not okay {ziam}

five

{five}

is that a knife?

-

i remember vanessa as if it were yesterday.

she was completely different from mandy — sharp tongued with brutally gorgeous features, inky hair chopped savagely short, and ruthless, silver piercings in her nose and ears. her legs looked like long storks when she marched alongside the lockers, as the girls used to laugh and point at her, calling her all sorts of hideous names. none of it ever fazed her though, she had a sailor's mouth and would spew out any sort of insult right back at whoever deserved it.

she rung a bell in some ways.

there had been a precise moment in my life when i decided i wanted her. it had been two years ago, i was just fifteen. a rather ordinarily quiet day of mine pursued, aimlessly riding my bike around humdrum neighbourhoods in the dead of night. it was at the time when i still lived in my father's house, so to escape his pending wrath, i'd make myself scarce until he'd pass out in a drunken stupor.

i had only been passing time, until a young girl came sprinting out of her house around midnight with her feet slapping across the driveway in a panic.

it had been vanessa, terrified, trying with all her might to get away from her hysterical mother. the sounds of the horrifying scene still ring in my subconscious, her petrified breaths and the psychotic shouting being thrown at the young girl who usually held her head up high with any insult. the older woman seemed manic, having some sort of violent episode.

"how could you leave your own mother in this state?! what kind of monster are you! i need you, vanessa! you can't leave me!" the woman's voice sounded like nails on a chalk board, spitting rage and hysteria.

it had been obvious that whatever the mother was trying to portray was completely warped — something deeper and darker was going on. something that made the ballsiest girl run with fear, while the moon gleamed in the dampness of her eyes. as i hid in the shadows of the night, i observed a crazed mother sob and scream across the pavement of her driveway and a young girl disappear.

my reckless curiosity began there.

— the thing will vanessa, she knew i followed her, unlike mandy. vanessa had been the first girl i'd ever become infatuated with, as i spent my days revolved around her. whether it be around the campus of our school or anywhere she suddenly appeared, i was there. always.

yet, somehow, she seemingly enjoyed it. even if we never conversed, we grew an intense, strange relationship that consisted of longing stares and quiet, one sided admiration. sometimes, she would pretend as if she was unaware of me — a small distance away, trailing behind her as if she were mine. i'd watch her buy peculiar music records in town, the parties she'd attend to drop tabs of acid with her older friends, and the boys she kissed after too much to drink.

i knew why she relished in my ever lasting presence... it made her feel safe. we were strangers, yet irreversibly bonded together by my own admission.

that pond that i spend a lot of my time in, when i'm overwhelmed and struggling to breathe, she had brought me there long ago. when her mother's deranged behaviour became too much to handle, vanessa would sit in the dirt and write in a leather journal, smoking menthol cigarettes. i'd stand back, in the shadowy depths of the ancient trees, in love with the way her hair fell on her shoulders and the furrow in her brows.