Run Loser Run

Triggers: severe mental health, suicide, implied not explicit abuse, trauma, grappling with reality.

The sidewalk I slept on screams at me, mocking me. The trashcan I search for scraps in to satiate my grumbling belly threatens to expose my secrets. I repeatedly slam my palms into my forehead, trying to stop the echoes.

The lamppost won't stop laughing. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you," I repeat uncontrollably, twitching, recoiling from unseen attackers surrounding me. I feel their tiny hands digging around beneath my skin. They are trying to find the entrance into my mind.

On the corner, a young child points and stares. I can't be sure he is there at all. 

The stairs claim to know me, yet they make up lies to confuse me. Little do they know I have been watching them for weeks. I suspect they intend to kill me. 

I don't trust the stairs or their stares. Their echoing voices taunt me constantly. 

I have tried to stop them. When the sidewalk I once trusted to cuddle up with betrayed me, I stepped out into traffic, and it passed right through me.

I see the air—a trillion tiny dots swirling in a chaotic swarm. My theme song is the mockery of tiny atoms. It constantly laughs, the reverberating chuckling and cackling that is the soundtrack of my reality. 

It wants inside me. I try not to breathe, but it makes me. I am entirely under its control, unable to resist.

I am rotting.

They live on me, feed on me. 

My skin crawls with a trillion living beings.

They are devouring me. I keep hearing tiny voices say, 'come this way. I found a tasty bit.' 

I have been screaming a lot. The itch in my crotch and the 'mmm, so yummy' may drive me crazy.

Crazy, they never used that word. The talking penguins gave me two blues and a red, then strapped me to a bed. 

That room and bed were my quiet, comforting friends that silenced the screams with whispers.

They left me too soon. The streets welcomed me back, giggling happily. 

Two blues and a red made even the lamppost and the stairs speak more respectfully. They were quiet, always silent, with not a hint of mockery. If only they hadn't pissed in my pocket, I might have enjoyed them as pets. I crushed them into purple powder beneath my feet.

The trashcan that fed me; ate them.

The twitching returned. Then came the laughter. 

Two yellow arrows peeled themselves off a street sign and pointed the way I obediently followed.

That was where it happened; The big IT. The it that changed everything. 

The arrows lead me to a bridge, a bridge over a highway. The cars screamed by yelling out, "Come get me."

I am getting ahead of myself. I had a watch once. A shiny silver one that hugged my arm as if it needed me. It was nice to be needed, at least for a while. 

I awoke one chilly morning to hear the tick tick ticking, whispering, "You are such a loser," as if it was programming me. 

I smashed my only friend in his shiny face with a brick.

Free at last, time no longer tethered me, and the past lept into the present, assaulting me.

She was large—more expansive than any of the other moms. She hugged me once. Only once. She was smothering in a literal sense. While she was immense, I was so small and trapped beneath her body while she turned blue.

Three days had passed.

The only sound was the leaking of gasses.

Momma evaporated in a chorus of flatulence. That was when I heard her large intestines rumbling and groaning, "You loser, nobody loves you." 

There was no care in foster care. They were real; I felt their fists. 

They enlisted every trashcan as a spy and every lampost to torment me. The streets became home as I dared not enter a building with stairs. Assassins, that's my suspicion, anyway. It has been over a decade since I stepped foot on a step. Somehow though, the curbs feel more welcoming.

In more lucid moments, I thought, 'There is little difference between a step and a curb; if one step is safe, could I do two and not die?' 

I trust the trashcan more than the stair. I had to play it safe and sane. Even if the receptacles were spies, who would they tell? Dead is dead, isn't it? It used to be, anyway.

The air was way too loud that day. The constant chattering set me off at an all-out run. Arms thrashing, trying to chase it away and get some peace and quiet, I fled following the arrows saying, go go go, and ignoring the stop stop Stop. 

The traffic was dodging me for the last time.

A truck hit three trashcans and nearly took out a lamppost.

It never stopped laughing.

I never stopped running.

There was a fire. I had a match. The fucking fosters did so much damage in such a short time; I had never learned their names before their taunts turned to screams.

The crackling fire roared boisterously, "well done! Well done!" 

I never thought to ask if it referred to me or the sizzling fosters.

My bones are now creaking and rattling. I hear them clack away the time like the watch used to, but with less precision. 

I don't know where they are. I don't know where I am. Lost from a past that seems closer with every step.

The arrows are getting bolder and more insistent. They pierced through the heart of every stop sign that slowed my pace. 

The bridge raced towards me. 

A trash truck rattled toward the bridge, overloaded with garbage. There was one thing worse than a can of trash: an empty trashcan hungry for secrets. 

I had my secrets; they were mine, and I would take them to my grave. 

My grave where my bones will rattle and my skin will rot. 

The yellow arrows pointed down. Car after car flew by calling to me.

I lept.

As the windshield shattered my face and my face shattered the windshield, I saw them there.

Waiting.

Screaming.

The fosters are calling me from the gates of hell.

If I had just one regret, it would be two blues and a red before I chose between eternity in hell and or as a ghost.