M is for Melody (Old)

Chapter 15: I Relive The Falsities Of Design

 The next day, I wake up, words swimming in my head like lyrics to a catchy song. They won't leave. They won't leave and neither will that perpetual guilt. I didn't even know him and now it's my fault he's gone. And it's my fault...always.

A crash sounds downstairs and I force myself to get up, pulling my legs over the bed and taking shaky, reluctant steps to the door. Or at least I attempt to, because all of a sudden my lungs collapse and I'm staring at the ceiling. I suppose I fell. It's all I can do to take small sips of breath to combat this...it cannot be an asthma attack. I wasn't doing anything close to active for eight hours while I tried to fall asleep. So what is this? The black around my vision returns, and I'm reminded of track tryouts last Friday. This time, I feel much, much worse. Physically tired, mentally distraught. An anthem of anti-algorithm. Maybe I'm not calibrated correctly.

Steps echo somewhere until someone looms over me, covering my fantastic view of the ceiling. He is blurry. Blurry and painful to watch. Where have you been, I try to say, to shout, but nothing comes out. Whatever I truly want to say acts like glue in my throat. Typical.

"Mellie," he whispers like the night. It's so dark for me I don't try to see past the veil across my vision, and shut my eyes.

"Melody. I'm sorry."

Why don't I believe him?

A cold, cold hand rests on my forehead as the shadow in front of me shrinks to my level. "You seem to be sickened," he says. His breath smells like autumn wind. "Maybe I took too much..."

I wait for the dizziness to fade like it always does, but it takes a bit longer than usual. The longer the blur persists, the slower my heart beats. Until my breath returns, until I can bear to stare upwards, I slowly slug along like sewer sludge in the city.

Then the oxygen is allowed access again, and my eyes stop throbbing and my head defogs. That impeccable fatigue lifts its heavy shroud, an operatic opportunity to get up and off and away.

"Morning," I grumble, wiping his hand off my forehead. Pushing myself off the floor, I glare at October, who is kneeling like a martyr begging for food and peace. But that anger slowly slips away the more I see. He looks...haunting. Sallow. Hollowed. So alike the last time I saw him, rampant with fear of the invisible predator nipping at his heels. I hate it, especially because it feels like I was the one that made it so. "Where...did you go?"

He takes a breath he doesn't need and looks away for a brief, vulnerable moment. "...What do you mean? Go where?" All the colors of his eyes swim in a confusing appeal, gasping for air. They confuse me, too.

I don't know how to respond for all the witty remarks I've made in the past. "Well, you know, after those tryouts-"

"I didn't leave." He winces, which I don't understand at all. "I was always...here."

My thoughts swim like blind fish. I'm disconcerted by this facade he seems adamant to maintain. "But...I haven't seen you for three days! Do you not remember?"

"I was here," he insists, and I'm unsure who he's trying to kid. "Maybe you just didn't notice."

This angers me, and if I wasn't so terrified of the lack of breath I would surely summon quite the objection, but it seems I cannot muster the courage enough to give what is deserved for this. I notice everything I can and, seeing as October has been the only thing on my mind for days, I find it hard to trick myself into believing I did, in fact, miss the presence of the very being. Unlikely stories are becoming less and less appealing as this time of mine wears on. As much as this melancholy truth saddens my very bones, I cannot reverse the fact and make it not thus.

"Would you kindly stop lying to me and tell me where in the world you've gone to? I wasted much of my thought space worrying, and you don't seem the type to condone that. Unless I'm wrong and have always been wrong. Wouldn't be the first time, in fact." I blink back a tiny tear, refusing to be weak when I was always the strong one. When others would break down, I would stand still and trudge ever on. It has always been that way. I was never a coward. I was never the one to give up and shrink away in self disgust, and I don't know any other way to be. I cannot bear to see myself give in after everything I've withstood in this sheltered, picture world of mine, absent of contact or unconditional friendship for so long. A starved islander, stranded in the ocean of conformity. Yet I did not give in. I will no longer make myself sound like a victim, either, because that is painfully hypocritical of me. I'm fine. I'm fine.

"I-" October musters, but loses momentum almost immediately. I can tell he doesn't know what to say anymore, and I don't want him to say anything. I just need to go to school and out and away. Encounter people who don't try to trick and lie to me.

Or do they, something inside my head echoes, a small breath of doubt I have to push down to stay sane. I have to be able to trust to be human. Else I'm merely a monotonous drone, a true deserted sea captain. Alone. I don't think I like being alone.

Gathering my feet under me, I stand and banish all thought from my head to prepare for the ordeal that has become of school attendance. "I don't care if you come, but I need to go somewhere that isn't here and it so happens that the school bus will arrive in-" I check my bedside clock "-ten minutes."

"You intend to allow me to follow you there again?"

"Who else am I talking to?"

"...Case in point."

I take a deep, steady breath - the steadiest I can manage - and gather my wits about me in a mist of false confidence and sound mind. With this facade, I think I can take on an army. I will not be transparent.

I am not transparent.