Leave {z.m.}

Prologue

"You're always like this. You can't live like this anymore." 

Her words dripping with anguish echoed through my mind of inescapable paralysis. She didn't understand, although she did put forth a considerable amount of effort to succor. I could not be helped. I would not let her anyway. I was not good for her. I was not good for anyone. 

"Please, Zayn. Don't live like this."

I sighed once as she reemphasized her purpose of standing before me. 

She assumed she could transfigure the very nature of who I was. Of what I was.

"I am not." 

I no longer recognized my own voice. It was bland and empty just as my feelings might've been; I did not know what feelings were anymore. They left. 

"What do you mean?" 

It appeared that I had caught her off guard. I wished she would not seem so interested in what I had to say. I never said anything worth listening to.

"I'm not," I shrugged. "I'm not living," I clarified. 

She placed a pale, delicate hand on my chest, and each of her slim fingers spread out across where my heart would have been. 

"I can feel your heart beating. You're alive." 

I could have almost laughed, but I hadn't laughed for the longest time. I could not even remember what my laugh sounded like or if I was even capable of laughter.

"Can you? Are you certain?" 

Her deep bronze colored, arched eyebrows scrunched together as she pursed her dark ruby red, lipstick-covered lips. 

"I thought...I thought I did." 

If I had feelings and if I knew what love was, I might've been fond of the perplexity smoothed across her face. She had always been a deep thinker. 

"You didn't," I simply replied, disregarding her illation.

She tilted her head in wonder as her curious oceanic eyes gazed at me. Her lips parted as she opened her mouth to speak. She couldn't speak though. She wouldn't be able to.

Her shriek only lasted one second before she was dead. 

The resonance of my footsteps trudging away from her limp body seemed to grow softer. I refused to turn my head to glance back at the woman I might've loved.

I just decided to leave. 

Again.