I spend hours looking in the mirror to see if there's any part of me I can recognize; any part left unscarred, cancerous, or mutated.
I'll break the mirror. It's laughing at me. They're all laughing at me.
I go to the box once a week; I don't cry... I try not to. This is what he died for? These cold, hollow eyes stare back; unanswering.
Left, not died, left. Maybe death would be better. Maybe it would hurt less if I just gave up and called it death.
I sometimes pretend that I can laugh it off. It doesn't help; it just hurts more inside. Like tentacles reaching into me and pulling out my guts... examining them... filling me up with black oily goo all sick and twisted and dead.
They say (we say) when we start to go, we can't stop laughing 'cause the pain stops. The Voices surround us and drown us in Them and we stop needing air or hope, just Voices pushing us down.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Down.
All the way down.
I give myself a moment to cry, after the fact. I'm cleaning off the hammer, hoping against hope he was one of the bad ones. I try not to think how it doesn't matter if he was or wasn't... It's that kinda thinking that means you're either not up for it or in too deep.
Have to stay balanced; it's a long way down.
I have papers, stories. Too many are gone or hidden or lied about. Forty-four isn't a gun, it's a weapon. He isn't a person. They tell you He might as well be a He but He's not. He's not at all like a person. Not even a little bit of a person.
"Why you comin' here again, buddy? I told you I won't take your money."
He says that to me. Me. I'm important. I'm rich. But he knows it's a lie. A sham. I feel like something's sitting on my chest and it won't let me breathe. Incubus.
Nightmares. All the nightmares. It's closing in on me, I can feel it.
They smile at me on the street. If only, if only they knew.
I'm asked to dance. I don't dance. Not anymore. I used to love dancing and parties but I can't handle it anymore, it's like there's this impossible thing between me and them - scars, a hundred scars and tumors. I can't see them past my own bulbous, horrid face. They can't see through the scars.
I'm walking down the street. I see it. He has it. He died so that it could be there, in the box with him (what's left of him). I follow him home and pretend that is matters if he's a good one or not but I know what's happening.
I'm falling down.
And down.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Down.