L'Appel du Vide (Nocebo Effect P3)

buttnuts roasting on an open fire

The flames are performing for me, or so it is in my perception, because no one else has ever been so kind, for even Dallon Weekes, the love of my pathetic little life, abandoned me for solitude, and it became a frequent occurrence to sit by the fireplace at home with Kara and speculate on why the hell this happened and why the hell I deserved it.

This time, on the contrary, the flames are much prettier, vaccinated with crimsons and sunflowers and vermilions and tied up into a beautiful bow of stone circumscribing the roots of their scarlet electricity. This time, there's no available space to wonder why Dallon departed so abruptly, because he's back now, and that's all that matters to me, so I'm not going to pester him about his decisions, however misguided they may be. This time, I'm with Elle, who is a sister but is not my sister, and she changes things up while Kara is in the living room and Dallon is aiding his parents in cleaning the dishes. This time, there's the charming estate in Bordeaux, France to waft the fragrance of pine and smoke and ash onto my skin still rouged by the kiss I shared an hour ago.

Ah yes...I know it well, even if it was fleeting and interrupted and mashed by the melancholy of being blamed for something I was endeavoring profoundly to prevent more than anybody else was, and that kiss was absolutely extraordinary. It didn't feel like all of our other kisses, back when Dallon could actually remember them, because those were secure. We assumed that nothing could damage our relationship, that nothing would wrench us apart besides our own eventual distaste for each other which would be completely understandable. But this kiss has finally accepted that things did damage our relationship, yet we were never wrenched apart, not even by the ailment of dissociative amnesia.

We've been staring at the sky for the entire duration of this mellow excursion, admiring how each day the moon tips out a bit of light to hide behind insecurities and secrecy and gradually builds it back up again, and truly it is a spectacular phenomenon, but Elle concludes that it's finally time to speak, because this silence is becoming a bit unnerving to the both of us.

"I'm sorry about what happened during dinner," she apologizes, gnarling her hands in her lap to occupy her nervous mind.

Yeah, I'm sorry about what happened during dinner, too. I have been nothing but gracious to Dallon's parents since they greeted me at the airport, yet they still do not favor me. They thought I fucking killed their son, when I would be the last person on earth to enact such a monstrous deed. Shouldn't they be grateful that their son is simply alive? They did nothing for him, and I did, and that's why only I can expect more in certain areas. They cannot, so it appears that resentment is their suitable tactic.

I snatch my focus from the fire and redirect it towards her, partially out of surprise, partially out of tiny flakes of spite, partially out of a need for a reconciliation that isn't her job to deliver but is flying from her mouth anyway. I don't say anything, though, only wait for her to continue, and she almost doesn't, but she then recognizes that I'm not wasting my words on fallacy, so she carries on.

"I understand that my parents don't like you, and I really have no idea why, but I want to make it clear that I am so grateful for your presence in Dallon's life. You really helped him. He used to only sit in his room all day, never talked to people, and I know that may not mean much to you, because you immediately saw the effects of Dallon's happiness where I didn't, in addition to the fact that the only other thing you saw was when he ended up almost killing himself, but I'm incredibly thankful to you for helping him anyway."

I'm just about to giggle maniacally, but that's apparently rude, even when someone has no fucking clue what they're talking about and it's so bloody hilarious to see them try to decipher things that they will never comprehend, because Elle Weekes, Dallon's very own sister, doesn't know anything about what transpired in Las Vegas. She wasn't there, and she wasn't truly there in Bordeaux when Dallon was, either, so he was permitted to fall, and somehow his family claimed that they were permitted to mourn him.

Not even I saw Dallon's joy in a pure sense. I only wished for it and basically ignored the obvious truth that artists cannot be happy. They can never be happy. Show me a gleeful artist and I'll show you a mirror with the face of a liar printed in the glass. I thought Dallon to be many proficient things, but I should've known that a happy artist is an impossible label to achieve, even for him.

And maybe I could've helped him achieve that, at least in a minor way, just scraping the line where humans can no longer pass, but he refused my help to instead drug himself with pills that never even functioned correctly for his specific purpose of fucking dying and deserting me and throwing himself to the shit he thought he assembled and needed to repent to, but he was not infested by venom at the start. He was consumed by it when he began to hate himself, and he pushed me away because of that pest under his skin.

I was physically unable to help him, yet some people are praising me for being this saint that I know I'm not, and it's not like I can decline their offer of deifying me, because I've never been capable of poking my opinions into discussions, as no one really cares about me, and when they do, they only care about the idea of me, so now it's time for me to interject.

"What kind of help is it if he shoved it away?"

The young woman laughs halfheartedly, vocal cords slackening into a gloomy remembrance that I know all too well from dreary nights of pondering Dallon's beauty and realizing that it's no longer there. "I guess my parents were asking themselves the same thing. You shouldn't worry about them, though. They're always this conservative. There's no fixing that in the near future, so you can just subtlety avoid them for the time being, and you should be fine."

It seems so odd that Elle is warning me against her own parents, but if these were the parents who fucked Dallon up in the head, who made him feel unwelcome during his childhood, who repelled him from the home in which he stored all of his memories since he was born, then Elle's warning is conceivable enough.

Nevertheless, I absolutely dread being scared of places in which I'm staying for a prolonged period of time, such as this quite magnificent house in Bordeaux, because then I am required to conduct myself in an astute manner so that I can observe each niche where my plan could go wrong, where I could be met with disapproval from those I'm laboring to shield myself against, and that would just be the end of me.

Dallon would protect me, but would Dallon be quite cognizant of where I'm coming from? He grew up in this place, and though it didn't treat him very nicely, it's still more of a home than a barn would be. But I suppose we're all just searching for an escape, and Dallon is the master at locating them, 'cause he can know things that you never would've suspected. He knows that he could have easily hanged himself with his scarf, but he didn't, because that wasn't psychology. That was suicide in its least diluted manifestation, and he didn't like suicide when people called it that, even if it was its proper title. Truth is, he was hiding from his responsibilities as any teen blogger would, but he's not a teen blogger. He could be so much more, could do so much more with the life he was given by oblivious parents who only brought him into this world so that he could figure shit out on his own, and he's doing some of it adeptly, but some of it just tanks, and that's all right, because he's trying his best, and I'm so proud that he's finally dug himself out of the hole he's spent so long burying himself in.

But now I've found myself in a hole, and I'll be in this hole until promptly after Armistice Day when we return to Las Vegas, and I pray that Dallon's parents won't guard him for themselves, because they sent him to America for a second chance, and he's taken a third from suicide because he enjoys it there. He needs something to enjoy in his dreary existence, and perhaps it's insensitive to call his existence dreary, but he'd agree with me. That's why everything I do for him is so imperative to his survival, and that's why his parents will not faze me.

~~~~~

A/N: why do I go off on these tangents like they barely said anythign I'm fucik

aesthetic: people asking if the book I carry around is a journal because i'm always writing in it but boy do they know I'm outlining gay ass fanfics smh they'd be devastated

~Dakotaylorswift