The sky had finally opened before me, blazing in gold and light just like it was supposed to. I had always believed that was its purpose; to represent infinity and to tell reality from illusion. I had no real emotional connection to the world, all I knew was its melancholy, but not even that could ever truly satisfy me. I needed more, more than drugs and concussion could give me. My habits must have been unhealthy to no avail, and because of that my addiction grew all the more.
I looked over at Jamie, who smiled into the distance like she often did, then I shifted my gaze over to the seagulls feeding on filth and getting ready to race to the horizon. The ocean glistened in a million diamonds along with the silver sand that must have been burning hot, yet cold in the shade.
A trail of blood ran from my mouth to my abdomen and onto my sides where skin peeked from underneath my shirt. The same red was dripping down Jamie's jaw and nose, having stained her pure white sundress that I could never have imagined being subject to something like that. Then again, she didn't seem too happy about wearing it in the first place, but now she no longer minded. Her smile never faded, not even when the sun began to set and dark blue clouds pushed against the bright display of fire that we had watched for hours on hold. Her fingertips began to trace my forearm, and I was surprised at how cold she was. But I knew that there was warm blood in her, so I wasn't bothered anymore.
Winter melted away with that and never returned. The sky took on colors that leaped into higher saturation, screaming in red, orange and purple, those were colors I didn't knew existed before. But now I did. I had seen death up close, the world I knew existed only in grey and white. I didn't feel victimized or pitiful towards myself. She knew that as well, but this time she wasn't the only one running towards the ocean, nor was I the only one watching as her figure disappeared into peaks of light and glimmer. She took on who I once was and I granted her wishes, I dug my nails into her porcelain cheeks and let her bleed. She had answered to my calls and cries, with shame, with amusement, but most of all, with no remorse.
We were the damned but not the broken, I was whole and she was pieces of glass washed up on the shore. Now we were nothing more and nothing less than fragments in the far horizon, aware of our purpose and how much we were going to defy it until the end of time, until a punishment for our sins was shoved upon us. But I anticipated that the punishment would not be like what we did to each other, it would come faint and steady like the wavering of the sea. I would eventually disappear into the fire within the waves, and I would take her with me even if she persisted. But she would not persist.
-It's really quiet, you know.
She said that as everything turned to red around us. The world was not watching us, we were watching it. When I observed Jamie in that haze of colors, I couldn't help but make out stone and moss, green water dripping one droplet at a time. In her I saw memories I didn't know for sure were even mine, in her I saw the parts of myself I so desperately tried to hide. I wanted to ask her many things, from her childhood to why she became like this. No, perhaps I didn't want to ask, I simply wanted to know without asking. But regardless of my curiosity, Jamie told me nothing. She only looked at me like she had found long lost hope.
I leaned down on the sunbed, wrapping my own arms around my torso as though to make sure I was still one. My body soon fell sore and numb, but I didn't dare to move, not wanting to set chaos into a balanced state of perfection. Only my slow breathing pushed against the still air, steaming and forming clouds that faded into the night. Light ceased from all around us, and darkness soon dropped over the coast along with the nightly cries of crickets.
Sometimes I thought I had lived for centuries and through everything there was for mankind to experience. I had the world cradled on my palm, and it was a surprisingly small world, one that I could control alone with just the snap of my fingers. But after meeting Jamie I found all that hard to believe, it was as though, I, was the sand slipping between her fingers. She wanted me hanging by a thread, ocean beneath the fall, I knew she wanted that, it was her prolonged dream to let me drop with no hesitation. So, everyday, I let her push me down that cliff and into the damp, into the nonsense that neither of us really had faith in. And just when I rushed to look up, I reached out my arms, and that was when I saw her face; her lips parted and her eyes nearly shut in a narrow thin line.
Craving, a craving it was and nothing more. Falling and rising like the chest of a living person, not a corpse. I hadn't a hint of affection for her, I held nothing, and nothing, for a being such as her. But I did love the sight of her when no one else was around, how she melted and molded, monstrous as she was. No one would ever come to know of it but me. The distance we shared must have been great, but it was the distance that made everything we did and shared so addictive. I could run past her just to have her turn around and walk away, heels stomping the ground.
Most of the time she pretended not to know me, not that I acted any different, but I could read her eyes, and they were clumsy. She couldn't deny me anymore, she could only fight back like I used to. But I was there, and she couldn't stand the thought of acknowledging me. When we turned the last corner into a remote ally that reeked of all things violent, she might grab my face, she might push it against the wall as far away from her as she could.
But she couldn't let go.
