just because they know the name, doesn't mean they know the face. [oscar]

[particles of me]

"Good afternoon, Oscar."

The office was always the same. It smelled of toxic chemicals tossed into a plastic bottle to replicate a new carpet scent. It held a fake fichus in the corner whose gangly branches looked half dead, save for whoever put it there failed to remove the tag first. It held two chairs, a chaise lounge, and an oak desk -- all of which matched in color. Dark, stiff wood. Cold. There was a single framed picture on the wall that read Inspire across the bottom, with a dark-skinned man raising his hands to the sun.

It was all so cliche.

From Oscar's seat, he sat with a stoic attitude, his eyes glazed over and shielded by the lens of his glasses. He watched the man move to the other seat, shifting around, crossing his legs, uncrossing them again. It was the same routine every week: make an attempt at small talk before the session started, pretend they've known each other for much longer than they have, comment on the seasonal weather which had really grown quite tepid in the days previous to this particular session. There would be no mention of the psychiatrist's family, or friends, or his feelings. Only Oscar's, because it was only Oscar who needed the medication.

"How are you feeling today?"

It was always the first question Dr. O'Brien asked, but it never grew old. In its generic splendor, it made Oscar want to vomit.

"I'm fine."

O'Brien nodded and pushed up from the seat as he always did, moving to his desk to find a clipboard. He pulled open a wide drawer from which he swam through file after file of his patients, pulling Oscar's file from its usual place, just after Stephanie Cade. Why he fished through the files preceding Oscar's, Oscar would never fully understand. His guess was he was paid by the hour, and was looking for precious minutes to waste.

Making his way back to his seat, O'Brien sat back down and crossed his legs, dropping one knee over the other. The clipboard rested in his lap, his fingers lacing with themselves as he sat pensively, waiting for Oscar to make the first move. He always did this, and Oscar never made the first move. He never twitched, he never opened his mouth. He simply sat, stoically in his seat, staring right through O'Brien.

After a pregnant pause, O'Brien coughed a forced cough into his fist to clear the silence, and he shifted in his seat again, waving his hand as he began.

"Tell me about your family."

"They're fine."

"You know you're going to have to give me more than that, Oscar," O'Brien prodded. "Come on, now. Tell me about your family."

"My mother and father are dead," he reiterated in the same monotone drone he used week after week. While this seemed like a rather negative statement to start out with, it was what he always started out with. "They're dead, and I have a sister. She's younger than me by eleven years. She's got blonde hair, blue eyes, and a smile that if it could smell, would smell like homemade cookies."

"That's a new one," O'Brien pointed out. "Last week, you said it was like clouds."

"I'm hungry," Oscar retorted dryly. "Now may I continue without being interrupted?"

"Of course," O'Brien motioned with a hand.

"As I was saying. I have a younger sister. She's unmarried." Pausing, Oscar furrowed his brows. "And I forget what's next."

"Your girlfriend."

"Oh, right. Sandra. She was my last girlfriend, and that was four years ago. She was a beauty, that one. Brown hair down to her shoulders, dark eyes. Thin, but not too thin. I don't like wafer-thin girls, you know? I don't like them to look like they're starving. She moved to New Mexico. I heard she had a baby, I hope it's true. I always thought she'd be a good mother."

"And the father?"

"Who knows. I'm not it, though. And it could be a rumor, I just heard through the grapevine."

"Perhaps you should try finding someone new," O'Brien offered in the same sullen tone as he did every week. He knew what Oscar was about to say; repetition at its finest.

"I'm not interested." Generally, Oscar would've stopped with that and moved on to the next question, but instead he added, "Listen, Doc'. We do this same shit every day. I sit here, I tell you my boring life, you prescribe my medication. Can't we just be done with it? I'll pay you time and a half for Christ's sake, but this is a bit ridiculous."

"I know you're frustrated," O'Brien offered in his clinical tone, "But--"

"No," Oscar corrected him. "I'm not frustrated, I'm bored."

"I'll tell you what. This week, and just this week, we'll end early. How is your prescription?"

"The same as it always is. I need a refill."

"So you've been taking them, then?"

"Wouldn't you know it if I hadn't?"

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ August 05, 2006 01:01 AM: Message edited by: particles of me ]</font>

[particles of me]

"Oscar? Oscar, dear, could you please pick up the phone? It's Cooper, I--"

"I hate the way you do that," Oscar answered flatly while smothering a hand over the side of his face. His limbs tangled and fought against the sheets, a groan splitting through the small aperture of his mouth while a hand tucked beneath his pillow. Blue, just like his sheets. Blue, just like everything in his goddamn room. "Do you know what time it is?" Twisting, he blinking open his eyes and shoved on his glasses, squinting at the digital clock beside his bed. "Three-thirty. What the fuck, Cooper."

"I hate the way you cut me off," she snapped back in a hurry, her absence quickly filled by the memory of her side, the way it cut into his mattress like the bed was made for her. Not him -- just her. He hated that, too. "Can I come over?"

"Jesus Christ." Pushing off from the bed, he moved to the side, his legs dangling as the pads of his feet hit the floor firmly. He was so gangly; he hated it. He hated the way he looked like some origami bird, twisted up like a piece of paper that should have been left alone. He never should have been formed the way he was -- so... gangly. So... Oscar.

"No, he's not here right now, but he'd like to take a me--"

"Shut up, Cooper."

"You're such a girl," she huffed and moved to hang up the phone, though she thought better of it. Where her walls were cracked and peeling and held no warmth at all, his voice was like a finely knit afghan, wrapped around her with silky threads that trails right back to home.

"Goodnight, Margaret."

"...What did you just say?"

"I said 'goodnight'."

"No, no, the other thing."

"Margaret."

"I can't believe you just called me that."

"What's the matter, Ma--"

"After all the shit we've been through, you're gonna pull a fuckin' stunt like that?"

"Whoa, whoa. I don't know what 'shit' you're referring to, but remember, I'm a girl. That must mean I suck dick. Which means I don't suck pu--"

"Oscar," Cooper hissed on her end of the line, her fingers fumbling to find a pack of cigarettes in the bottom of her bag. "You son of a bitch, you know no one knows my name. No one but--"

"Me," he reminded her.

"You," she chided. "I hate you."

"If you hate me," he moved to lay back down on the bed, pressing his spine to the mattress as he figured she wouldn't be around anytime soon, "then why are you on the phone? I don't have time for these games."

"I hate you because..."

There was a single ring to the doorbell. A buzz. It was a buzz, not a ring. Oscar's heart immediately slammed against the cage of his breastbone.

"Because why, Cooper."

"Answer your door."

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ August 05, 2006 01:00 AM: Message edited by: particles of me ]</font>

[particles of me]

The sheets of the bed were mismatched in that one was solid and one was striped, though they both held the same royal blue that decorated the rest of his room. That's how he liked things; strangely haphazard, yet neat. Blue. Solid. Sitting down on his bed, he caught his reflection in the mirror across from him, tilted on its side as though it had been slapped up there with one fresh palm, sweaty from holding a camera for hours. For a mirror barely askew, it drove him insane, and he would spend the next two minutes and forty seconds tilting the frame this way and that. With a camera in one hand, he struggled with the other to straighten the heavy frame -- he fixed it, fading sneakers drawing him back several feet as he studied all four corners of the frame, then all four sides, before he focused on his reflection. This went on, and on, until he gave up and put his camera down on the newly refurbished cherry dresser that was wide, but lacked height, and had previously worn nicks like memories.

It was never perfect. The mirror, the nicks on the table, his life -- they were always askew, they were always mundane and unfortunate and purely accidental. Had he not struggled with the slanted mirror, he would not have crouched down to the bottom drawer of his dresser to pull an all-too-often used level. Had he not pulled out the level, he would not have seen the notebook. Had he not seen the notebook, he would not have remembered his medication.

Downstairs, the temperature was tepid and the stale hum of the air conditioner acted as a filler for the silence that swam itself through the barren walls of the meticulously prepared townhouse. The walls were eggshell in color, though not abused: built in the 1970's, the house was sure to have gone through battles far worse than anything Oscar had to offer, but not trusting the landlord or his workers, Oscar had purchased his own liter of paint and moved throughout the house, touching and re-touching paper cut-sized spots that acted as reminders that this was not his house, this was someone else's, he only temporarily occupied it.

At the gray kitchen table, Ella sat hunched over a newspaper, a red pen in hand as she circled classifieds. She was everything he was not; her hair was a soft blonde that spilled down to her shoulders, wavy when it was wet, rather straight when it was dry. Her mouth wore an upturned grin that showed no signs of strain, and her eyes smiled like her mouth. Pure, gentle, and sincere.

"Did you take your medicine?" Even her voice was the opposite of his. It bred intrigue and gentleness, while his was like that of a flat-footed obese man who collected carts at the local Wal*Mart for a living.

"That's what I came down for," he murmured out evenly before surprising a sigh that came solely from exasperation. "Are you finding anything?" Amidst his trying to straighten a mirror (important of a task as it was), Ella was busying herself with finding a steady job for him. He'd been fired; his boss claimed that Oscar was lazy, while he was really too drugged to know better.

"A few things. Two, but I'm optimistic," her smile never faded and her tone reflected her comment. "You know, I'm sure you could qualify for disability, Oz. Why don't yo--"

"I'm not disabled," he reminded her flatly, his voice growing quieter the more she spoke. He never enjoyed the sound of his own voice; in fact, he avoided it as much as possible. Perhaps that's why he chose photography to fill his spare time (which was all too often at present moment) rather than music. He could speak volumes through a single photograph, where his voice hammering against thin air could say absolutely nothing about the subject at hand.

"I didn't mean it like that," she refused to let the corners of her mouth pull down into a frown. Pushing back from the table, the legs of the chair were silent against the carefully cleaned linoleum floor. "I'm sorry. Let's change the subject. Do you want to have dinner with me?" Ella crossed over to the stove and leaned casually with her spine pressed to the oven door, her arms folding lightly across her torso. "I have pizza at home we could heat up, maybe watch a few movies. Would you like that?"

Oscar noted how she spoke to him like a toddler, when he was in fact the older sibling. Still, the softness of her voice was soothing and the way her face wrinkled up and got all pink and splotchy when she cried hurt his heart more than death itself. Choosing silence over comeback, he only nodded, then tilted his head back for his fingers to pop a pill into his mouth. He felt it hit the back of his throat, and he gurgled up enough saliva to swallow the pill down whole, without the aid of water.

"I don't know how you do that," Ella comment in an amused fashion. "It's all I can do to swallow an Aspirin with two glasses of water; even then, I feel like it's stuck in my throat."

"I don't know why you're so fascinated with my disease," he answered back flatly, careful to not put any lean on any word. He preferred an even tone, void of expression. He was less memorable that way.

"Oscar," Ella grinned widely and laced her arms around his waist, pulling him close to her in a hug. "What's wrong with you? Stop being so..."

"So what," he prodded.

"...Pessimistic!" She smiled even though her irritation.

"This is how I am," he reminded her, clapping a hand against her spine several times in an awkward attempt to hug her back. "I've been this way for years. Why pick now to ask questions, huh?"

"I guess you're right," Ella shrugged.

"Yeah."

Pulling out of his sisters embrace, he thumbed his finger over the countertop to check for dust or debris, and he placed the bottle back on the lower shelf in the cabinet that hung above the microwave. Closing the door, he moved to the sink to rinse his hands, though he didn't use soap, and he quickly reached for a paper towel, careful to not drip water onto the floor or countertop. On his way to the doorway, he tossed the paper towel (which was neatly folded, not crumpled) into the trash can, and waited for the lid of the can to firmly close.

"C'mon," he waved her towards the door, pulling his keys from the hook just to its left. "Let's go have pizza."

[particles of me]

The newspaper left strips of ink imbedded in the creases of his fingertips; rather distracted, he balled up his fingers and gave himself a thumbs up, peering at the crevices of his skin. My prints will be left everywhere, he mused to himself silently, his eyes narrowing as the paper pancaked down over his lap like a blanket. His free hand moved to adjust his glasses on the bridge of his nose, and Ella twisted in her seat, staring at him. He felt her mind far before he felt her eyes; he felt her eyes long before he felt the temperament of her tongue.

"What time is it?" Shifting around in the blush seat, she tucked her legs beneath her and fidgeted with her hair, an elbow dropping to the wooden armrest as she pretended to read the book flattened over her knobby knees. She was good at twisting herself up into unusually interesting positions -- all of them seemed so comfortable, but in the back of an onlooker's mind, one had to wonder if she was double-jointed.

"Four-seventeen," he guessed as his eyes dropped down back to the newspaper, his fingers fumbling to pick up the thin sheet of text to hide his face. "Four-twenty-one," he corrected his guess and stifled a cough, flicking the paper with a snap of his wrists to straighten out the page.

"Four-ten," a woman's hollow voice from across the room snagged over to them. "If my watch is correct, though sometimes it's not." It was an idle attempt at making casual conversation, the side of her mouth ticked up in a smirk that licked jealousy and resentment, in no particular order.

From behind the wall of black text blocked out over gray paper, Oscar slid his eyes over to her sister. He didn't have to see the woman's expression; he could hear it. He waited for the hairs on Ella's arms to raise, but instead, her mouth turned up into something soft. He hated her for that; the way she could mimic an angel in the face of the devil made him sick to his stomach, if only because he never held such charm. "You're staring," he mumbled from the corner of his mouth, curiosity winning him over as he bit back more tepid words.

"I'll make you a bet," Ella offered warmly as she found her bookmark and slid it into the small hardback novel in her lap, her fingers pressing gently to the jacket of the book as she closed it mutedly.

"A bet," the woman echoed dryly, though not intentionally. She had every right to kick and scream at the world, but in the face of Ella Calloway, she refused to buckle down to something so negative. "What have you?"

"Christ," Oscar mumbled from behind his paper-thin shield, just in time for the woman in a pink and cream dress to pop her head out and call his name. He easily released the newspaper and folded it meticulously, setting it down on the nearby table -- square, brown, and now ridiculously neat with its magazines, books, and newspapers rather symmetrical, thanks to Oscar. Once he disappeared behind the door, the women were left alone; a kitten in black with razor-sharp claws aching to slice through another kitten, balled up in her seat with a pristine, sincere attitude.

"Afternoon," the young woman greeted Oscar easily and led him into the back room, his brain too caught up in numbers and steps and synchronicity to register her greeting, though he returned it deafly anyway.

"Hey," he murmured and pulled himself out of his counting, the soles of his shoes muted against the tiled floor once he sat down in an armchair much like the one in the waiting room. "That's new," he pointed to the plant in the window -- deep violent in color, though he couldn't recall the name of the bloom itself.

"It is," the woman's brows perked in amusement, her mouth twisting up into a smile that was close to something Ella's mouth often wore. "Dr. Peters brought it in this morning."

"I know," Oscar reassured her. His fingers went to unbuttoning the cuff of his right sleeve, slowly rolling the material up towards his elbow. He'd learned that simply pushing the fabric up over his skin would wrinkle the material, and rather than take time to re-iron his shirt when he got back to the house, he decided before he made the appointment that he would wear the oxford with flimsy material and roll the sleeve, with the hopes that the prongs of the iron's cord would not be inserted into the socket. Again.

Her fingers were gently against his upturned arm. His skin was cool beneath her warm palm, her fingers slow and meticulous as they splayed over his skin and traced over his vein, free of a cotton swab for that moment. The rush of Oscar's heart bothered him; he knew if she did not move on quickly enough, he would panic. It wasn't because of the needle -- God knew he was used to those. It wasn't over the cotton swab or the flower in the window or the scent of a room he'd always hated; it was all over her touch, the smile, her skin.

"Could you hurry," he demanded rather than asked, his tongue flat and practically void of expression.

The insertion of the needle was flawless in that his veins didn't roll and her tongue didn't flap with nonsense speech, as it sometimes did when she tried desperately to distract a man who was not distractible. Once the tube was filled with his purple-red blood, he waited for the cotton swab and Band-Aid, rolling his sleeve back over his arm slowly. Wrinkled, he immediately saw with his brain rather than his eyes, the material bone-straight save for the warped ripples caused by only his inner lens. Excusing himself without thanking the nurse (it was her fault his shirt was wrinkled, after all), he pushed open the door and murmured a goodbye, interrupting the tail end of a light discussion between Ella and the woman seated across the room.

"Ella," his voice was dry as was his throat, his tongue clicking as he tried to work up fluid to swallow down. "Let's go."

"It was a pleasure," the woman from across the room offered lightly, her eyes on Ella rather than Oscar. Ella only smiled and nodded, untwisting herself from her origami-like position in the chair.

[particles of me]

The image was like nothing he had ever seen before; it stood before him like a landscape, vast and rich with an emotion he could not drum up for himself behind his limp skin and sagging bones. Through the lenses of his eyes, his sight crept over the photograph -- starting at the top right corner, then slowly moving down until his eyesight sprawled over the face of a person he had never known. In their eyes, he saw many things -- they were not empty, but full of instruments like pity, resentment, and some strange sort of hope -- that all bled into a symphony of music that somehow portrayed his life in three-four time. Behind the thinning eyelashes and the messily-sculpted eyebrows, there was a vision held that screamed isolation, but begged for a sense of belonging. This image, this entity, refused to lay down and play dead.

Against the whitewashed wall and doused beneath a pool of light that swam from an overhead spotlight, the face of the man who stared at him held something nearly geometric. Everything seemed in perfect alignment -- where his expression seemed stoic, the lines of his face and creases of his forehead all molded together into a tapestry of a man woven together by significant things an onlooker could never really see. The first cry of his baby sister when she was born. The thrum of his heart inside an adolescent's chest over a middle-school teacher's crush. The spark of a key against his fingertips as it slid and turned in the ignition of a 1977 Pontiac, black and all his own. The moan of a siren that splashed light against the peeling walls of his first apartment. The half-slung smile of a man who finally began to understand love, though what he felt was the steady chugging of his heart to the beat of internal war-drums. The satisfaction of a glossy photograph, fresh off the press (so to speak), that finally relayed just an inkling of what he had stored up for many, many years prior to the culminating event.

The photograph was simple: the bust of a man, from the northern end of his heart up to the tip-top of his head, with a blurred background of deteriorating-paned windows behind him. The chipped panes created a sort of text behind him -- a tribal script that spoke volumes through quiet slashes and brash peelings, nearly identical to the mapping of his forehead. The bridge of his nose held creases that were like birthmarks, left behind by the square black frames that usually offered a Plexiglas-like world to a man who was nearly blind without them. It was easy to hide behind the glasses; in the photograph, the man was naked, his eyes exposed like an open Bible. An open book simply would not suffice.

When he'd had enough of studying the image that dominated the expanse of the studio's wall, he backed up two steps and mutedly noted the sponged sound of rubber soles against a tiled floor. From behind the shield of his glasses his eyes shifted nervously, studying the man's right eye, then his left, his own eyes flitting back and forth as though he were watching a distant tennis match. He felt the ball of mucus form in the pit of his throat, crawling up to the back of his mouth in murky cobwebs that refused to clear against the beating of his Adam's apple -- and when enough was enough, he closed his eyes and saw the screaming white outline of the foreground of the picture, the bust of the man still visible by way of black shadows that hinged themselves to the backs of his eyelids. He looked like a ghost unto himself; he did not know this man, he had never seen him before in his life.

Though he wore the same name as easily and mutedly as he wore the same mesh of skin and collection of bones, Oscar Calloway knew in the very moment that he opened his eyes and stared into the face of a man he'd lived with for thirty-something years, he knew nothing of the naked eyes that stared into his own.

[particles of me]

"You want me to do... what?" Leaning back in his seat, Oscar dropped an ankle over the opposite knee, frankness splintering his language as he spoke.

"Journal," O'Brien suggested matter-of-factly, with a small wave of his hand. "It will give us more to talk about in our sessions. You come in here and you have nothing to say, so--"

"So you think," should his tongue ever flop up into something more than a dead piece of sandpaper, he'd chuckle (but not today), "...that if I record things on a daily basis, I'll have something more to say?"

"Precisely," O'Brien smiled, misunderstanding the attitude of Oscar's words.

Oscar shifted in his seat, figuring his movement would somehow mask over his silence. He blatantly held up his head with his hand, the edge of his elbow jabbing into the arm of the chair. His face was void expression as it always was, his eyes blinking naturally, the creases of his forehead at ease.

"Oscar," O'Brien finally spoke up and stifled a sigh, choosing to shift in his seat for the very same reason the man with a Clorox facade sitting across from him did -- to occupy time. "You know we have to continue to have meetings as long as you're medicated."

"What if I was to not be medicated?" Oscar knew it was a stupid question, but he asked it for the same reason he shifted in his seat, just as the iron-pressed man seated across from him did.

"Oscar," O'Brien clicked his tongue and shook his head slowly, a small laugh bubbling up from the gut of his throat. "Let's not waste time in asking questions that should rather go unanswered," his voice held a poignant point.

"Cooper contacted me," he offered in an attempt to change the topic, though he filed the question away in the back of his mind with the intention of it not going unanswered. "A few nights ago. I think she was drunk."

"Cooper?"

"Margaret."

"Ah," O'Brien nodded and hurriedly scribbled something down on a sheet of paper, belly-up on a legal pad. Somehow, his hurried scribbling was supposed to be less obvious and less suggestive -- perhaps if he wrote quickly, the man sitting across from him who bluntly watched the scrawling pen would miss the fact that the man wrote. "Tell me more."

"I don't know a lot about her anymore," Oscar shrugged and sank further into his seat, quickly peeling out of a suit of comfort he had worn just moments before when he brought the situation up. He could tell from the look on O'Brien's face that he was not satisfied; sighing, he pushed up on his elbows and loosely clasped his fingers around the arms of the chairs, his feet planted firmly on the floor. "We dated a while ago. Before Sandra. She doesn't look anything like her; Sandra is the pretty one, remember? Well, Cooper isn't so attractive. She's red hair. I don't really care for it, but it explains her personality." His wrists snapped and flicked here and there as he attempted to orchestrate some sort of rational conversation.

"Why did you date her if you didn't find her attractive?" It was a simple question that made O'Brien seem more human that doctor in that moment.

"I... I don't know," Oscar paused and twisted his face up, puzzled by the question. He took a long moment to think about it; O'Brien didn't bother to interrupt, he figured from his side of the office he was finally going to get a muted man talking, even if it was over something trivial. Or perhaps it would turn into something not so trivial at all. "She was simple," he decided.

"A balance to you," the ironed-out man led on.

"I guess. I mean, she wasn't really simple. She had a bad way of showing her feelings and she was pessimistic as anything. But like I said," Oscar half-assedly wished he had a cigarette just for effect, "she was a redhead. We all know how those girls are."

Where O'Brien should have said something, his pen twitched and filled the silence instead.

"I did like her though," Oscar admitted on his own after three (painfully) long moments in silence (save for the twiching pen). "I remember this one time, we went to the Poconos because her cousin or something or other had a cabin up there. She didn't have a lick of money -- Coop', I mean -- and..." Trailing off, Oscar soon found little words for the subject and fell silent as he refolded himself in his chair, his hands falling to rest against his knobby knees.

"And?" O'Brien tried his best to encourage him to continue, but from the moment he looked up from his legal pad, he knew whatever moment Oscar had been reliving through his speech was now destroyed by the present. The past always shattered so quickly -- the more Oscar tried to live it, the quicker it slipped through his hands. Swallowing down a sigh of frustration (he knew his own was no match to that of Oscar's), the man only nodded and flipped back to the beginning of his legal pad, clipping his pen in place horizontally close to the top of several sheets. "Alright, I think we're through for today."

Pushing up from his seat, Oscar wore a face blanketed by a stoic attitude he'd tried to shake for months. Years. It dated back to a time from before he could remember -- and even if he finally found it, it would only shatter like the memories of past faces and places that were nothing but silent reveries, twisted up in the field of his mind like ticking time bombs. Just as he moved to turn the knob to the door, he turned and rattled out words that came as easily and often as his very breath: don't forget the prescription.

[particles of me]

Entry #1: God, this sucks.

Before I even start filling out this bullshit, O'Brien told me to do this. Somehow, writing shit down on a piece of paper is supposed to give us more to talk about in our sessions. I'm at the point now where I just want to skip this whole thing and risk life without medication. Wait, maybe I better burn this now so no one ever sees that, because really, someone (Ella) would kill me if they ever found out I wasn't taking my prescriptions.

There is nothing new in my life. I still take photographs, I still dress myself, I still brush my teeth, I still take walks with Ella. We still eat pizza, I still like Looney Tunes. I do not, however, like these stupid fucking journals or those goddamn sessions. I do like swearing. But not out loud; that's just tacky.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to move out of this place and start over, but I have a feeling wherever I go, there I am, and there's all my baggage, too. It doesn't make much sense to run away from anything when I haven't got anything chasing me to begin with, but then again that's all part of why I'm stuck taking pills. Something is always chasing me; they have since I was very young, ghosts that progressively turn into demons. They taunt me and mimic me and toy with my shadows, until I realize they are just that -- particles of me just waiting to spring out and pounce on some poor innocent person. That would be very unlike me. Can you see me pushing someone down in the middle of a street? For Christ's sake, of course you can't. You're a journal.

This Sunday is August sixth. Perhaps I'll go to church.

[particles of me]

<center>

Lucretia walks into a room.
Because she does it's not the same room
The one she wanted to be in
She says, "Everywhere I go, damn! There I am."
And I just want to walk away
Won't you let me walk away sometimes?
Won't you let me walk away?

Every one of you is fired

I'm just an ordinary guy
And all I want is to be loved - is that so wrong?
Don't think that I don't know what you're saying about me
I hear it all through these thin walls
And I just want to walk away
Won't you let me walk away this time?
I just want to walk away

Every one of you is fired
Every one of you is oh, oh, oh, oh!
Every one of you is fired, yeah!


<font size="1">bf5.</font></center>

[particles of me]

Entry #2: Lotus.

Everything about her is beautiful. She wears these colors no one else could ever pull off -- limes and pinks and these ridiculous red sneakers, and her hair isn't ever perfect but her smile is. It's lopsided and shaped like a giraffe's neck, slurred up to one side but so beautifully curved. I like the slope of her nose; it's perfect, and it fits her head perfectly. ...I'm sure there was a better way for me to say that, but at least I wasn't like 'her nose on her face is like an egg on a piece of bread'. I told her I like her colors; she told me she likes my face. I think she's the perfect height, because she's shorter than me, but I feel pretty sure she could kick my ass if I ever did (do) anything to piss her off.

She smells like coffee and cinnamon, but I've never seen her drink coffee and she doesn't look like the type of person who likes cinnamon. I think maybe I just think she smells that way because that's what our house smelled like when we were kids, and she reminds me of home. Not that she's anything like Ella (who I miss and wish would come home), but because she's familiar and comfortable and this masterpiece of something beautiful I've never even seen before. I still don't see her, I know that, I just see what I want to see of her.

Forty pictures richer, and I still can't stop staring at her nose. Thirty-nine, because she stole one and smiled at me awkwardly from across the table, in her colorful glory, with that giraffe smile and eyes like the broken ceramics that shattered over the floor to make a mosaic for her amusement. She won't pick up the pieces -- she'll apologize, but she won't clean -- she'll only smile and maybe bite her bottom lip, itching for a way to scrounge up the pieces into some sort of shape only she can see with her eyes, but she'll clip them with a single click of the shutter and keep them as a promise that the day had happened and our meeting did occur.

She'll twist herself up like a lotus flower and sit across from me like a mini Buddha, her eyes aglow, her skin ridiculously close to porcelain, and I am afraid to touch her because I will break her.

This one isn't for sessions. This one is finally for me.

[particles of me]

The bumps in the sidewalk showed age, just like the tiny weeds that sprouted between the cracks that spliced open cement like cake batter. His eyes were keen to listening to the plastic-tipped laces flinging around hit against the meat of his shoes, the cement, and he dropped his eyes to watch them fly about. In that very moment, Oscar wondered what exactly it would be like to be a shoelace, and part of him even felt sorry for them. Though, they did hold an extremely important job -- they kept many people afloat, and some people wouldn't dare to walk had their laces been untied. He remembered Edward standing in the middle of his living room, stranded for that very reason. Just when he was getting to the gut of his concerns, her mellow voice snapped him back to the moment.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing," he tried to keep from making eye-contact, but the flurry of red hair to his right made it difficult to focus on something else. Loosely curling his fingers, he shoved his fists into his pockets and continued to walk, his brain already back to the shoelaces, his heart thump-thumping religiously to the beat of his steps. "How's Carry?"

"She's good, but sometimes I think she's sick." Her voice was nothing like milk or honey, no, Cooper Tills' voice was hardly that. It was something gritty -- but not like salt. Really, it was quite indescribable, and probably not anything out of the ordinary, except for Oscar. Her voice held memories only he understood -- and they both knew that. "Hey, Oz?"

"Oscar," he replied easily, only because 'Oz' was saved for Ella. Nevermind Cooper had grown up with them. "What?"

"Fine, Oscar," she scowled at him slightly but soon after screwed her face up into something pretty, tilting her capped head to the side. "Do you ever talk about me at your sessions?"

"No," he answered flatly, more-than-half wondering why they were even having this walk, let alone this conversation.

"Oh," she sighed out a bit exasperatedly, "Because I was thinking if you ever did, and you needed me to come in with you sometime..."

"I don't need you to go there with me, Cooper." Inside his pockets, his fingers were curling into tighter fists, his blunt fingernails digging against the heels of his palms.

"You don't have to be so mean about it," she paused in her steps and scoffed at him, looking genuinely hurt. "Maybe this was a bad idea."

"For Christ's sake, would you just come on? I'm trying to have a decent walk with you, since that's what you wanted." His voice was becoming strained against the anger who had once started in the pit of his stomach, but was quickly writhing up through his chest.

"Well if you're going to be mean to me, maybe I should just go home!"

Sighing, Oscar pulled a hand out of his pocket, wet from sweat and aggravation, and smathered it across his face. It quickly went back into his pocket and he pivoted on his heels, turning to face her. He didn't bother saying anything, the expectancy in his voice was only doubled by the weight of the attitude scripted across his face.

"Sorry," she mumbled and moved to catch up with him, hooking her thumbs into her belt loops while she walked.

"I don't get you," he offered easily, his tongue lapping at the corner of his mouth. "You call me in the middle of the fucking night a week ago, then nothing, then you call me last night and now you want to walk today. Where is your boyfriend, anyway?"

"Michael," she chided. "His name is Michael, and I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?" Oscar was only half-surprised that she didn't; Cooper didn't exactly have a way with keeping relationships for very long.

"I mean I don't know," she sighed and shoved her hands into her pockets, her chin tilting as her eyes dropped to the ground. Her pace slowed, her voice quieted, and for half a second, she thought maybe Oscar would feel some pity for her. "I think he's seeing someone else."

"Probably," he shrugged and didn't bother slowing in his steps; slowing would only mean taking longer to get to the restaurant, which would mean postponing the meal, which would mean... "Hey, why are you slowing down?" Dear God, help me.

"Oscar," she halted in her steps and stopped completely.

"Oh, God," he murmured beneath the back of his hand and he, too, halted in his steps. "What now?"

"I love you."

"Ella is waiting, Cooper."

"I know, but I love you, and--"

"Can't we talk about this some other time?"

"Why don't you ever let me talk to you?"

Oscar didn't dare say another word. He couldn't see the trembling in her bottom lip, but he could feel it, and everyone knew what a sucker Oscar was for a crying girl.

"Huh? Answer me..."

"Look, let's just meet Ella and make her feel at home, and keep this between us, alright? We don't need anything to upset her when she's just gotten back in town." Oscar tried desperately to shift the spotlight onto his sister, not his current relationship with Cooper. Silently, he prayed that she would give in and start moving her feet. When she did, it was all he could do to swallow down a sigh of relief, and in his pockets, his fingers curled into loose fists.

Somehow, Oscar knew this was going to be the longest meal of his life.