A Nameless Fault

Chapter 3: Words

Elizabeth

   "Mama, did you hear me!" I asked again, as she sat in front of her papers. "I keep seeing these boys in weird places," I paused after that to reconsider my choice of words because I was never good at calculating what came out of my mouth. "Not in that way, but they boys aren't real!"

  My mother didn't seem to hear me as she hunched over her papers. "Mama!" I repeated stepping toward her, but she didn't look up instead she made that: "yeahh," and "ahuhh" that sound that all parents made weather intentionally or non intentionally. I let my painted hands fall to my sides in defeat exasperating that teenage sigh. She still didn't look up, and I turned to march off to my bedroom. I knew my mother loved me, but it didn't feel like she loved me enough. Maybe I am just being selfish, I should concentrate on clearing my mind during meditation.

   That was one thing that she could never affect in my life. That twenty minutes of peace in which I could breathe and feel nothing, and everything. Yet, lately I would close my eyes and open them. He would be there, or the other one. Just sitting there watching in silence, like I would watch them. I closed my door with a soft click, and paused in front of the mirror. The sunlight touched my back, and flitted through my hair and all its curls.

    The long brown curly mass, of all tangled curls, with all the tiny braids randomly thrown into the mane to make it a little easier to manage. The light dark tone of the Cherokee human race. Painted by the devil with its horrible splotches that started at my jaw, spiraling down in large and thin blotches, curling down my his and legs beneath my clothes to spot on the tops of my toes. No one understood that my condition wasn't contagious, my Papa called it Gods beauty. The girls at high school called me a cow. I turned away from my reflection, and turned to stride to the end of my bed.

I sat cross legged at the end of my bed, feeling the warmth of the suns rays through my window. I placed my bare spotted foot on top of my pant skirt, my best friend had painted them this beautiful white with a miss green vine pattern curling in the center of the smooth nails.

   I closed my eyes for what felt like a blissful eternity, my body falling into a meditation state where my ears wouldn't work and all I felt was the sun, and all I smelled were the dried rose leaves on my window rested scattered away from the dead stem. This was the peace that led me to move on from the every day chaos and let down. The sun, its golden white rays cascading to kiss imperfect skin.

   I didn't remember opening my two eyes, but everything was brighter and in front of me sat a red headed fellow. The other one who had screamed in my head in a dream, a dream during the day. A day dream which I have been falling more and more into. The fire and the waves pulling me under and washing me over in warmth and wonder, darkness, strange and even bizarre sets my mind must have made up.

  He looked up at me, and I inhaled sharply. The blemished skin was pulled tightly over sharp cheekbones, and a deadly jawline. Wide grey eyes starred into my own brown. Those eyes a stab into my own, the kind that could melt a brain, or kill a bird. Greys,blurs, and coal mixed into this pale freezing vortex. I looked just under his eyes concentrating on a single freckle under his left eye.

    He seemed at a loss for words, like me. Beneath the right side of his jaw was a fat brown bruise, and on each side of his temple were burn patches. Dark purple marks almost like scabs. He looked down at the floor drawing his knees up to rest his arms on them.

   I had seen him before, screaming at us to do something. In a language that I could understand but wasn't my own, a whole different frequency. I had seen him watching me hug my pillow and read my book, but he always was in the back of the room, against the wall. Trapped.

    I pursed my lip, leaning forward into the shadow he cast across the floor. "Hey," he looked up in a jerking motion, whipping his head up. Those horrible and lucid grey eyes searching, searching into my soul. As of he could read me like an open book, the startling orbs that told a person to take their hand. That they could hold your hand in the dark and drag you up to the surface.

    "Why do you need help?" The question came out from my mouth before I could understand what I was saying, it was just thoughts that spilled from tongue and lips. "Trapped," he whispered turning to look over his shoulder, and I was washed in darkness. The sun replaced by a cold florescent light in a creamy white stone room. Like a lake wave in the cold winter, the cold, frigid breeze that came from black fans above sent a shiver along my skin. I looked into his eyes, when his head turned back to me. "I cant make it," he whispered eyes flickering back and forth to the other tables with rocking, murmuring men and women.

   "Cant make what?" I leaned forward, further into this illusive dream.  Sinking into its insane realism, the boy across from me looked up in confusion. "You should know," he whispered confusingly. He leaned dangerously close, until only a hair separated our noses and I swear I could feel his warm breath fanning my lips,and cheeks. Hot breath that warmed my cheeks in this cold room. As his eyes searched into mine, as he cocked his head to the side in confusion. "You are my imagination, how could you not."

   The tide was over and the ocean pulled back, and I fell cold and alone back, so my back hit the bed. My breath had quickened and my hands were clammy, my forehead wet with sweat, and I shivered in the rays I had been sitting under. All I could think about was that other one, the figment of my imagination that I could never dream up, much less a conversation.