Tears

When that pain you feel builds and burns in your chest when your eyes gloss over and you can’t see, when that slow, damp, feeling sticks to your cheek, be sure to remember we made that word. From simply seeing them we can taste the salt in our mouths, flares under our lids, and strep in our throats; to cry is to be Gasian. When a Gasian wasn’t crying over this or whimpering over that, they were looking towards the ground and going about their day; obedient to an order that they forced upon themselves. History said we were always this way, always stumbling through the hazy blue atmosphere with cloaks about our frames; always hiding from each other and ourselves-but I never believed that. 

A common gripe my father held with me, a Gasian who never surfaced from that eternal pit that shaped his jaded mood. Every time I came home from school, dragging my feet on the tightly packed cobble, he was somewhere in the room-typically lounging in his tears-sitting up just to jab at optimistic skepticism. How could he not see it through those baggy, dark eyes? How could one person not realize when they became what had haunted them?

I was sick of it. 

I had gotten sicker ever since that dapper man with a golden trinket came into town with his own proposals and shabby promises. Ever since I embraced that trinket out of desperation...I felt different...angry might be the word. Synonyms to that word I seldom heard were echoing, following me in my dreams, in my school, and telling me there was something else to be done about...us. Frustration towards where I was, what I’d been exposed to, had lit a flame under my ass, had straightened my back, and inspired my tongue. This place was filled to the brim, too cloudy with an oppressive somberness. So we had to look outside.

“Are you sure about this?” Melody whispered with her form crumpled (per usual). She was a friend by proxy, someone I didn’t know too well, but tolerated in Discord’s presence. Discord had been my loyal friend since my first cry, always by my side, always my neighbor through thick and thin. The two of them were a little taller than me and shared hairstyles, lengths, and colors. An expression that represented anything besides the norm, to inspire our togetherness, was prevented by minimal measures, yet we punished ourselves more than any who was prescribed to. Where we all shared the same sickly, grey skin tone; the same lack of nonadhesive skin; and the repressed tone, and slow pace of words, we differed for the better beyond our sexes. 

Discord always had a pleasant smile on her. Her smile cleared that clingy haze on some days and her laugh was all the evidence I needed that something else was here. She had baby blue eyes that contrasted the deepest black of Melody’s...which drooped and creased with layers. Her eyes were more haunting. 

Her eyes neared so close to becoming a permanent red with all those fat, obsessive vessels trapping those abyssal irises; and her bangs hid them further. 

She was always huddled over like…

She was always held by Discord. What made her so special? Before we started high school, that summer, I knew something was different.

“Of.Fucking.Course not.” I growled under our lecture, “ But we can’t wait for everyone else to catch on.”

“This seems...a little selfish.” Discord spoke softly, “ We’d be leaving all these children behind. Our classmates, our families? ...It’s just too sad.”

“...No...they won’t care about us…”  Melody sniffed, sinking her head lower.

“And this is the problem!” God can’t they see that!?  “The best gift we can bring to them, everyone, is leaving this all behind. We can come back and we can, no, we will change this shithole for the better!” 

“Mr.Apathy,” 

Suddenly, the sound of my own voice pinged around in my head. Was I just yelling?

“ may you please sit down so I can finish my lesson? There’s nowhere for you to go, so just sit down and take responsibility. You’re too old to be acting like this.” 

“FUCK THAT!” 

I was yelling, wasn’t I?

“ I don’t give a DAMN about your sorry excuse for a lesson! No more useless, self-loathing bullshit! I’m done, we’re done!” -I looked to Discord with a flame of my own in my eyes, and she stood by me-” When I come back, I’ll show you how it’s done.”

When exactly was that, huh?

No-one stopped the three of us from leaving. Not a single enforcer dragged themselves from their offices to even look for us, and the ones that didn’t put up a fight. They watched us go. They sounded alarms. They put our names in every mouth, and likely, in every slanted cottage.

 How long would they cry for us? 

The thought among others new to me came up when the sun shined too often. Once, our faces lifted, our eyes peaked to a brightness we never knew outside of mist; once, we hugged and cried tears of something beyond sadness...but I don’t know what. What we yearned for, the freedom of the unknown, embraced us with sweltering beams and scorching soil. Long gone was the cool, hard, meticulously placed cobbled streets ruled by a filed and orderly divide. Out here? The ground sloped in all kinds of ways. Upwards, downwards, loops, and loops. It was like someone bigger than all of us molded it in their hands. Maybe it was the wind? It did carry its own aridness through the tan canvas. 

When my time wasn’t spent leading the fruitless charge, it was tapping the tip of my wrinkled tongue to my parched throat. Those snacks and water canteens only lasted so long. The nights were so cold we all spent them in each other's arms...or we all spent them on either side of Melody. She hated this.

She regretted meeting us, coming with us, and sometimes, she would start to stumble back towards the invisible town behind us. She had nothing, and every time she spoke she reminded me of...him. She reminded me of the things I hated about that sad, depraved, complacent town and only drove my quivering steps forward. The glue that held us was Discord (of course). Why was she trying so hard? What were they to each other? She hugged her often. Her fingers were nested between Melody’s. The way she looked at her was the way I...No. I…

That was too much.

I waved away the heat corrupting my thoughts. I tried anyway, but my chest hurt like something hard, a hammer or that hand that shaped the dunes, had rammed right into the middle. Fuck! FUCK it hurt. No amount of strength or dedication made it go away, and what I relied on, anger, seemed to make it worse; so I cried.

I hadn’t done so longer than anyone I knew, but that day I sobbed up a storm. I made sure to walk ahead of them when I did to keep them from seeing me how they saw everyone else. We had enough reminders in our lives. Enough snotty noses, flimy throats, and eyes rubbed red. Tears were popular with Gasians; they were our blood. When they caught up to me it was too late. I was bottling my fury at the time, but I knew I couldn’t stand her doing this to someone I loved. There was a way out of this crackled land of famine, and it was staring me right in the face all my life. Lounging there, leeching off of me, inspiring fear and procrastination and sorrow it was taught. 

“Pointless”

The heat clung to us desperately, yanking out thoughts in the darkest corners of our mind and twisting them with amusement.

“Useless”

She was so beautiful. She knew she deserved better than that town, but she still refused to let it go. The city depended on her as much as she did.

“Death”

I was going to see this through. We were. She was digging into my arms with her bitten nails and shouting something with webbed lids. What was the issue? I was trying to save us! My hands had never been so filthy before then. I used to use them practically-the backs of them anyway- to wipe away my tears as Gasain's did...so why were they around her neck? Where did all this strength come from? A power that I never felt prior rushed through my lightheaded skull as our eyes widened within each other. She held on and I held on, silencing her through sloppy, inaudible garble, through a wind that ripped those bangs clear for the sun’s focus. She struggled, she really did, but soon those tears fell like rain; and I’d been in a long drought. What was I doing? More importantly, why couldn’t I stop myself? Gurgling up, sticky, foamy, crimson from her mouth, I saw sudden color in those dark eyes; ones that begged for air along with the girl on my back. Brown hues plead until they lost that fight that I put there in the first place. That spark was mine to take, and though nails and teeth had parted my skin to expose where the meat stayed white; I relished in that moment. 

Victory...VICTORY!

The glory of finally winning something, anything, washed over me. I understood, all at once, the appeal of power when the fire went out of those amber eyes. 

“UGH!” 

I grunted, panted, I looked to the girl I did this for...who I loved...and she didn’t need to look at me to tell me what I was. I knew it. I even loved it for a second, yet I couldn’t believe it was me or that Melody was really dead or ambitious for anything-let alone life. No, she was holding us back. This was necessary?  

“Ug..guh…” 

I stammered over Discord’s dry whimpering. She and I weren’t able to bear a tear and...we used everything we had just then. 

We were going to die out here. Just like Melody.

Horror, then, or a sick joke, that a figure climbed out from a sandy pit to witness the aftermath. He saw us in pieces. 

One dead.

One traumatized.

And the other horrified at himself.

He was a tall man with a tall humpbacked creature stationed next to him. The one thing that spared me my shame-when that all too familiar warmth stung my lids- was that he wore a spotted fabric over his mouth...and a hat that veiled his eyes.