ADRONITIS (II) : tmr minho

6: I could be Alive

Dawn 6

"Can we talk?" It's Dave asking me, but I push past him. He tries to follow me anyway.

No one has gone back to their jobs after that girl came up, so I don't know what to do. I'm not sure what Dave wants to hear, since I feel as if I'm stuck in one spot. Trapped here, between a rock and a hard place. One last girl, or so they are saying, and Ben's screams still echoing are enough for me to handle.

His voice is following me, but I can't manage to hide. I thought his pain would be good. For weeks I had imagined hurting him, but it doesn't make me feel better. It doesn't.

"I'm busy," I push past Dave, but he manages to follow after me.

"Please," he continues on, trying to chase after me, but I find myself in the Deadheads, hiding. I can't do it. I need to see what happened for myself, in these woods.

I stood in the Slammer, for I don't even shucking know how long. Staring at the Walls. Glaring up at my blood. Blood that looks the same as Michelle's blood, blood that I let Leo see. I shouldn't care, but I do, and it is the principle of the haunting that haunts me.

My body is a house with old walls that creak and monsters hiding inside. Ghosts of boys rest in my bones, which ache and quake given their own fragility coupled with the weakness of my muscles. My body is a tavern, vast and empty but simultaneously prone to infestation by an unwelcome visitor. My body is anything but my body. It is anything but mine.

He did nothing to me, which is why I am ashamed. Part of me wishes he actually hurt me, and then the guilt wouldn't weigh down my stomach. Hurting him proved no relief; it only makes my stomach turn. His skin seems to melt off his, wasting away in the heat. Why must I be forced to watch him like that?

"It's about Michelle," at this I stop, and turn around. Dave has followed me. My mind is elsewhere. I can't concentrate on him, not in the darkness of the trees. It was dark in the Slammer that night. It is hard to make out Dave's shadow from his.

"I'm in love with her," he begins.

I can't react so I just wait for him to add something more. The limbs can't move, the lips can't speak, the mind can't think. Though the heart in this corpse beats, it beats for nothing. It doesn't feel nothing, it feels an absence.

I want Minho here, to be with me, but I can't burden him. He can't know. I won't let him.

"She's been distant lately," he continues, rubbing the base of his neck. "I don't know what to do."

"Just shucking find her tonight and force her to talk to you," words of advice spill out, but I don't know what they are, I don't know what they say. Seems the lips have a mind of their own. It certainly isn't mine. The mind rots in the skull. "Michelle is the kind of person you have to force."

I hate that this is the world I am advocating for. You should never force someone, but Michelle likes the pressure. She likes to need and to be angry and to shout. But when I think about it, that is what was done to me. Those are the hands that reached up and strangled me. The hands of not caring about my choice. Leo mentioned that Michelle liked Ben a while ago, but things change in seconds.

I am not the girl who was born in my body. Lost is the girl who first showed up here, right? Why is it bothering me now? I was fine, but now I'm not.

His hands were reaching for me. The wall was firm behind me. I couldn't escape, and even this forest, away from walls the same colour as the Slammer, feels suffocating. The trees are closing in on me and the sun is gone. The closest star to us has abandoned me. Perhaps the rest will soon enough.