M is for Melody (Old)

Chapter 18: I Revel In Injuries Past Light's Spectrum

On my way from the lunchroom I'm stopped abruptly by who I at first believe to be a hall-roaming teacher vigilante, but it turns out the pale hand clinging tightly to my jacket belongs to October. It takes a lot of force to keep myself in place, and I'll well be colored surprised, curiosity is a fine contributor to that iron will that roots me to the spot. I realize this is my chance to act upon the resolution I made this morning, to forge answers out of the little broken pieces I've collected. And before I can back down or fight my way through to find Ellie, I harden that resolve into something that can fuel the words I want to say so badly.

"What do you want?" I bite, and I reckon that held a bit more venom than I meant it to. Regardless, I'm impatient to get to where I'm headed and escape the looming reality in which this conniving entity dragged on top of me and left to rot on my shoulders in place of the whimsys I once tended.

At once he releases his grip, the hand he withdrew, I can't help but notice, shaking with something like anxious fury. October attempts to say something, but maybe the way I look at him kills the words before they taste the air, because he quickly looks away and holds out his wrists.

The pale, lifeless skin I'm shown seems to pulse with an echo of something, and only when I blink a few times do I realize they're actually ebbing in and out of corporeality. Thoroughly shocked, I look to October, but he is still facing stoically away from me, and remains so even as he speaks.

"I tried to focus it in one spot, but that was all I could manage. It's getting a little dangerous, but I think-"

And then the most peculiar thing happens. Though his mouth moves, no words travel out, and the rest of his sentence is lost in soundless mouthfuls. He only seems to notice the problem after he finishes whatever he was trying to say, looking like he's trying to produce some form of noise from his throat. When it doesn't hum like it should, he paces a few steps, but his feet never echo on the hallway tile.

I'm nearly terrified, but October remains sober as he stares hard at the wall behind me, focusing on something I can't begin to see with my own eyes.

When those colorful yet colorless eyes finally fall on me, October smiles - I'm alarmed to discover it to be the same heartbreaking, time-weathered smile Ellie had shown me hours before - and lifts the corner of his shirt.

I look away at once, expecting to see skin, but then I realize I didn't see anything at all.

And it's true; I didn't see anything. Because where one might see a torso with pale, flawless skin, the only thing I can perceive is flawless nothing, an emptiness where flesh should be present.

"This is the price," October says, his voice back but unsteady and broken. "I thought maybe you'd want to know."

I search his face wildly, for answers, for reassurance, for I don't know what. "The price for what? What do you want me to know?"

The look in his eye becomes something wrenchingly sad, and he answers quietly, "Something you'll figure out anyway. You've got something, Mellie. Something everyone wants a taste of. And once you realize how precious it is, you'll do fine."

There's something unspoken here, and I feel like I'm missing something. That missing puzzle piece, that hole in my heel, it all comes back to me momentarily, a tidal wave of recorded words lying sandwiched between lined pages. And I'm drowning in that glass box again, filling up with fear.

"What are you talking about? I'm trying to figure everything out but I can't! You've got to tell it to my face or I'll never be able to speculate anything close to the truth. I don't know who to ask, I don't know what to do even though I make it look like I do, because everything is all acting, you know?" I don't know what exactly I'm saying, but I know they come from the same place one feels overflowing with words that need to be said, that need to breathe the air to grow and branch and fly. But they haven't been reserved for this moment; they come straight from my head and don't stop anywhere until they have fought through clouds of uncertainty and rode the truth to their own freedom.