WHEN BEAUTY NO LONGER EXISTS

4

a/n: im so fucking proud of this chapter. it's my favorite. there's only four, but, i mean.

noodleboi peep this + i tagged you twice kiss my ass

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With bleary and burning eyes, and an empty bed stretching vastly beside me, I woke up.

My arm was thrown across the desolate sheets, body smothered in the blankets I tried to keep on me throughout the night. The idea of bare skin, annoyingly enough, made me anxious and paranoid, like there was already going to be someone watching me from some place that I couldn't see, working to stare at me. It, they, would probably get in the corners of my room, and even my mind, crouched down and waiting, patient and destructive. My skin used to be for Josh and I, alone, and now I didn't even want it.

Yes, I wanted it away from me completely, because, there I was, feeling like a heart attack wrapped in flesh. Doing some waiting myself, putting work into the act of worrying those that I loved. Did I want it to eat at them, though? Did I want it to haunt them nearly as badly as it would haunt me? Consuming every inch of my brain and my insides, crawling through me like a virus. A posion.

I hadn't showered since it happened, though, and I was in desperate need of an intense cleaning. The residue of fingerprints and teeth marks and knuckles sat on every piece of my body, all of it unwanted and all of it painful. Hands that were forced on you, burned, like their identity was being branded into wherever it made contact. Needless to say, that was not a nice thing to feel. Not a nice thing to suffer through.

I gave myself instructions as I moved.

In order to shower, you've got to set your feet on the ground. Work to feel the carpet through your soles, feel out the material with your toes. Move your body forward, until you feel like you're falling off the mattress, except you're not, and move your knees. Don't worry about that pain that just spread through your back. It will not go away, you might as well grow used to it. Walk. Walk to the center of the room. Don't look in that mirror don't look don't look don't lo-

My mind couldn't tell who it was trying to address. It was lost, talking to anything that it could, including itself. Did it want me to study my reflection, or be repulsed by it? Did it even want me to step over to the very middle of the room, walking around the memories Josh and I held inside of these walls. I felt like I was pulling on them, wringing them out onto the floor with every movement of my foot and my legs and my arms. Throwing pieces of us out where anyone could see.

Regardless of everything that I was saying to myself, though, my eyes fell to my mirror.

And.

People say certain things about pain. Like how time will heal it, stitch the wound shut with its strong, careful hands. Like how it can make you do dumb things, think irrational thoughts, stain your judgement with every ripple that tore through you. And, I might've even gone far enough to say that pain is some form of an illusion, that the brain makes up, just to work to convince itself that it's real. That the body it's controlling is real, along with the life it's leading. It needs to make sure this reality exists, doesn't it? The brain. All I knew for certain about pain, though, is that everyone felt a different kind. And I knew that my pain walked.

It was a tangible thing. That I could feel, and would grow to feel even further, because agony would tug on me like it had nothing else to do. Using my body as a playground. A source of entertainment. My bones like a jungle-gym, cells like a hula-hoop, heart like a basketball. All of me would be taken apart under it, stored in jars with the intent to keep it all there, sealed tight and stuck in the dizzy, excruciating feeling, and there was nothing I could do.