive and well and might be the happy artist I prayed he would be since the beginning of our friendship.

I shrug, swiveling away from my indifferent sister and subtlety caressing the table with my fingertips as I wait for her to freak out at my next comment. "Oh, sorry, I guess you wouldn't care if Dallon were to come back."

All of the sudden, Kara's head whips around to me, eyes like a gleaming blade meant to murder me if I'm not telling the truth, and she sincerely hopes that I'm not bluffing like I usually am, or else she'll fervidly release her morals to add a few indelible items to her permanent record. "What the fuck did you just say?"

I turn towards her again, a smirk tying the edge of my lips in a bundle. "Yeah, that's right. Dallon Weekes, my beloved Dallon Weekes, is not as dead as you thought he was."

I'm playing an approach that I shouldn't be playing, one of teasing my little sister into fascination with what I have to tell her, when in reality all it will bring is a slight relief before she erupts into sobs because the man she thought was fucking dead is actually not dead at all.

"You're fucking joking, right? You have to be joking. H-he died. You can't escape death." Kara is anxious now, heartbeat fluctuating like the wings of a hawk soaked in stress, and she leaps from the couch, abandoning her paper and pencils for the sweet mercy of a decoded sophism.

"His pills weren't strong enough, I guess."

And I cannot explain how fucking grateful I am that his pills weren't strong enough, because now I have the love of my life back in my small reality, in my small cycle of living and breathing and dying, because with him here, those three things have gained purpose, and it no longer feels like I am a machine, a robot, a puppet on strings controlled by the natural order of the universe. Instead, it feels like I am as shapeless as art, as complex as psychology, as beautiful as Dallon Weekes himself. And that's fucking awesome.

"Oh, this is fantastic!" Kara almost strangles me with her arms around my waist, something so unlike her yet exactly what she needs in this moment, and thankfully she pulls back eventually, asking excitedly, "Where is he? Can I see him? I have so much to say."

"He's at home right now, but he'll be back at some point. I promise."

"That dick ass better see me soon, or else he'll be witnessing the largest shitstorm in history coming his way."

"He'll be here," I reassure her, tilting my head down and grasping her shoulders like any compassionate person would do, even if it seems as though my compassion has died in the war that my mind is trying to convince me never happened. "He hasn't been here for a while, but he'll be here now. I'll make sure of that."

"You'd better," Kara snaps, relinquishing her affection for the man in favor of that boss ass bitch attitude she loves to wear every second of every day. "That rat ass isn't getting away so easily."

And I can't really expect anything else from her.

~~~~~

A/N: today's episode of Kara Is My Queen

aesthetic: the 1940s/1950s I'm about to cry (not the homophobia and racism and such, just the general vibe, like swing dances and greasers and all that oml I'm dead)

~Dakrashcourse