Aftertaste | ✔️

like a marionette on a string.

          Lea picked up the pen again, moving it across the paper listlessly. Words arranged themselves in elegant swirls, blue ink flowering across the sheet as she attacked it again and again.

      She'd forgone the use of punctuation fifteen pages ago, and now her thoughts manifested themselves in unintelligible scrawls that nobody, not even her, could understand.

       But she didn't care because all she wanted was to write take her thoughts shove them in a corner so they don't have to be looked at or felt ever again.

          Her eyes were blurry; she couldn't remember the last time she'd slept. Or eaten. Or gotten up from her desk, really. Blinking hard, she forced herself to keep writing and writing and writing.

        She got to a few sentences before she misspelled a word. Then another. She put her pen down, breathing hard.

        It was okay. It was okay. Itwasokay. The room was silent but for the scratching of her pen. Another.

        With an animalistic roar, she threw the pen across the room, watching it shatter and fall on the floor in a pool of ink. A pool that, in the dim light from her lamp, looked just like blood.

        Sick to her stomach, she turned back to her paper to study the last few lines she'd written.

"This is for you Claire my angel who told me to rite a book about her and it took me too long to realize what you ment"

        She squeezed her eyes shut, but the tear slipped out anyway. It was true. She was a fool, a damn fool. She should have realized.

        The anger left as soon as it came. That wasn't good. The absence of anger meant other feelings could take over, and there was one feeling that had been waiting to take over ever since she killed her best friend.

        She crumbled. This was all too much. Everything was too bright too loud too strong. And too fast. God, everything happened too fast.

        The conversation. Claire's house. Sirens. Pools of blood. Crying. Shouting. Yelling. Screaming.

        Lea slammed her hands against the desk again and again, silently giving in to the fit. She let it take over, pull at her body like a marionette on a string.

        Silent screams tore out of her throat, leaving her gasping in pain but without the satisfaction of being able to shout out loud.

        She laid her head against the desk, cheek against the cool wood, and let herself cry.