Call Me Hurt

Chapter 1 - Hurt

Ellen had been sitting at the bus stop for an hour. She missed two of her buses back home. While her hair was usually a vibrant red, today it appeared dull and lifeless, and made her look decades older than twenty-three. Hope had always been with her every day of her life, but this was the one day Hope wasn't anywhere near her.

This was when Ellen woke me up. I had been with her a lot recently, but at that moment I had never been closer.

From a distance, she was completely catatonic. Almost as if she were sleeping with her eyes open. But the closer I was, the more I could see her tearstained cheeks and red eyes. Her breathing was shaky, like she was holding back a loud cry.

What Ellen thought in that moment frightened me. The next bus would be here in five minutes and she didn't intend on boarding. However, she was tempted by standing where her bus would be. She wanted it to be the last place she ever stood.

I approached her quickly, my heart racing in time with hers. Ellen was still unmoving, but her mind was so crammed in her own thoughts that I could barely hear them anymore.

I had always known how miserable Ellen was, but I never suspected she would ever reach this low.

"Ellen!" I called in desperation.

And then, Ellen did something she had never done before in her whole life.

She looked at me.

It wasn't like she might be looking at something behind me. She was looking directly into my eyes.

I could tell she knew who I was even though she had never physically seen me before.

I carefully sat down next to her, staring into her bloodshot eyes that were buried in despair.

"Do..." I stuttered in disbelief that, after all these years, she could finally see me. "Do you know who I am?"

With tears still leaking out of her eyes and her lip trembling, she nodded.

"I mean, I know who you are but...I don't understand." She replied.

No one did. None of her feelings could determine how this was happening. Either way, we knew she needed us, and I wasn't about to waste my time questioning what I couldn't understand when Ellen needed me.

I sat close next to her. "Maybe you just need someone to talk to."

She clutched her bag close to her chest, as if she were covering her racing heart. "I haven't really talked to anyone in a long time. I don't know where to start."

"How about that thought you had before you saw me? Do you want to talk about that?"

"You called me Ellen," she said in a hurry.

"Sorry, EJ," I corrected myself. She always hated the fact that she was named after her mother.

She stared at me for a long time, digging through her thoughts, trying to find an excuse until she found none.

EJ laughed in embarrassment, "It was a passing thought. Everyone gets those."

"Not as loud as yours were. You hadn't planned it, but that's what made it so tempting because you didn't want to think about it for too long. Just long enough to know if you really wanted it or not."

The evening was growing darker, and so was EJ's mind. All this time, through her whole life, she had put her thoughts in boxes, taped them up and stored them away in a tight corner. But I could feel it. The boxes weren't just in a corner anymore. They were everywhere, exploding out of her. Yet, the thoughts just kept piling on.