❝ You smiled at the stars like they knew all your secrets. ❞
In a world where listen and silent are spelt with the same letters, attention is an obsession. To Hazel attention was more than a desire, she needed it to function - and negative attention...
They are these big beautiful diamonds millions of miles away that exist just to shine bright. Yet everyone takes them for granted. They are the only things that see everything with the power of them being half-invisible; forgotten about until the night. The stars know everyone's secrets.
When the world explodes, everyone and everything that every individual soul worked towards for billions of years will be forgotten - only stars can carry on the legacy.
All I wanted was to be remembered. And I would have done anything for that to happen.
***
"Nothing beautiful asks for attention."
He was yelling at me, his voice ringing through my ears. But I wasn't asking for attention, I was desperate for attention. No matter how sick, twisted or pathetic you think I am - I needed the focus on me for me to function.
So I just smiled at him.
Isn't it scary how much a smile can hide? Your sickening thoughts, you dying inside, every single secret lingering in your mind.
He continued to yell at me, making me half fulfilled, half completely shattered. The brutality spat out in his voice was beyond what anyone should deserve to go through, but on the other hand, it was all being wasted on me, spending all of his pent up anger and energy on me because I took up his mind. As if I was a tattoo in his head, the ink draining into and poisoning his soul.
His shouts echoed as I stood simply just smiling and not answering back.
Don't just kill them with kindness, kill them with silence. Funny how no words hurt more than a thousand insults, and empty space can feel like a knife in your back.
Feeling my lack of retaliation, he stopped to look me dead in the eyes. He breathed in, speaking everything slowly as if it were a demand.
"Every damned fibre of your body is coaxed with nothing but pure ugliness, everything about you is just excessively and unnaturally flawed."
Excessive.
Unnatural.
This meant I would stand out. Be remembered. Be the starring role in his mind, as I wouldn't have settled for a supporting role.
Internally, tears were streaming down my face, but I couldn't show him emotion. Then he would have won. His eyes burned through me until the last moment when he turned to leave me alone.
Despite how much everyone hates being yelled at, and the immense relief I felt when it all stopped, I was still happy. Negative attention was still attention after all.
Plus I managed to keep my mouth shut. Not utter a word to defend myself, not give him any victory of caring about what he was saying. He was giving me his full focus, not the other way around.
Anyway, silence and attention are star-crossed lovers.
***
Hazel Fitzgerald
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