Charlotte.

Sometimes when I’m asleep I can see him standing in a puddle of blood. His eyes burn with unbridled sadness. I just stare into the dark apologizing over and over again until he speaks…

It’s always the same harrowing words that break my soul and burn the splinters…,”you left me mon petit rêveur”.

I swear. I swear at that point I wish I didn’t believe in ghosts. “It’s all in the mind baby girl. It’s okay it’s okay”, I whisper to myself…..I wake up every fucking morning with soaked pajama bottoms….but hey, everyone has nightmares…everyone has monsters that come out from under the bed to cuddle.

The elevator is empty; I can still see the smile on the receptionists face as he took in the graffiti on my shirt,’ INDOORS Y!’ It was a cruel smile speckled with the fragments of thought that fell from his plastic halo. My fingers are numb from the cold, but it’s okay. I’ll be dead before the clock chimes again.

The Le’Mac, one of the more eye-enslaving buildings in Westland's. Its name has reference to the leading edge of mean aerodynamic chord…mean aerodynamic chord is important because it determines the amount of lift a wing will generate….it’s kind of ironic considering his it’s going to be my leap into abyss…I’ll fall like Icarus as I step off this buildings balcony.

“Suicide is so underrated”,….I look at my reflection in the walls… my curls tumble towards my shoulders in reckless abandon, my eyes betray the unholy fire burning my chest, the facial scar under my eye that I’m so fucking proud of….but I can’t help but wince at the memory tied to my pride…..and lastly my skin; the cause of fights and drunken brawls between my parents; two roman catholic nuns, Angels incarnate in the light and devils spawns in the dark…..a shade not quite dark but not pure enough to be called white….I was the mud of the saints, molded into their abhorred idol.

I wonder if it will hurt when I hit the concrete 102m below…..human terminal velocity is about 193kmph….I’d be dead in less than 2 sec. I don’t wanna cry, tears are for the weak, not the broken. I shoulda probably had sex before I did this….the most severe pain a human can feel is when the trigeminal nerve picks it up; it detects facial sensation…doctors supposedly have sex as one of their prescriptions…I smile at the thought of referring sex to an elderly woman.

I remember the first time I kissed a boy…I must have have been like 12,it was at a party at school….he said my lips were the only thing beautiful enough to make a poet hate the inadequacy of words….I look at my lips in my reflection. They’re all dry and splitting…

The orphanage had a habit of reminding us that we were its code, and we had to be changed from time to time to make it better even if it meant complete annihilation of our most dominant aspects and painted us with insecurities in the process…it was all in the name of a better name.

When he first snuck me into his room…I was exhilarated…maybe it was the adrenaline of the fact I was feeding the beast inside. Even as he lit up a joint and touched me….I felt in complete control of the situation. But months went by and I lost more and more of my happiness, cause that was all it was…a painted joker mask. And with time it shed off and I could see my reflection again.

The nuns hate heresy. They say to withhold respect to a deity is to be a disgrace to them. He was my god. My totem. And I couldn’t stop…couldn’t let go of his selfish hand because without him I was a human mortified by its existence…Can you be addicted to approval?

As years went by I started to notice his hesitance to touch me….maybe it was the scars. Maybe it was the bruises. He never asked what curse wrought such dishonor upon his maiden…no, he just closed his eyes as he made love to me like he didn’t want to believe that he wasn’t the only fucked up thing under the roof he slept. I started to smoke with him more; we became more of a partnership rather than couple…like handcuffs, chained together at the heart because they’re useless alone.

We abandoned easy approach to conversations that had the potential of wounding us. We spoke the truth no matter how much it hurt because we were on a hunt for each other’s wills. I think he broke first…he punched me when I told him he was lacking in confidence and even more drained in reason. My nose bled, but I smiled …because I had the upper hand…I could hurt him…much more than he could hurt me. Wounded confidence is a fatal flaw, a hamartia, a gap in the armor, a bleeding tongue of flame…He knew I was filled with hate. He could see it across my breasts when he took off my shirt, the scars that gazed at him like a hell hound at a damned soul, of course there was something wrong with me. I just hid it under the skin they stared at so much…under the veil of silence that made me invisible to my demons….I slept that night with a clotted up nasal cavity, but a sound resolve. To hurt him too.

But I didn’t…

No, I didn’t love him. But…he loved me. I could see it in his clouded, glassy eyes…I saw love when I spoke…but when I saw him lying there in his coffin yet to be nailed shut by the self-righteous pity of the priests …I saw hate on his face….dark suffocating hate…because I had left him and thus his soul followed suit…I wish I believed in a god. Wish I believed in retribution rather than amnesia, because without him to loathe...I detested myself.

The elevator stops at the 12^th floor. My neck tendons grip my muscles dragging my expression into a panicked one…but the doors don’t open, a groaning sound pushes its way from the floor the lights start to flicker. ”no, no, no… fuck!” I try to pry open the doors with my fingers but they yield not to my endeavors.

I Scream, not for help but in response to the seething frustration… I punch the unflinching doors…I keep on punching until my knuckles are raw and bloody. I start to cry…my tears blind me as I cuss…I can feel my fingers twitching as blood trickles off my nails and fingertips.

I scream.

When I would wake up from the nightmares, I would wake up to him staring at me. He would make coffee for us…he said my dreams were his to explain…that my terror was his to take…my tears were his to slake his thirst…my hate was his to gorge himself upon….That’s why he called me his little dreamer. Because I gave him a reason to deny his insomnia….I was what got him through the night…and he was what got me through the trenches of hell….we were each other’s hamartia…..but we stole each other’s flaws in a desperate effort to deny our own….

It’s been almost an hour now and I’m still encased by a polished steel cage….invented in the 1800…obviously by a Caucasian…I look at my arm and the skin that covers it that seems to shrink away in shame as I gaze upon it….I start to think about Him. His twinkling eyes…dying starlight that I never noticed fast enough…I can almost see him pushing a knife into his midsection…there’s something fucking archaic the way he let go of his hold on his lifeline….It was all my fault. I dumped his cheating ass on the wrong day…I let rage get the best of me and the reaper picked up his broken heart…he was never strong…supposedly never like me....but look at me now…on my way to meet my makers other failures.

It starts to get cold. I pull my shirt closer to my Goosebumps…I start to laugh as my breathing gets shallow...”can I die here?” I wonder. Modern elevators can travel up to 16.66 meters per second….how fast would one fall?...I’d die in a hell blaze and wake up hell blaze…fear could help numb the pain. But I can’t feel fear without acceptance and I can’t accept this is where I stand…at the end of the road with nothing but my scars…so if fear won’t drag me into cardiac arrest what will?

I look at my phone…there’s a picture of me and him looking back at me….I can almost hear his approval. I smile.

When I’m splattered on the street will they peel me off to have something to put in the coffin? Or will they soak up my blood and put it in a jar for the incinerator…humans have about 1.5 liters of blood…there’s be plenty left for the presses flashing cameras....I can almost see the headlines ”Teenage girl commits suicide over boyfriends death”…I curse…understanding is almost as rare as trust. Do necromancers really exist…will my soul be summoned back for trial? What will be the epitaph on my grave…will they miss me? And for how long until I become another biochemical sequence in the nagging sub-conscious?

“I don’t wanna die”, I whisper to myself…”OH, but yes you do petit rêveur”,he whispers back. I look up into his empty sockets…”You’re not real”. He spits at me and grins. I sit there waiting for my sanity to kick back. “You left me mom petit rêveur”…”YOU FUCKING LEFT ME,” I scream back….he moves away from me as I grate my nails up against my neck…the pain makes him start to flicker….He raises his hands in surrender…but there’s a look on his face know only too well…triumph.

The lights start to scintillate. I push myself to my feet. My thighs feel damp but I know it’s just sweat not piss….the doors open.

..I’m standing at the ground floor.

The receptionist looks at me and bites his lip….I smile back and mouth the words,”…Fuck…you.”

I look back at the elevator…”up or down petit rêveur?” I whisper to myself…..my eyes burn as the elevator doors close….I think about dying, but…It doesn’t change my mind.[suicide is for pussy’s]

“Guess it’s up,” I murmur….I wonder if the receptionist is staring at my ass as I walk out the door.