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Untitled #21

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Maze Runner

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The Man Who Lost a Boy

I stared at the street below me, watching the cars go along, blowing smoke into the wind. I judged the distance from my third floor balcony to the ground. I didn’t think it would be enough to kill me but I considered the option all the same.  I pictured the headlines, “man in his late twenties found dead in the street. Authorities suspect suicide.” I sat at my desk setting my head down next to my laptop; I could hear Aunt Helen downstairs banging about in the kitchen. I groaned and hurried down the stairs. I managed to be out the door before she could bombard me with morning pleasantries and offers of breakfast. I took off running down the sidewalk. I passed the street side shops and small houses until I had to stop eventually on a bridge, chest heaving and heart pounding. My fists clenched as I remembered the last time my heart beat this rapidly.

           My eyes stung from the sweat pouring down from my forehead.  I ran a hand through my hair. Jordan passed the ball to me hard. I dribbled the ball a moment checking my options. I could pass it to Patrick and have a low to fair chance of him making the shot. The sound of sneakers against the gym floor and the crowd making ceaseless noise was beginning to irritate me. I took a fast break to the basket and sunk a jump shot getting tackled directly afterwards. Jordan offered me a hand and pulled me up. I walked over to the bench sending Hampton out to play. The coach’s assistant brought me water. I sat back and watched. There was only a minute or so left on the clock and we were up by fifteen. I closed my eyes listening to the crowd, the game, the guys talking excitedly beside me. The buzzer went off Jordan hugged me and high fived a few of the other guys, finally the game was over.

I gripped the railing of the bridge looking into the water below I could feel my anger but it was weak. I wished that Jordan’s murder still hurt me as much as it did the first time I found out but it didn’t. I had a steady job and home; a high school sweetheart had no place in my life now no matter how much guilt I harbored. I checked my watch seeing that I had to start work soon I took off running home.

I took a deep breath before I opened the door.

           “ Helen could you please bring some coffee to my room”

           I trekked to my office down the hall and sat down shifting spare papers off my desk and taking out a bottle of vodka from a bottom drawer. Soon after there was a knock on the door and she brought it in and kissed my forehead, I smiled.

           “Thank you”

She nodded then saw the bottle, gave me a very stern look and left. I didn’t know what I would do without her. She was my mother’s sister. When I moved in with her, she was behind on some bills and I was making more money than I knew what to do with. I was happy to help. I stared at a blank screen for a while alternating between sips of coffee and sips of liquor, eventually I opened up the novel I was working on and started banging away on the keyboard. I kept at it for hours before I stopped a moment to realize that my hands and head were aching and I had run out of liquor and my coffee was cold. I sat back and looked at the stack of mail on my desk I sorted through it, anything that resembled fan mail went into a bin by my desk and anything from my publisher went into a drawer. I knew none of it was of my interest all my checks from the publisher went straight into the bank. I assume it was just accumulating there; I didn’t really tend to anything anymore. Thank god for Helen. I was alone here writing a lot in the spare bedroom I used as my office. I was a machine just churning out patterns of the same letters. After a little while I would send whatever I had to my agent I suppose that’s what he was called, then he did whatever he had to with it and put it on the market, he kept trying to get me to come to his office and talk about my “bestselling books” he called them. It sickened me. I was commercialized. My mother really was the one who pushed it on me so I couldn’t tell her no not after all that she had done for me. After... him... I refused to go back to school. I stopped eating for a while and instead of sleeping I would just rewrite the eulogy that I gave over and over until I finally broke and burned the papers I was writing, scared my mother half to death when the smoke alarm went off and she found me blankly staring at a small flame on my bedroom floor. After that she made me go to my psychiatrist, again and he put me on meds to keep me from being too severely bipolar but he said he couldn’t fix the grief, said I had to do that on my own, which was irritating and I told him so. I had to go to the hospital again and after a week I threw a major fit that lasted two weeks eventually they decided I was back to my old self enough to function and not stare at a wall all day or die I assume. I’m beginning to think my mother and the psychiatrist put me in the hospital as punishment instead of their reasoning of “keeping me alive” I think everyone understood that I wouldn’t dare kill myself especially after Jordan died and I couldn’t save him. I deserved the 50 years of guilt I had left in my miserable life. I took out my stash of liquor I had hidden in my desk. Helen kept alcohol out of the house because she knew I had a drinking problem but I assume she knew about the assorted stashes I kept hidden in the house so there wasn’t much she could do even if she had good intentions.  I took a long drink feeling the creative buzz coming to me. I stared at the picture of him letting another piece of him go. The phone rang I picked it up angrily answering with a hostile “yes?”.

           “Ah Noah lovely to hear your angry voice again, Listen darling I need some money”

I rolled my eyes, this damn kid. I don’t know how he managed to go from high school salutatorian to a prostitute of all things.  I also didn’t know why we were ‘friends’. Well, yes I did, on my particularly angry days he was cute, young, and available. I reminded myself that he was not the lover I lost. He was only hanging around because heavy paychecks awaited him at the end of his nights with me.

           “Cole, what the hell for? Just go make some depraved person happy and they’ll pay you for it. Have you forgotten how your job works?”

He let out a bark of laughter and I could just see his grin and his dimples on his childish face.

“Oh you never cease to amuse me dear, but business has been positively frightful and I just can’t seem to catch a break.”

I huffed rolling my eyes.

           “I’m not interested in you or your body.”

           “Goodness, nor I you, believe me Noah I could always do better than you; some wealthy business man is sure to come by and prefer me over his wife, just not any time soon and I really need some money. So I have a proposition for you, I have a story for you to write I’ll tell it to you and you pay me what I need and I’ll be on my way and you can profit off the millions you will make on me.”

I was intrigued by the prospect; I did think he had an interesting story. I was skeptical on how well the agent would take it though, which was even better. Whenever I would write something especially vulgar or morbid he would always send me indignant emails. I found it amusing.

           “Alright you have my attention.”

           “Excellent, well I wanted you to write about me of course.”

The animation of his voice I was reminded how young he was.

           “You remember the awful client I had that stole from me after promising me he’d get me a career in Hollywood, don’t you darling?”

           “Yeah.”

I said it gruffly, I knew that guy was sleazy.

           “Wouldn’t that just make a wonderful story? People eat that kind of stuff up. You could make me beautifully pathetic and...  Perhaps you better make my character a girl, just so you would get a wider audience. I only need seven hundred dollars by the way.”

I faltered in my thinking, my mind had already been gone drafting the novel in my head.

           “Seven hundred?!”

           “Yes, you see I got in a bit of a bad spot with my landlord and I have a loan I need to pay off before they come and shoot me or worse.”

I shook my head in fond disbelief. He was one of the most extraordinary creatures I had ever met.

           “You still there? Don’t you dare hang up on me again.”

I did consider hanging up but I thought better of it.  I figured when he came to pick up the money I could get more information on the story too.

“How soon can you meet me here?”

“Oh Noah I’m already at your front door”

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Demons

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Utopia

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As they were

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He told me that he loved me, but it hurt. I knew he would never love me like he loved her. I knew he’d never see me in that light, the light I wanted him so desperately to see me in, the one I shone on myself, begging him to please notice me. Begging him to see my beauty, and my wit. Begging him to think my jokes are as funny as I try to make them. Begging for him to look at me a little longer, a little harder, so he could see all that I am. So he could see all that I could give to him. Begging for him to one day come to his senses and realize that all along I was the one he needed.

v.m // maybe one day (via writingboutyou)

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Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

Neil Gaiman, Coraline (via books-n-quotes)