Ghosts' of November

Chapter 18: No Excuses

> My eyes open but the world is hazy. If two worlds could exist at once, this would be the in-between place. A place where dreams fade like color becoming gray, and the fear of emotion will never be understood. In life not all mistakes happen by accident, in fact, most happen on purpose with forgiveness in mind. The bottle was drunk on purpose, but now felt like a mistake. It felt like maybe all that was left for my life was the bottle, a darkness that tasted like poison, and led me to a broken wishing well. Because of the bottle, my head heard thunder as my eyes couldn't stand the lights, and my mouth was as dry as the desert. There is no need to forget what will never be remembered. As my eyes looked outside, there were no changes, but nothing was quite the same either.

> Up until now forever was simply a fantasy that was lost to time. One day things were supposed to end, and someday things were supposed to begin. If my life never would end could it really ever begin. That bottle was empty, but not because it was drunk. The Old Man, when he saw it left on the counter, poured it down the drain. There were words he wanted to say as he knocked on the door that separated the two worlds we lived in. My eyes stayed closed, as anger reminded me that his voice would never be silenced. There was a coward living inside of me, and he was to blame for all the years of my life. That coward must die, only now it was not through suicide. Maybe someday that coward would learn to live with the scars.

> The Old Man left early this morning, he shut the door loud enough to shake the shack. Though it would be nice to sleep my life away, that is not possible. There are hunger pains reminding me that it's been longer than necessary without food, and my mouth still feels so dry. It had been more than a few hours, maybe even a few days since Lizzy had read to me, and my ears missed her voice. We both knew that time was running out, but we both thought we could run faster than time. Some Days we sat and talked about where we would go if we could go anywhere. Other days, we sat in silence listening to the other breathe, and just being content in sharing that moment. The closer we got to the end, the more the beginning felt like a trap.

> How could she so casually walk away from all that we've become? She said we could run away together, to someplace where we would never be found, but she was a dreamer like that. My journal is laid out in bed with words scrawled across its pages. Some of the words that were used when the bottle was drunk sounded confused, but most of them couldn't even be read. In the middle of one page, the words "I hurt" were crossed out, but also underlined. It wasn't clear which came first. By now, Narnia had been read from beginning to end, and the ending was the same as it was in the beginning. Does all life simply end where it began, and we are just to blind to realize it? Maybe, life is all a dream, and you can wake up in a world, like Narnia, and become who you were meant to be.

> As my feet hit the floor, reality becomes real again. If only it were possible to hide from the emotions that were waiting, but it never will be. There is no breakfast waiting for me, as if that were really punishment, most of my life was spent starving. There are a few eggs left on the counter, and it was time to gather more either way. There was a strange sensation running through my mind, knowing that something was going to happen sooner than later. If today was the beginning of the rest of my life, then the other half of my life would have to die. The eggs were eaten quickly, and the hunger inside of me was really revealed, as there were two more made and eaten. With nothing left to do, the journey into the end would have to begin somewhere.

> As the door shut, the August sun wasn't quite warm, it almost felt like fall as the leaves on the trees had lost some of their color. The road leading down the path was empty, not even the animals were singing their songs today. The sun was much too bright, and my steps much too short. Lizzy would be found at the Library, but not because she was lost. It was me who was lost, and she was supposed to find me. In this little town, there were all the people who pointed their fingers with whispers on their lips. They never saw me; because they could only see what they were looking at. My eyes look down, watching the steps lead me to some destination almost against my will. It sometimes felt like life was like a circle, and eventually we would all become dizzy trying to arrive at where we had always been.