Tethered

Six || Early Bird

{Yours - Russell Dickerson}

...I was a worn-out set of shoes, wanderin' the city street, another face in the crowd, head looking down, lost in the sound of a lonely melody...

----

     It's happening again. I can feel it creep in through my skin, that foreign yet familiar sensation that, in the dark, I can't escape.

     I can hear the music, the faces all distorted, rushed and yet slowed down, fleeting as I am pulled, dragged through the crowds, while the bass drones on. 

  "It's too loud," I say to the hand gripping mine, but I can barely hear my shout. 

  "We'll go somewhere quieter," they reply. 

     So I follow. 

     The door closes, blocking out the noise. I'm stumbling towards the wall, holding myself together. He is there. Again. In the quiet. Away from the faces and the noise. 

     It's too quiet. 

  "Come here," he tells me, but his face is over mine before I can lift my drooping head. 

     His breath lingers, seeping into my skin. It's harsh, jagged, waiting for something I don't know if I want to give. 

     I've seen this all before—this moment. I've lived it before, but I can't escape seeing it again and again. I just want to wake up. I just want to run. I just want to scream out--

----

     My body jolts forward, sweat staining my back as I launch my body out of bed, crying silently in the dark. It was just another nightmare, I tell myself. Nothing you haven't handled before. It doesn't matter what I tell myself; no words of encouragement take away the feeling of your skin crawling all over again. 

     I walk over to the window seat, the early morning light just beginning to creep over the hills as I feel the plush cushions underneath me, getting comfy. 

      Another sunrise. 

     I have seen more sunrises than most people. I know the way the sky paints itself to say hello. Yet, I can't enjoy it. I'm not awake because I want to be. 

     My eyes pan over to the stables, still dark in the shadows of the early morning where the sun hadn't quite touched yet, a single torch hanging on one of the pillars, guiding my eyes over to it. I have to be up in a few hours anyway to help Beau with the stables. Something I had agreed to, purely to piss him off. 

     A knot forms in my stomach when I think about him. How flippant he was. How angry he seemed at me. He doesn't even know me, and yet he sees me the way everyone seems to. Like I'm nothing. Like I'm a problem. Like I'm a mess that Uncle Deacon doesn't need. 

     I grab some clothes I'd left lying on my dresser, quietly pulling on my boots before tip-toeing down the rickety wooden stairs. I am already out the door when I see the first strong, shining light of the day. 

      I'll show him, I think. I'll prove that I deserve to be here.

     The stables are darkened and smell strongly of hay and horses, an overpowering aroma. Still, I trudge on, watching the horses as they stare back at me curiously, wondering why I'm not a rude, ill-tempered cowboy wannabe coming to clean out their stables. Still, they'll have to make do with me.