I live for her

Chapter 1: A Good Day

A/N:The following chapter is dedicated to my eager and supportive and loving  followers: sassyroe
mhashe18

The alarm rescued me from another one of my nightmares - they're becoming regular: the ones drenched in suicidal thoughts. The kind of nightmares where I watch myself slit my wrist and hang myself - but I am unable to stop myself. I feel paralysed - immobile. It is as though I am a witness of my own suicide - watching myself, from the view of an omniscient narrator, take my life. I hold my chest tightly until my pulse drops; I rub my eyes against the side of my index fingers. And I am reminded that I am short-sighted as I get a blurred view of an orange ball rising in the midst of an orange horizon. Myopia. Short-sighted people see art when their glasses are off: it's some Van Gogh or Picasso type of art that I get to scrutinize on dark nights lit up by kaleidoscopic traffic lights.

Dad wasn't home - he was on the night shift again. I preferred it like that, so that I didn't have to face him - because I spend my whole day trying not to piss him off... Also, not seeing him feels like a warm cup of coffee after trudging through a snowy terrain in subzero degree conditions, for nearly a month - without feet beneath your knees. And when my frostbitten fingers touch the cup, I sip the bitter-sweet coffee of solitude and look down pleased knowing that my arms aren't overworked and lower limbs are intact. As I inhale the caffeine... life becomes less shitty... the hot liquid stings the back of my throat... and my anxieties sleep like a baby with his mum's breast as a pacifier. (You're such a pervert for imagining that... ). I know it's hard not to stare: you'll find me burying my eyes into the screen of my phone when a baby feeds from his mother. I know it's natural, but it doesn't feel natural to stare.

I got myself ready for school - for the 7AM bus - while Twenty One Pilots' songs were blaring from the ears of my headphones. Dad doesn't allow me to use them at home - that's one of the reasons his presence evokes so much anger within me. His voice, his scent and visage riles up my anger - while his footsteps and his shadow supercharge the anxious voices in my head. The amount of times music has saved his life is innumerable: because I have his murderer genes but music tells me to chill out. (Now you think I'm psychopathic, me too. If you've got African parents you definitely think I'm ballsy. You imagine the beatings that would tattoo Wolverine-inflicted scars onto your backs from belts held by your own pops. Me too... sometimes. But the Western environment causes African dads to change colour like chameleons from disciplined African parents to immoral killers.). 

I stepped out of the house and noticed the first bunch of roses budding this season, in Mrs Knight's garden. She was a middle-aged housewife - or granny: introverts learn to keep neighbourly greetings at a superficial level consisting of an exchange of "Good morning" or "Good evening". I slyly snapped off a stalk from her rose bush, placed it in the pouch of my bag invented to house a bottle and walked away very briskly until the house was out of peripheral sight. And I did want to ask for permission - but remembered I had to respect the introvert's code of conduct.

The 7:00 bus was on time as expected and I saw her, from the bus's dirty window, waving at me with a cherry-blushing smile. She mouthed, "I luvvv u" with her thin pink glossy lips. I eagerly walked into the bus and felt my heart race as I closed in on our usual spot - the third pair of seats from the back row. (The heart problem: it's the stupid teenage hormones!). 

She smiled and said,"Hi". I sat down and gave her a peck on her soft thin lips to return her greeting. Soft thin lips taste nice. She laughed and giddily laced her fingers through mine before she began her bus-ride long rant about how much her mum doesn't understand her. (It's become routine: I... blame the teenage hormones - hers.).