Story Excerpts

Makida, excerpt 1

"It feels like everything inside of me is breaking. I took my own heart out of my chest and held it cupped in both hands like it was water from the fountain of youth, but it shattered between my own violent fingers, broken shards of my life tumbling to the floor uselessly, and when I tried to gather the broken pieces and put them back together, they sliced open my filthy palms, and my softness broke. I didn't want to be soft after that. I wanted to be made of broken glass and the monster you find hidden under your bed, the one peeking at you from the cracks between the stairs, waiting to grab you and hurt you, I wanted- I wanted to be the kind of person you can't look at for too long or your eyes will start bleeding." The lights flashed under her eyelids, red and blue. "I was born a soft soul into a soft body." Screams echoed in her ears, the ache in her skull a dull drum. "I will not die as such." A phantom ache constricted her throat.
Makida could feel the eyes focused on her. After a moment, the doctor spoke.
"You're aching. From what I'm hearing, you have so much trapped inside you, you don't have the room to sort through any of it anymore."

(He doesn't understand. Incompetent prick.)

"It's- I'm rotting. Inside my bones, there's rot, I have no way of stopping it and soon, it'll consume my whole body, and I'll die a wicked monster."

(You're already a wicked monster. The rot won't change that.)

"No, Makida. You're not rotted, you're hurting." The doctor shifts in her chair, watching the girl curled into the office's loveseat. She was so small, so frail looking, it was hard to believe she could have killed someone.
Makida hugged her knees to her chest. "Ryoshi is my best friend. I pushed him away over and over, but the moment I offered my friendship, he was right there."

(He was innocent, you absolute freak.)

"Why would you want to hurt him?"
The doctor absolutely hated her. She knew the doctor wanted nothing more than to tell her she was full of shit.
"I didn't want to hurt him. I've never wanted to hurt him, I don't even remember..." She was walking one moment, and the next thing she knew, she was standing over two other friends, covered in blood and wielding a broken bottle. She couldn't remember anything in between.
"You had a psychotic break. It would have been traumatic, you subconsciously buried the event."
No, that's what the doctors had claimed. The doctors with their clean coats and shiny, no nonsense degrees.

(If you tell them it was possession, you'll be locked up in a heartbeat. Ooh, maybe they'll call a priest for you.)
A cold hearted cackle.

"I guess so. I would never wish him harm though, Ryoshi has almost always been my closest friend. I love him like family." Makida hugged her knees to her chest tightly. These sessions were getting nowhere.
Her therapist seemed to think the same thing. He was frustrated by her lack of progress.
"That's time, Makida."
They were ten minutes over.

(Useless man!)

Makida got to her feet, wrapping her arms around herself. "I'll see you next week then. Have a good night." She didn't give him the time to reply, speed walking out of the office to the waiting room, where Sonnet sat and watched a little boy play with the wooden trains. It was going to be such a long recovery.

(Sonnet deserves better. You should get out of her life, you sad child.)

Another night trying not to break down in her partner's arms completely. Nothing new yet.

Image: appearance reference for Makida