Catastrophe Jones

It was the dry of winter, cold and tasteless, grey and hateful. It clung to fists and mouths and eyes and music, crackling and gritty, pops and whistles echoing from lips brittled by disuse. We hadn’t laughed in millenia; it had been bottled by the Mirth-Eaters before the dawning of even the second sun, and now there were three.

I couldn’t remember his name, so on the rock was a symbol for Unending — it was the last thing we could cling to, after time had washed away spirits and faith and ground them into ash from which not even the cry of a phoenix would lift.

The sound of chisel and hammer was muffled by the thick of cold that had crept in and choked the breath from the last in the nurseries. All my experiments drowned in ice and straw, wrapped in swaddling clothes; crowns of thorns as their pillows. I could not finish the symbol; draught parched my bones and tendons, and the last of me crumbled to nothing in a silent, bitter wind.

My eyes dissolved, watching the stone bear our final word.

Ending.

My inability to keep focused was going to wind up getting me killed; I was certain of that much. Right around the time I looked at the clock for the thousandth time in thirty minutes I knew I couldn’t even begin to care. I’d been listening to harpies all day long, screeching about husbands, wives, stupid children, office gossip, car accidents, pedicures, construction, phone calls and hell yes, even once, WORK. My arms were cold and I was shivering like some like touch was dancing along the skin, smooth and cool and impossibly light. My guts were in knots because I knew what was coming, but I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

Out of here soon, and there’s a bottle at home. I’ll pick up a pack on the way and I’ll settle in for a long haul. I’ll raise a glass to you and smoke out of spite and defiance, enjoying the taste of the smoke on my lips all the more for it.

And when the bullet comes tonight, through parted window shades that I could’ve closed, shattering the glass I’m holding and burying itself beyond my left eye, I don’t suppose I’ll mind it.

I haven’t been able to see in so long, anyway.

Did you think it would be easy for me to watch you do this?

I know we talked about it; I know you had your decisions to make, and that the world wasn’t going to let you off the hook. I know how you felt, trapped and broken, lost inside something where you never fit at all.

No, I didn’t fucking talk about it, of course not.

What, do you expect me to go pouring out my feelings to you at the drop of a hat? Did you expect me to lay myself open so that not only you, but the rest of the sodding world, could see my insides? You have to know me better than that by now.

Nowhere to go but down, once you’ve hit the top, you know.

And I think we hit the top and took it a little higher, with us, pulling the stunts we did.

You think Dix minds that he’ll never have depth perception again? Or what about Nassi? It’s not like she ever really liked to run anyway, right?

I suppose the lot of them will forgive us, once they see how happy we are. So get up, and stop bleeding, for fuck’s sake, would you? You’ve ruined the shirt your mum gave you, love. She’s going to be right pissed.

Now let’s work on that happy bit, if only for forgiveness’ sake.

Get up.

Please.

I could still taste you on my lips; it didn’t matter how much scotch I used to try and burn it away, and trust me, I’d been using a lot. I wondered about the night before last, and whether or not it counts as cheating if the whore leaves before you can pay her.

She didn’t care for some of my particular thrills, but then again, sometimes I don’t, either.

So then I wound up in the rain, because none of the damned cabs would stop, and I walked something like a hundred thousand blocks in no particular direction, tracing sigils over New York City with my footsteps. I said your name every time I crossed my own path and stopped in every bar to light a cigarette and down a shot, as if you’d walk out of the smoke from my lips or the last drops on my tongue.

It was the kind of spell that would take days to complete — even if I’d been some kind of magician, I don’t know as I could pull something like that off. Fuck, I wouldn’t have even been sure I did, except you’re here now, right?

Right?

There are days where all I can manage is pulling a bottle off the shelf, unscrewing the cap and drinking until a thick, impenetrable haze has wound itself around my eyes and knotted at the base of my skull.

Sometimes the next morning, the knots there have tightened enough to make me believe my own fury was trying to choke me in my sleep.

I’d be angry that you walked away, if you had. I could be angry if you’d sworn and slammed the door and stomped off — I could be angry if you’d wept and slunk away to lick your wounds, or even if you’d mutely disappeared–or, shit, even if I’d found you in the goddamned closet, a belt of mine around your neck in a sort of last-call “No, fuck you,” directed at yours fucking truly.

I could be angry, then, and in time, all that fury would piss itself out and shrivel up to be little more than the kind of troubling dreams you can’t remember.

What I can’t do is let go of this rage that’s got me by the balls, lifting me up on tiptoes to creep around, in constant agony and simple fear, my breath a caught and ragged thing. I can’t be anything other than mad, for what you’ve gone and done, but it’s the kind of madness that won’t go, won’t heal, won’t leave, won’t anything but stay.

This ring on my finger is all I have left to remember you by, and it’s getting so I’d like to take it off. Except the circle stays there, wrapped tight around my flesh, a marker that I can’t really erase.

How dare you let me live? It’s not that I was content, before this, but I managed.

I can still smell you in the house, in my clothes and in the bed. In the pillows. On my skin. It’s too soon to have forgotten your face, but I’m trying. If I have to go through every bottle in the flat today, I’ll drown the memory of you before you come home. And then, by the time you don’t, the ring around my finger that’s there after I take off the ring around my finger will have faded, and I’ll be mine again.