one man guy.

[star studded]

[taken from live-play between landfillsky and notmyvoice]


Part Two: Who We Were Isn't Lost


In the background, something tempestuous brewed. It carried all the destruction of a war with the appearance of a particularly violent thunderstorm. Lightning cracked its whip and the shelves trembled with its force. A damp chill began to warp books and soak through clothes. Leaning in with a purposeful slant of his chin, lips caught upon the shape of the other man's. Dragging in a slip of breath from inside mouth like a wisp of smoke, he fell back with a recycled exhale.

"Come, see: real flowers of this painful world." Basho quoted, clairvoyant breathed. The vast library began to melt sugar-spun against a sudden rainshower.

It contradicted and disproved possibly everything Harlen had ever had a strong footing in. Prophecy was not prophecy, it did not come from a god. Every pain he had ever felt, physically and otherwise, bundled itself up and manifested in one memory, a blossom in the back of his mind, brimming to life, its petals glimmering with image. In Harlen's closed palm, he felt something stir, and opening fingers, he dropped a bundle of colored petals to the ground. All that pain. Collectively it amounted to one memory. It lacked detail, it lacked circumstance and reason, but he felt it. He had been torn in two. Not he, the person he was now, in this image, in this body. Another he. A more whole, fuller he. Everything transferred with a kiss, the skies opened up, thunder cracked, and rain spilled. Harlen gasped in shock, hair matting to his face, his eyes squinting against the wall of water, a hand reaching out to grab harshly at Michael's wrist for fear of being washed away, melted down like the shelves and books that floated past, errant pages and blurry, running ink. "It hurt. It was hot, and ... it was the worst and most terrible pain I have ever felt. Losing you. Losing myself. Me. We. Our us." Spine stiffened at the almost-memory, just out of reflex, bracing as if the same feeling would strike down and tear through him again.

What had once been infinite and spiraling came crashing down in a shimmering display. It was his conscious self's greatest nightmare: a reflective wall of water. From the thick clouds of fire, a smeared stain of red and orange, came something spun of the same element. The curving ribbon of a marble staircase lost its smooth, polished shell. Instead, it was craggy and etched with points again; a mountain that stretched up into the clouds. The insistent lockdown of fingers upon his wrist wouldn't keep Michael from being washed away from the other man.

The ground trembled as nature grew over the man-made and world righted itself. Grass choked out the inlaid and upon it, he moved in an impossible arc. Once dragged, now he moved easily in the violent snapping motion. The jarring effect of the transformation had been lost. Instead, he sighed and felt eyes slide shut. Behind the screen of paper-thin eyelids, he watched the fusion take place from the inside out. Heartstrings wrapping and anatomy shifting. What was once lanky and slim plumped up. They were round as globes, but still marked with the familiar cut of sharp cheekbones and aristocratic noses. Back-to-back and breathing in, it always took him a moment to synchronize. "Don't panic."

Everything twisted. A larger hand tied two together, stole pieces from one and combined functions, arms tangled at awkward angles. He fought it with everything he knew how to use, but all efforts were fruitless. How was something like this forgotten? How did he not remember? With eyes clenched tightly shut, he refused to open them and look. The scene was unattractive, but only in its newness. Fingers dug into whatever parts he could find, of himself, of this new person, two-peopled and four-limbed. Dragging in a ragged breath, he choked like a newborn struggling for too much air for small lungs. Don't panic. Don't panic. A shared heart sped up to a hammering speed. "I'm panicking." He needed a moment. Just one moment to get bearings and footing, and he'd have some sort of composure to speak of.

"Calm," he coached and stressed all in one. It was essential that Harlen calm himself, if only because the heart that frantically galloped inside one now worked for both. His panic was Michael's swoon. He felt dizzy and light with the excess oxygenation.

The command and advice was taken, and he tried his hardest to simply slow. Slow down. The last thing they needed was for this to leak into reality, and for all dreams to be shattered by an epileptic fit against the mattress. Eyes loosened their squint, still closed, and he tried to breathe with, rather than on his own.

"This goes against everything. This defies everything." This was what Michael spoke of yesterday. This was the new religion, the new origin to believe in, this was where all belief had to stem from. It was a terrible, realistic reminder of togetherness and loss. "I want to not understand. This shouldn't make so much sense.."

"This goes against nothing. This defies nothing. It is what it is. Your god is a part of this." Teeth cut into the corner of his lip as his mind searched to connect. "Elohim. Theos, Eloah, Elah. These are all names for god. They're all plural nouns. But... Yes. Yes, it's easier not to understand. Not in a cognitive way at least." He didn't know what was more blasphemous: his take on the Bible or his preaching against the mind.

"I thought he left. Whatever I considered as my.. I don't believe it anymore. We talked about this, I.. I needed something new, and.." This was it. An incorporation of the old system, a rearranging, a removal of the excess.

"I don't want it to happen again." He whispered, a quiet confession that meshed with the hiss of still falling rain, his eyes finally opening to stare out rather than at himself. Straight ahead, he had the crosshairs of sight trained on the landscape. There was no more library. Not a trace. "Is it going to happen again?"


Elements combined to crush Michael, or... No. He had lost his identity. A child of the sun, his name was no longer relevant. Perhaps he was nameless altogether. Perhaps in this world there was no need for the naming. Knowledge and the quiet thread in the back of the prophet's voice that vibrated against the slide of his own separate voice-box bathed him in a secondary shower. Drawing in a deep breath, they were inflated like a great balloon fashioned from a skin-tone that now floated between his dark and Harlen's blue-blood pale. Lightning crashed down, staining the ground with a black, ashen zig-zag streak. This, was prophecy. Palms pressed into their twins, fingers threading through and digging into knuckles.

"Yes," he whispered quietly. "Yes. It's going to happen again. Soon. I, I'm sorry."

Angling joints, fingers latched instinctively. That felt familiar. This contact without sight. It felt strikingly familiar, right here in this moment. Angry weather stormed and churned, someone or something above threw down heat and light like weaponry, and he cringed when it struck close, a black smear against the ground. "Don't be sorry. Don't be sorry.. there's no time to be sorry. We can't run?" No, there'd be nowhere to run to. They couldn't drag this from dream to reality, like he had figured out how to do with small things. Trinkets, pieces, just shards. He could wake up with them in his hands, but not this. This was purely for dreaming's sake. "We're here. And.. we'll wake up.." A foreboding rumble warned, and he leaned the back of his head to brush against the other's, eyes angled ahead. "I'm going to wake up screaming. Please don't be scared." Whether he would wake now, immediately after, or later, after a haze, it would be rattling with the same shock and fading somatic pain.

No. No running. Easily, they could have attempted to escape the inevitable by tipping over onto their side and rolling off in a blur of motion. However, the thunderbolt would have cracked and torn them apart in mid-turn nonetheless. This was one thing that could not be changed in his dreaming. They wouldn't wake fused together and freakish in a world of two-legged, single bodies. They would have to separate first. "It's fine. I won't. I'll be fine. I've been here before." This, was why he didn't run. This, was what had grounded him in reality, thusly mystifying all around them.

The firestorm above was gathering. If they jumped upon their respective feet and reached, fingertips could gather up the licks of fire -- maybe. Drawing in a deep breath, head relaxed upon their circular neck and eyes shuttered low. Calm, steady. As eyelashes tangled and the last ounce of vision faded to black, their brief union was torn apart in a violent flash of light.

He was blinded first by light, then pain. The force of Zeus' lightning bolt as it tore through sent them rocketing away from one another. Michael, clumsy and coltish, stumbled down upon the grass. Singed and bleeding, his skin hummed with the afterglow of electrical shock. He gasped, wheezing out a rusty breath. Again, his mouth was bright red and dripping. "Harlen --" Collapsing, knees and palms smearing out, he fell down belly-flat and sprawling against ash-tipped grass.

It was a force rather than a thing, the split. Driven away, it was silly for him to think that holding hard to hands would keep him close. Fingers came free, and he was flung in the other direction, knocked onto knees and toppling over soon after, in a similar pose. Arms angled out and he clawed at the ground for protection, his jaw set angrily. He could taste blood, he could see it, he could feel it on skin. Dead grass stuck to knees and feet, smearing against stomach and arms, sticky with red. Where was he. Where. He couldn't see anything, he couldn't seek him out with intrinsic radar. In the waking world, in a bed, far away, hands prowled over the mattress in a much slower pattern than the way that Harlen was nearly tearing the earth to shreds in an effort to move. He couldn't stand. Maybe he could crawl. Drag himself. He couldn't shout. He felt easily transferable, lightweight and easily tossed, but for some reason he couldn't get himself to move. "I can't.. I can't.." See. Move. But most importantly, he couldn't find him.

The key was in transcendence. Of all things, for him to rise above, the physical ripping of his first form. It was an impossible task, but one that he took on nonetheless. It was important. The scene wasn't a mere dream full of imposters, an actor in a prophet-shaped mask, but rather something painfully real. They relived rather than pretended.

"Stay," he coughed out. Stay. I'll find you. The physical distance between the two men was small, but injury made it epic. Upon the flats of his knees and trembling heart of either palm, he crawled over and battled the tremor that threatened the crooks of his elbows. Shoulder-blades, like stunted wings, threatened to tear through as body mended itself. Adaptation with a splash of the otherworldly worked miracles. The rivulets of blood that poured down from his broken crown and gathered upon dark brows was smeared away by the bowing of his head and reach of a shoulder.

He found him in a nearsided, shimmering haze. Collapsing down, arms tied themselves around a blood washed frame and legs tangled through lanky counterparts. As futile as it was, he would always try to sew them back together. "I'm sorry. Wake up. Please wake up."

Birth, death and rebirth. They came together, split apart and mended. Discovered, Harlen couldn't help but cling like a child. Broken, bloodied, separated and in pain, the only relief he found was in arms that wrapped around him. Wake up. Every other ability was lost, but he knew he could wake up. If he tried hard enough, he could shove himself away. A bloodied mouth opened, and in a defeated, desperate scream, one world shattered like glass, everything falling away.

He shot from sleep like a rocket, a howl echoing through the bedroom. Laying flat on his stomach, he had somehow managed to shove himself up onto hands and knees, screaming down at the mattress, at the pillow, at what had once been ground and ash. It was a horrified scream, the sort of sound that came from someone who was alone.

Prying eyes open, he stared at the light color of sheets, dotted with red that kept dripping. His mouth. Something was bleeding. "Oh my God.. fuck.. fuck, fuck.." Lifting a hand, he clapped it over his mouth and gasped a wet breath. All sense was lost. He should have been running for the bathroom, he should have been grabbing something to clear up, but he was paralyzed instead. Sweat-drenched and tremoring, everything still seared and ached, his free hand reaching for another body frantically. "Michael.. Michael.." It was muffled against his hand, red, sticky blood dripping across palm and down his arm. Another set of sheets ruined.

[star studded]

"My poor prophet." The voice that lingered over his shoulder was a familiar one, haunting and forboding. It was beautiful, constructed out of perfect tones, the correct emphasis on every word. It was eerily celestial. "What did he do to you.."

Instead of responding, Harlen flipped a page in his book and hunched closer to the small cafe table, scooting his chair forward. Eyes narrowed in on the words and he attempted to focus in on them instead of the four feminine fingers that coasted down his jaw. They soothed over and healed, and he hated that about them. She was a living panacea, better than any painkiller, better than pills and powders.

"Go away, Moira." His words were stern and meaningful, but she was not moved by them. Instead, fingers swept through his hair, and he felt her settle beside him, hands folded, fingers knotted together. Instead of acknowledging her, he stared dark eyes back down at his book, trying desperately to lose himself in the story instead of whatever was coming.

"You're hurt. Look at you. What did I tell you, Harlen? You're broken-hearted. And what, over a dream? Over a man?" Her hand covered over the pages of his book and he immediately snatched it away. Leaning back, he folded over the page and closed the covers.

"Leave me alone. I don't want to talk to you." Childishly introverted, he exhibited the same outwardly, his shoulders hunching up around his neck and his eyes narrowing down at the coffee that sat in front of him, weak and decaffeinated.

"Walk away. Walk away now, and it will be easier than if you wait. Better to have lost him when the ties were barely binding, better the contempt of the familiar cannot start.."

"Shut up." He snapped, cutting her off with a glare. "Just shut up."

"What are you going to do, Harlen? Dig the Bible out from under the things in your dresser and then go bury it in whatever lot you can find? Let him find the rosary you've got tucked away? Sure, you're no ideal Catholic, but you'll always be your father's child. You can't run from your roots. Your background intervenes."

"You can't condemn a child's design to his parents blood. It's.. not like that. And you don't understand what I saw. What I felt. What's in my head, Moira. It's memory. Memories don't lie, they just hide. They don't change unless you change them." Fingers wrapped around his book's edge and he stared over at her a moment. Moira's face had twisted into one of disbelief.

"You aren't really considering the fact that this may be more than just a dream, are you? You aren't.. letting that pagan professor convince you that there's an ingrained fate in someone, a physical reaction to being literally split apart from another half. You aren't going to fall for that, that's not ... where did your logic go, Harlen, where did your sense, your belief..."

Harlen's hand lifted and waved her comment off, stopping it short at its end. "It would be easy to refute if it didn't make sense, Moira. That's the trouble. It makes more sense than anything else. It fits. I remember it. Maybe not as well as I remember things like.. piano keys, or how to say the alphabet backwards, but it's there. It's in my head, it's there. It's memory, and you can't just disregard what memory is, because memories are tangible, concrete things, like body parts."

"Listen to you! Listen to yourself! Do you forget where your prophecy comes from? Do you forget where the Messenger gets--"

"He isn't the Messenger, and I'm not the Prophet. Not the ones you're looking for." His head shook, shards of hair falling forward into eyes. He hadn't the energy or will to knock them away again. "Call it prophecy. Call me a prophet, call Asher an ecstatic, call Michael a pagan, a clairvoyant, a witch, whatever you want to label all of us. But none of it comes from anywhere else but ourselves. God, or Gods, religion.. it comes from us. Faith is manmade. Trace back, trace all the way back to when you were ripped apart, and you'll understand that. It hurts, yes. It hurts more than anything else will ever hurt, but at the same time, it gives you hope. If you can survive that, if you can go on living with all that pain and that agony, then you can survive anything. If you find yourself again." Everything unfolded in a rush of words and sudden understanding. Things clicked into place in his head, and almost immediately they were on his tongue, unfurling and explaining to a disbelieving Moira, who stared in shock and awe. Dark, witchy eyes had intensified almost to black, her mouth pulled taut.

"I'll kill him. Spewing his polytheistic ignorance like it's the New Law, the doctrine we're all supposed to adhere to, I'll kill him for doing this..."

"You won't touch him. You won't go near him. You might think you're infallible, but you aren't God. You're just an angry angel. You're unhappy because you've been abandoned. We all are. Find yourself. Go looking. It shouldn't be too hard for you. If you go anywhere near him, though, I swear you'll regret it."

Moira's chair scraped along the floor as she pushed it back, standing. She was tall and slim in this light, the curls of her hair left loose in their knot behind her head. Skirts and layers of clothing swished a moment, her hands left pressed to the top of the small table. "What do you believe in anymore, prophet? Where is your faith?"

Reaching for the book he had been reading, the softback cover was pulled open, fingers flipping through pages. "It's in him, Moira. Far away from you, where you'll never be able to touch it."

"You'll be back. He'll leave again, and you'll be back."

"I'm not afraid of lightning bolts anymore." Eyes glanced down at the pages of his book, and slowly he closed them, lids shuttering and lashes falling down to wrap him up in black. "When I open my eyes, you'll be gone."

He took a moment and then pried them open again. There was no trace of her, just the bustling atmosphere of the coffeeshop, its patrons, and the blurry text of his novel.

"It's almost done." He sighed, the words spoken to no one in particular. They were more for his ears. Something about words being spoken made them so much more concrete than thoughts. "Almost finished."

[star studded]

You spent a summer thinking that this might be what a family is.? You spent three months with the youngest one, barely two, on your lap and hammering away at the out of tune keys of their old piano.? You were considerably older than all of them, but that didn't stop you from spending Saturday mornings in your pajamas and eating applesauce from the little plastic containers, or cereal out of the box.? Your summer was bright and filled with sticky fingered children (real children, their real children with real parents), and you helped take care of them, fix scraped knees and build forts out of blankets and couch cushions.? You lived out a fitting childhood in three months, and since then you have felt less robbed of it than you had before knowing them.

The summer after that was where everything went wrong, but you were lucky.? You only had two more birthdays to count down to, and then you were free and easy.? It's difficult to remember most of the details now, but foster families are never real families and no one ever considers them that.? The adults are not parental figures (none of them are quite sure how to handle the seizures and the headaches and the insomnia) and the children are not siblings.? They are rarely even friends.? Brian was far from either, he lingered somewhere else on another scale entirely, two years your senior and intensely mysterious and interesting.? You remember wanting to unfold him, to roll up your sleeves, crack him open and pull out whatever you could figure out was removable.? You spent most evenings locked in his bedroom, preening over his collection of literature and music, playing selections and suggesting your own favorites.? The father (whose name you can't remember because you made it a point to forget it) would call lights out at eleven, and you would trudge to your own room, which felt more like a guest room.? But once, you had the spine to get back up at one and tiptoe back.? And you had the courage to lock the door behind you, and to climb into an occupied bed.? Brian had the courage to hold your wrists to the mattress and somehow, you were kissing, and somehow your clothes ended up on the floor and the rest was a blur and an affirmation of things that you knew to be true for as long as you knew anything to be true.?

Until someone knocked on the door, and you ended up scrambling to put clothes back on.? You hid like a child instead of facing the situation like you would have liked to, but you were discovered anyway.? In two days, you would be sent away to spend the worst two months of your life in a home for boys, and you would swear that the next time anyone opened the door on you, you would not run and hide, but greet them with a satisfied smile and a shameless admission.

Those boys were uncultured and violent and you hated every one of them.? They left bruises on your cheekbones, and you left your own on their ribcages, kicking and swinging at whatever came too close to you.? It was only two months, however, and school awaited again, a year long haven for you in the mountains of Massachusetts, where everything was brown and golden in the fall, and gray and white in the winter, and beautifully green and blue come spring again.?

You were the musical prodigy, the heartbreaker and the unheralded talent.? The beautiful thing was that everyone there had talent and you were proud of each other come graduation.? You promised to keep in touch, but never did.? Just with the few that followed you to College Street in Providence, to march down the halls of Brown University on a free ride from the state.?

College was a whirl of nameless faces and bodies and unidentified beds, of powders, pills and the pages of books and sheets of staff paper you scrawled on.? The years following weren't much different.? They, however, were filled with a woman rather than a man (there were many men, of course, all nameless and all inconsequential, but beautiful and fulfilling nevertheless), and travel.? She showed you the world at her expense and treated you to every trivial pleasure of each stop on the line.? You began to see clearer with her, and her explanations were sufficient.

You cannot place exactly what it is that kept you at her side for so long, but you think that it might have been her constancy. She was reliable, despite her whimsy, and she took care of you, and she needed you and relied on you just as much.?

Your home was not in one place.? It changed from hotel rooms, to the shoulders of strangers, to the cold floors of people you had just met.? You circled in search with her until you could take it no longer.? Sick and tired of dead ends, and beautifully brightened by a dark, new prospect, you moved on.?

That was always you.? Growing bored and tired and moving on.? Until now, with your feet planted and your heart knotted and your memories betraying you. The prospect of moving is a good one, but moving on is petrifying and entirely out of the question. Now you have a permanent residence, a bed to crawl into, a body to warm it, conversation and comfort rather than temporary and intermittent residency. This is not a guest bedroom, this is not a small room in a larger hall, this is not the floor of a stranger, or a friend you've known for a handful of hours. This is home. Not because of the roof over your head, or the location of your piano, but because of who it houses inside it.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ February 22, 2005 01:01 PM: Message edited by: pretty things ]</font>

[star studded]

It wasn't difficult to pick Harlen's frame out of the every day sidewalk shuffle. The lanky pianist didn't stick out too terribly, but there was a distinct way he had of walking, a subtle bobble of his head, the way a cigarette end was chucked aimlessly at the ground and crushed by a parade of passing feet. Angling shoulders, he swept past the majority of the people between them and sidled up. It wasn't with the usual eager grin that Harlen had been expecting since he picked up the feel of Asher following him a block away.

"You're stealing my schtick." The pianist murmured in his lazy drawl of speech. Without even glancing over at him or offering a smile, Harlen marched on, balancing a loose bag from his wrist, fingers wrapped around the handles.

"Your schtick?"

"Sneaking up on people. This? What you're doing here? I did this to Michael for a good three weeks." A finger swept through the space between the two of them and his chin tipped over to stare. Asher's expression lifted a little, picturing the prophet sticking his head out of alleyways, or climbing out of dumpsters to race after a passing, and ever-oblivious Michael.

"I'm doing it for different reasons."

"And here I thought you wanted to make out with me."

Asher's face scrunched up in disgust and Harlen considered his job done. Marching forward, a hand lifted and fingers swept absently over the jagged line of stitches along his temple. The bandages had been long disposed of, and he had one more week left before they were torn out again, leaving only a sliver of a scar behind as evidence. The two men walked in a strange, awkward silence. There were no boundaries defined. There was no line Asher could be wary of staying behind or stepping over, and instead he was left to create his own.

"I need to ask yew a favor." He finally breathed, his accent a sharp, crisp contrast to Harlen's voice. Where every sound was perfectly pronounced on Asher's tongue, Harlen's was a lazy mash of words that sometimes ran together, or lacked proper expression.

"A favor? De moi?"

"Oui, une faveur de vous." It was a surprise for the prophet, the effortless ease at which Asher replied in the same tongue. He was so used to Michael's shoddy translations and word stumblings that the Brit's reply was somewhat pleasing and refreshing to hear. "Une grand avec beaucoup d'importance."

"And what favor is that?"

"I need yew to do some detective work." He began, hands shoved in his pockets. Steps of the same pace wandered along and Harlen sensed what was coming, just like he sensed most other things in the same vein.

"About your parents. Parent. Parentage. I suppose that's the best word to use for it."

"Yes."

"And you've already asked Michael."

"Yes."

"So, the million dollar question is.." Pausing in his step, he propped hands on hips and assumed a pose that on anyone else would look quite silly. "..you've already got Michael working for you, why bother asking me? You trust Michael will find something. In fact, you know Michael's going to find something, and you know that it's going to be fact and solid fact at that, no matter how vague his terms. So why do you need me? Why do you need backup, so to speak?"

"Because I.." Fumbling for explanation, Asher watched as Harlen turned on heel and kept walking. The prophet had a penchant for the dramatic, and a flair for leaving people to feel like they were scrambling to catch up. Chasing after him, he justified their shoulders again, the two walking like they always did. Like AWOL soldiers in some forgotten war. "..because Michael can only tell me. He can just use.. images and explanation. Yew, however, can show me. Physically, mentally, wotever. Yew can show me. Yew have that ability, that.. connection, or wotever. And that's wot I need. Confirmation, so to speak. Of a different sort."

In this light, Asher couldn't help but understand why he remembered Lani comparing Harlen to something Cheshire and feline in thought. The slits of dark eyes were narrowed and pointed, honing in on something in the distance that Asher couldn't see. "I don't know. It's risky. All of it's risky. You know that, and you know because Michael refused to ask me. He made you. It makes me more.."

"..oracle than prophet."

With his sentence completed, Harlen nodded. Fists were stuck into his pockets and he shuffled along silently. Asher watched as if he could see the gears turning. Behind eyes, Harlen played worse case scenarios and attempted to dig up pieces of the future rather than the past. They mixed in oil and water rainbows and he sifted through them. The slant of his jaw tightened, his lungs deflating as he turned his head towards the Brit.

"Alright."

"Yew don't want to."

"But I will."

"Why?"

Scoffing a moment, Harlen's face turned from something taut into something lighter and upbeat. He smiled and rolled eyes, shoulders shrugging up and falling back down. "Because you're my friend. And you're his friend, and Lani's husband. And I feel some sort of obligation. Not to you, but to that concept. You're a friend. And friends do these things for each other. Besides. I've got nothing to lose that I can't get back. We all know the situation. We're all adults, here. It's not like it's shocking."

The word friend tossed around so easily seemed strange. Asher had few friends. Michael was his friend. Lani was his best friend, his wife, his other half. The incorporation of a new person into that tightly locked circle seemed odd and difficult in theory, but slippery and simple in practice.

"If yew find.. at all, that you're having second thoughts about any of this. Don't do it. Not if there's a big enough risk."

"There's not a big enough risk. Make sure you get to sleep tonight. Sleep well. Take something, even. A dose of cough medicine, NyQuil, a mild painkiller. You're a terrible sleeper, it's hard to keep you in one place long enough."

"Lani won't like that."

"It's NyQuil. Fake a cough. God, I sound like Moira." He felt hypocritical and ashamed, his head shaking. They understood. They'd all understand.

"Alright. I've got to go, I'm picking her up from work. And you're.."

"..going home. I'll talk to you later. I'll explain everything. Call, if you want to. I.. I'll see you later."

Before Asher could protest, Harlen had darted away through the swarm of people towards any approaching cab that would take him as far away from this sidewalk as he could get.

[star studded]

<center>"seemed like what she touched was hers / seemed like what touched her couldn't hold / she got us almost through the high grass / then seemed like she turned around and ran / right back in / right back on in"</center>

I am only partially surprised at how easy it was to get Asher to lend me the new, red Stanton vehicle.? I had to, of course, provide him with evidence that I'm a valid driver in the state of New York, with documentation and all of that, so that under the circumstances that I do veer off the road and wrap his car around a tree, or wedge it underneath the cab of an eighteen wheeler, I can at least provide him with the cash to get a new one.? However, he asked me for no reasoning, no explanation, no unfolding of why I was driving two hours to some obscure town in suburban New York.? He handed over the keys, made me promise it would be back for him to get to work comfortably the next day, and sent me on my way.? I can only attribute this to the fact that we're now running on a very give-and-take policy.? I'll continue to do favors as long as I can get something in return.

I didn't leave any explanation for Michael, because I'm sure he doesn't need one.? There will only be a slight bout of surprise when he walks through the door and finds that I'm not at my piano, or reading.? And then he'll think, and he'll tune in, and he'll understand.? I'll roll in just in time for dinner, and I have a feeling it will be with a sour face and moody disposition.? Either that, or as if nothing has happened. I can't decide quite yet.

I'm driving to Haverill, New York. Not to a store there, or to visit non-existent relatives, or to see some sights. Instead, I'm responding to a message left on our machine the other afternoon. I have a package waiting for me at the Haverill Post Office, and for some reason they prefer that I come get it. I don't blame them. I've always been unreliable when it came to forwarding addresses. The only time I had an actual address where I received mail was in my college days, and even then it was rare that anything of note passed through. From there, I never stayed in one place long enough to change my address. There was a four year stint in Paris, but I never wanted mail, there. I never wanted mail, ever. If people wanted to connect to me, to talk to me, they would have to come and find me. They would have to work for it.

The only thing about this trip that weirds me out is that Haverill is where I spent most of my childhood. Not most. From the ages of two to six and a half. We had a small house within walking distance of the private school. It had two floors. It was modest. I didn't realize how modest until I gained access to my trust fund. Sickeningly modest.

The post office is smaller than I remember it. I blame that on the fact that I wasn't any taller than three feet when I used to come in here. I remember standing on my toes and dropping letters into the Out Of Town slot, licking stamps, playing with the hems of my mom's jacket. I don't ever remember a time where she didn't have that jacket. I remember that Haverill was always cold.

Making my way inside, I'm thankful to see that I don't remember any faces, or recognize any of the set up of the interior. Either it's been changed since last I saw it, nearly two decades ago, or I have changed it in my head to be something nonexistent and unimportant. I tend to think it's more of the latter considering I don't see anything particularly new looking. Everything is wooden, brown, old and antique. I wait in the line of people, mostly older men and women sending packages or buying stamps, and when I finally reach the middle-aged teller behind the window-desk, I realize I don't exactly know where to begin.

"Hi, I got a call from you yesterday saying you had a package for me that was delivered to my old.. uh.. really old residence?"

"Name?" The man snaps at me without a lot of recognition. It's a cold and impersonal day for him, just like every other.

"Prior."

It is only then that his eyes actually lift up to look at me, two wide saucers staring out like I'm a movie-star, or Jesus, or the living dead. "You kidding me?"

"No, I.. do you want ID, or something?" I remember that I have about fifteen forms of it on me right now, considering Asher's attention to detail. Reaching in my back pocket, I pull out the folded contents of my wallet. It's nothing flashy. Simple black leather. Pulling it open, I fish around credit cards and loose bills to pluck out the ugly colored plastic card with my picture and birth date on it. I slide it across the counter and he picks it up with amused interest.

"The one and only, huh? No kidding. Kid, we've had this package here for ages. Tracking you down s'like trying to find someone in witness protection. You hiding, or something?"

What the fuck, does this guy want my life story? A synopsis of my reckless years spent on the run from nothing? A rundown of my current situation? "Moved a lot." I'm less than eloquent and far too tired to be witty and sarcastic. Instead of replying, he disappears behind the counter and returns with an oblong package. Small, but he seems to be exerting some effort in carrying it. Also, he plops a bag down beside it. Letters. Junk mail, some hand addressed, some from places and names I don't recognize. "All this stuff's yours. Couple a'years' worth, I'd guess. Mind signing for the package?"

"Sure.." I mumble. Inadvertently, I'm trying to figure out what's inside the beaten, white box with it's blue insignia and typed labels. I don't have time to read the return address, however, because I'm thrust a pen and a binder. I scrawl my name, but I can never manage to make it look less than perfectly formed. I have spectacular handwriting. Good enough for tattoos.

Lifting the bag of mail, it's got a little handle that I drape over my wrist so I can pick up the package. It's heavy. Surprisingly so. It has to weigh at least ten pounds, and for something so small, that seems out of place to me. Hoisting it up, I manage to carry it the short distance out to the car. I toss the bag of mail in the backseat for later, and balance the package on my lap as soon as I take my seat behind the wheel. The return address reads in black, bold computer print:

St. Vincent's Medical Center
205 Caper Ave
Miller, New York, 06948

Jesus Christ. Oh God, oh God.

Using the sharp edge of the key to the car's ignition, I stab blindly at the worn thin corner of the top of the box. Rather than pry at tape, I tear into it like I'm gutting some sort of prey and the jagged sound of cardboard ripping fills the car. I wriggle my fingers into the space I've made and with one furious motion, I tear off the top and set it aside.

Inside is a black case. Simple. Tall, but not too wide. The top is a flap that folds over, tucks in, and is locked with a bright gold seal. There is no writing. No explanation. And I still know. I am fully aware what this is, because what else could it be? What else could they be sending me, years later, after all this time?

I'm curious. My breathing is heavy, and my hands are shaking like they used to when I was flying on speed, my heart is hammering a mile a minute and I need to remember to slow down. I need to calm down, because I am in the middle of nowhere, and I will hit my head on the steering wheel, and there will be no one here to help me, they won't know who to call if I crack open my head and bleed to death. I will die unnoticed. It will look to everyone back home that one day I just up and ran away, never to return. They will never know.

I must slow down. I must calm down.

Moments pass and I am breathing relatively normal again. I figure this is as good enough a sign as any to plod on. Fixing my fingers around the top of the lid, I lift a corner up and pull.

It looks nothing like I imagined it. I don't know if I imagined bits of bone, hair, mangled, twisted silver from the rings she wore (no, I have her rings, I have them in a box on the dresser, I have them, I must have them, do I have them?), or if I imagined it to be smoother, powdery almost. It is none of the above. The contents themselves, the remains, whatever is left is in a sealed plastic bag, stuck in this black box, stuck in this white packaging. It looks like sand. Each grain is identifiable, and some are dark as black, where others are salty looking and white.

I feel sick. Oh God, I feel like I'm going to be sick.

This is my mother. This box, this heavy box and its contents are all that is left of my mother. She is shapeless, formless, moldable, portable, quiet, simple and a drab color. She is nothing like she was. This box is my mother. This box is not my mother. I don't know. I can't tell. Nothing clicks. It doesn't smell like her, or look like her, it does not sound like her, it cannot paint like her.

I realize I am still in the small parking lot of the Post Office. I have to go. I have to leave. What do I do with the box/my mother? I can't put it in the trunk. I can't sit it in the passenger seat like a person, like we're just taking a leisurely drive. I can't look at it the entire way home. Instead, I close the lid, reaffix the seal and strain to place the box/my mother on the back seat, in the middle, comfortably. Turning back, I fumble for the keys again. My body, apparently, does not like this movement. Or it does not like something else. Either way, I'm rushing to throw open the driver's side door and lean over, my scant breakfast lurching up and making an encore presentation over the packed-dirt of the parking lot. Better than the floor of Asher's car, I remind myself. I choke and sputter, it burns and subsides. With a few strange looks from the passers-by, I lean back into the car and slump in my seat, my head knocked back against the head rest, my hands on the wheel.

I don't know how long it takes for me to start the car and drive, but I do it numbly and without realizing. Before I know it, I am back on the highway, speeding frantically with little regard or consideration for other drivers, and my mind is running over everything that is non-essential. I consider the the realism, the logistics of it all. I cannot have this in the apartment. I cannot put it/her in some wildly decorated urn and stare reverently at it every day. I do not know where I would scatter them, however. Moving on to the next topic. I do not know whether this will trigger some sort of strange reaction in Michael, who balances between worlds like some see-saw fulcrum. I wonder if this will bother him, if it will enhance or deteriorate. I would envy him if he could look at this box and see her, alive and well, flouncing around like it was just another day. For a moment, I consider bringing him back to our old house, begging him to tell me if he sees anything. I toss these ideas away almost immediately. How am I going to get her/it home when I return the car to Asher? Will I have to carry her/it down several blocks, or god forbid, on the subway? How, how am I going to do this, how am I going to explain?

The truck in front of me brakes. I notice a moment later than I should, but I brake in time as well, watching the speedometer arc downwards as I shift back into a hazy, filtered reality.

I would like to be home, in bed, with the covers pulled over my head and wrapped so tightly around me that I can't be undone, unless you ask nicely. And only after I have had enough time to myself.

I do not know what I will do when I walk through the door. I can't see that far ahead, no matter how hard I try. Asher will have to come get the car. I'm going home. I'm just going home.

I don't realize that my throat is raw and my eyes ache until I get there.

[star studded]

<center></center>


Time thickens.
Sticky, taffy-brown
the malleable gunk of family
memories, resemblances, resentments
anecdotes thumped and punched
by a succession of urgent hands
hardens and cools, but early lumps remain,
fingerprints, palmprints, even marks of teeth.
You spend a lifetime trying to smooth these out.

Time thins.
To the original mix nothing is added
but a steady trickle wrung from years,
a faintly salty broth, not tears, not sweat.
The solution weakens until only
a feeble fingerprint of this first scent
trembles half-imagined on the air.
That earliest essence -- what was it again?
You spend a lifetime trying to get it back.


--Rachel Hadas

[star studded]

This is painful, it's torture, it's terrible and no one should ever have to go through it. At least not without a healthy dose of will power, and God knows I don't have any of that. Michael's been sick for about a week now. Not sick enough to stay home from work, or to be completely incapacitated, but sick enough to refrain from other certain important things. And let me just say this, first and foremost, so I get it out. If you're refusing sex with me, you'd better be bleeding from the eyes, or in dire need of emergency medical services. Otherwise, there's absolutely no excuse. Have you seen me? I'd fuck me even if I was in traction. Come hell or high water, I'd find a way.

He does look pretty miserable, I have to hand him that. The few early mornings I've woken up alone, I've found him hunched over the toilet like he had just endured a night of too many tequilas with lime and no chaser. I've done what I can to offer some sort of assistance and domestic comfort but I think the only reason he lets me help him back to bed is because he's too tired to tell me that he can do it himself. He's usually the one that ends up smoothing me over and telling me to go back to sleep. Oh well. Things with us are always backwards, or mixed up, or out of order.

While Michael paces around in the other room and cleans things up so we don't come back from Paris to a big mess, I'm in the bedroom, trying to remember what it is I wanted to pack last minute. I've got spring jackets galore stuffed away, but I can't bring myself to pack the things I can buy once I get there. Instead, I'm filling my bags with clothes I know I won't wear, trying to fold them at the seams so they won't wrinkle, even though I'm slightly inept at all of this stuff. Folding clothes was never my forte. To be honest, the only time I ever did laundry was when I lived with this family in Rhode Island, and we all had to do a load each week as part of our chores. I can't really remember anything else about that family, except the way the basement smelled and that the third stair creaked when you stepped on it. Memories are strange.

Every now and then, I'll wander past the open doorway just at the same time Michael does, and we'll catch each other, pretend like we didn't look, and carry on. It's obvious that we're both searching for the other when we step past and peek in. It's sickening. It's obsessive. At the same time, it's as natural and instinctive as blinking. Every time there's an open door to a room he's in, I walk past it for some inane reason or another, and I case it. Casually. Like looking in a mirror when you walk past. Everyone does it, but no one wants to admit that they're that self-absorbed. Only now, it's that neither wants to admit that we're that fixated. Though we do admit it, time and time again, over and over.

Like I said. Backwards, mixed up, out of order. We'll get better at keeping things in their places as time goes on.

I walk past again, and this time I just catch the stretch of his arm and curled fingers. He has a cigarette, and even though they disgust him lately (it's the nausea, I'm sure), addiction beats out all, and smoke wafts as he disappears around the corner again. I'm struck with a silly notion. The first burst of creative energy in some time, actually. I worried, after a dream, that the part of me that could create had been split down the middle and didn't survive. It's back now, and that's comforting. To welcome it, I drop my packing task at hand and tear through a bedside drawer. One of Michael's many notebooks is tucked away in there, filled with random scrawlings, numbers, phrases I don't bother to read. Turning to a fresh page, I uncap the first thing I find. A thin tipped marker will have to do. In my own painfully perfect handwriting, I write a note. I'm not sure if I've ever written him a note. I try to make it as casual as possible, I try to make my handwriting look rushed and scratched to express how this all came to me, in a rush, in a burst that I just had to get down on paper.

Michael,
<center>I love to sit and watch you drink
with the reins to the world, gripping a smoke
vaguely missing link
don't ever change, you hungry little bashful hound</center>

And that's it. Things start to connect again. My brain is thinking in piano keys. All good signs. I tear the paper out and fold it into quarters, tucking it into the loose pocket of his jacket. He can find it there when he goes running, or to work, or some time in between.

Four more hours until we board a plane to Paris. It all boils down to this.

[star studded]

<center>I don't need a support system
Lifting me into prop-position
What I need is a man of action, I need my attraction to you
Driving me down all those dangerous avenues
Lions and tigers tearing at their food

Liz Phair - Support System</center>


The dance floor was a moving body part dictated by the heartbeat thud of the bassline. The synapse flickers were electrically charged, strobe lights fluttering and rotating in uncommon patterns while the bodies on the floor crushed together like a pack of French sardines. Limbs tangled and hips drove into the hips of strangers or ten-minute-friends. This was nightlife. This was a new French revolution, a feeling of togetherness and invincibility that made each individual bohemian feel as though they were capable of swarming together and smashing down the Bastille doors once again, freeing inmates and procuring arms for themselves.

Though there would be no violence in this revolution. No, this was a coming together rather than a driving apart, or flushing out of authority. In the fray of it all was a stalky, slender thing of twenty-one, all jagged bone and perfect skin, his hair shagged and long, his fingers hitched in the waist of another viciously pretty thing's jeans. Crushed close, he was jostled by someone behind and turned a chin over his shoulder. Lashes were low and he smirked coyly, but with an air of powdered confidence that pulsed through his veins and killed his ability to sit still. Running on a mix of adrenaline and chemicals, the fluttering musician knocked hips back to retaliate, the sides of his face crushed by palms and his mouth mashed against one of a stranger. No names, no conversation, just connection and physicality, the notion that everyone was safe and sterile, without infection or risk, without emotional ties to sever, without lives outside this moment where they were all one, one body, one mind, one mouth, one pair of switchblade hips, one pair of eyes, one voice saying "Yes."

He leaped from body to body. In these moments he didn't distinguish between male and female, light hair or dark. It was beauty he searched for, a pretty face, a mouth that it looked like he could latch onto. Laughter. There was always laughter, a sound he'd remember until he died. The lift of unanimous laughter, at a bad joke, at a particularly silly anecdote, at the face someone made after swallowing a pill or downing too large of a line off of too sticky a surface. There was validation in that togetherness despite the wall of anonymity. Strangers loved him. And if strangers loved him, then surely anyone could. Dead fathers. Suffocated mothers. Beautiful men, strange and mysterious men with futures ahead of them that he could grab the coat-tails of and be dragged along with until he grew bored and threw himself at the next.

The night whirled and twisted, marked only by tiny, choice moments. His shoulders against a cold brick wall outside, his hands fumbling at denim and leather, hips, teeth, the sounds of springtime in Paris at twenty-one. The full moon. The clear sky. Staring at the ground. A strained spine. This is happiness. It has to be. It has to be.

A line of cocaine off of the bathroom sink. It has to be, because if this isn't happiness, what is? What feels better than this? A shivering feeling, a swimming room, everything warbled and distorted, slowed down and sped up at intervals. Heavy limbs and a whirring brain. The bathroom was too crowded. He pulled at his collar and stepped one foot forward. When his entire body hit the tile, everyone scattered like roaches in a floodlight.

As the epileptic seized on the floor, images rippled and flickered behind closed eyes, his spine twisting like a corkscrew. A familiar Paris flat. An empty bottle of absinthe. Maria Callas in the background, a heavy, leaden feeling in his body. Almost like intoxication, but different. More organic. Less volatile. It came from within rather than outside. Lanky limbed and sleek, he was prowling over a dark body, littered in bite bruises and circular desgins of black ink. Remember this. Remember.

A sharp hand stung his face, and freezing water hit him in a wave. Harlen jerked into the real world gasping and choking, lurching upwards off of the floor and snapping eyes open. A face was framed by light. He was dying. He was dead. Oh God. An angel.

"Sink." He grunted, a hand dragging him across the ground to the first available toilet bowl.

"Silly prophet.." The angel spoke.

Contents spilled out of him, the remains of what little food he had eaten flushed down in a stringy, stinging mess. Red eyes watered and he choked into the bowl before flushing it down, his forehead resting on his arm. His head throbbed. Images slipped away like dreams upon waking. There was a place. A thing. A person. No specifics.

"Come on, we've got places to go." The voice lilted, reaching for his shoulder.

"Fuck off." He spat, jerking away from her touch.

"Ah ah, now now. You won't feel too bad for much longer. I've got something to make you feel brilliant."

Harlen's mind immediately whirred in pills, powders and drinks. Curiously, he turned his head over his shoulder to peer at her. She was roundfaced and pale, Boticelli's Venus with golden hair that fell over angled shoulders. Hazel eyes narrowed at her brown ones and her slivered mouth curled into a disconcerting smile.

"Who the hell are you?" He rasped, groggy, tired, aching.

"I'm the woman who is going to save you from yourself."

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ March 15, 2005 10:25 PM: Message edited by: pretty things ]</font>

[star studded]

There was a brief moment of panic upon waking to an empty bed. Confused and still heavy with sleep, Harlen pushed himself up on a knobby elbow, his hair a shagged mess that fell forward in squinting, muddy colored eyes. Everything was familiar, but it all felt old. There was no worn smell of him on sheets, or pools of clothing on the floor. No glasses on the end table. No spiral notebook with a pen stuck in the coils of wire. Sitting up further, there was a tightening in his chest. Erratically, he forced eyes to focus and scanned the room with the flickering of them across pale walls. No music played to facilitate dreaming. There was not a trace.

The flat paneling of their (his?) bedroom door was cracked open and he caught a glimpse of skin as it fluttered past. Wrapping sheets around his waist, he nearly tumbled forward off the bed in pursuit, his feet hitting the hardwood and padding across it. Fingers coiled around the flat of it and he pulled it open, trailing into the living room with the white sheet following like a train.

"Michael?"

"Hn?"

The voice that answered was not one that he expected. Instead, it was melodic and feminine, a lilting little trill that answered from the kitchen area. In a slight panic, Harlen rounded the corner and peeked inside. She stood in long stockings and an off-white sort of pajama that fell to mid thigh. She was all familiar curves and sharp angles, a pile of blonde curls pinned on top of her head, pale shoulders rounded and angled. Her shoulderblades were jagged points interrupted only by the straps of her top. When she turned around, her face was the same, a rounded cherub, a Botticelli painting, a familiar angel.

"What're you doing.. where's Michael?"

Moira's pencil thin brow lifted in concern and confusion. "Who? Baby, you've been sleeping all day, do you want something to eat?" A palm reached out and smoothed over the ragged side of his face, fingers coursing over a dark shadow that sleep had settled on him.

"What are you talking about? You. You're not supposed to be here." A finger pointed at her and he took a step back in shock.

"Harlen. You're .. confused again. You slept. You went to sleep at five this morning, and you slept until now. It's nine."

"It's nine? At night?"

"Yes. We're in Paris."

"It's nine. In Paris. With Moira."

"Yes."

"So. Who.. where is Michael?"

"I don't know, honey, I don't know who Michael is."

Immediately, Harlen felt his insides sink. What was once illuminated dulled and dimmed out in a flicker fizzle that left him shadowed and darkened. Moira paused a moment and closed the space between them, smoothing a hand over the prophet's shoulder and lifting fingers to flick hair out of his eyes. "Harlen.."

The sound of his name from a now alien voice forced features to crush. Eyes stung and brimmed and he lifted his free hand to wipe the back of his wrist against them to keep floods from spilling forward. Wincing in some sort of indescribable feeling, he sucked in a deep breath and shuddered it out again.

"He's not real, is he." He muttered in a thick, blocked voice still heavy and deep with sleep.

"Probably not, my darling."

"Not fair." He breathed defiantly. Like a child denied, he shouldered his way through the living room with awkward, clumsy steps. Back in the bedroom, he collapsed back on the bed, still searching with some sort of conviction. His astute nose went buried in one of the pillows and he dragged in a ragged breath. Nothing. It smelled like nothing. It felt like nothing. Knees drew up to his chest and he pulled sheets around his skinny, amphetamine-addled frame, all bone and pale skin. The mattress depressed beside him and a palm swept over his shoulders. Prying his head from the sheets, he opened eyes and Moira had stretched out beside him. Instinctively, legs tangled. Her hands ran through dark hair and pushed it away from a wet face. Her mouth pressed against his cheekbone. All wrong. It all felt wrong.

"It felt real."

"It always feels real, my darling." In a shift, Harlen was unrolled, flattened out on his spine. Without protest, he let Moira fold over him, the broad, ring spangled stretch of his fingers flattened out against her stockinged thigh. She hunched over at the spine and pressed her mouth against his. No protest. He was too tired. Too disappointed. He could pretend.

With the sheets dragged around them, they were a beautiful, shimmering display of pale skin and soft features. Limbs tangled in a strange disarray, fingers knotted and hips shifted in subtle motions. Everything was whisper quiet, the rustle of sheets and the sound of voices. He needed to connect. He needed comfort, closeness, a body, a heartbeat, a pulse, a smell, a mouth, two eyes. In the middle of it all, he, for some strange reason, was compelled to leave a bright red bitemark on the slant of her shoulder. A rose colored calling card. A piece of a dream left behind.

Everything crashed over him at the wrong angle. A wave hit and passed over silently. Eyes stretched and strained to stare at the ceiling. Nothing. There was nothing. This was nothing.

Moira's weight seemed to drift away when he closed his eyes. There was a sound, a cracking of some sort, a snap, and eyes were opened again. The same room, but all had returned. The smell of it, the sound of a very quiet record being played somewhere, a heavy arm slung across him, a heavy, familiar arm, the right arm, the right body.

Asleep or awake?

He was not breathing. When he drew in a breath it was wheezing and weak, a sick, asthmatic sound. The arm was flung off of him and he sat up, eyes still searching.

"Moira?"

A pause. His stomach churned with his mistake and the memory of what had just, possibly, maybe, happened.

"Michael?"

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ March 20, 2005 06:12 AM: Message edited by: pretty things ]</font>

[star studded]

I feel like I've been stuck in this bed for days. In all actuality, I've been laid up in it since we got home, save for my trip to the doctor that first day. I get up to go to the bathroom, to take a shower, to move around a little bit, but if I stand up for too long, my head starts to get all light and dizzy and I just have to lay back down again. My showers are short because I worry about passing out. The steam feels too hot most of the time but it helps my lungs. I can breathe a little better when I'm in there. I took a bath yesterday instead.

I wonder if this is the way I will spend the rest of my life. Weak, miserable and being taken care of by someone who has no business taking care of me. The very idea of it is so depressing that I don't want to spend much time thinking about it. I want to play my piano, but I know my fingers won't stay steady long enough, and that the sound of the keys will make my head throb. Instead of doing anything, I just curl up into a tiny ball with my knees under my chest. It helps the weird stomach ache I've been getting from what I figure is only eating tiny little things every day.

I'm twisted up in this yoga pose on sheets that are clammy and sweaty. I want them changed, but Michael isn't home, he's at work. I'd get up and do it myself, but I don't remember where we keep the sheets and I think that I'll make more of a mess than they are already. That's what I am. A mess. A burden to bear, a joke, an example. This is what happens to you when you are gay and male in America in the midst of a plague, a pandemic. I think back to every last little fling I can remember and run them over in my mind. I deserve this. I honestly do. By any and all means, this is what I had coming for a long time. I used my body as a bartering chip, a fucking playground, I fucked anything that looked good and had a pulse and a cock and somewhere we could go with enough room. I see bathroom stalls, I see bedrooms and hotels, the backseats of cars, dorm rooms, kitchen tables. I see faces and a few names I remember. Every one of them is sickening. My stomach hurts even more now.

I know I didn't know what was coming to me when I was with all of those people, I had no idea who was in my future and what was in store but I still can't help feel that I've cheated. I've cheated him out of having what he wants most of all, someone healthy and whole. For all I fucking know, I've cheated him out of a healthy life himself, I've stolen years from him. I was so content to take everything. I wanted his heart in the palm of my hand, I wanted him to be desperate for me, I wanted him to not be able to think straight when I left the room. I wanted him to be willing to die for me, like my mother was for my father. I didn't actually want him to do it. I didn't actually want it to happen.

And me. I don't want to die either. Oh God. My stomach is killing me.

I crunch myself up into a ball and clench my fists and my eyes closed. If I tighten everything up, maybe it will go away. But it doesn't. It intensifies, like a stabbing cramp. It isn't an ache, or typical nausea. It's sharper, more prominent. It digs. In a fit, I kick the sheets away and realize that without them, I'll freeze. I drag them back up again and I'm sweltering. I hate this. I hate this and I want to go home. I want to burrow under something. I want to be sleeping and dreaming and not feeling like this. I want to be able to eat. I want to play my fucking music. I want to get dressed. I want to take a shower and wash all of this off. I want to be healthy. I want to forget the way the needle that pricked my arm felt, and the taste of plastic between my teeth and cheek. I want to reach into myself and dig whatever this is out. I feel invaded. Something is in me that doesn't belong. Something was put in me. I want to throw it up. I want my mother. Oh God, I want my fucking mother. I want Michael. I want Michael to come home, right now.

I'm sweating buckets. My fever is either spiking or breaking or some other stupid term. I'm panting like I've run a marathon. It feels a thousand degrees. I should get up. I should lay on the floor, or go get a glass of water, or a cold compress, but I know if I stand up I won't make it far. My limbs are shaking because I've pressed myself up on them, I'm sitting on the heels of my feet with my palms on the mattress, staring down and gasping for air. This is how it's going to be for the rest of my life. If this is true, this is how I'm going to spend it. Sick. Sick like I've never been sick before. Not when I was with foster families, or in the boys home, or at Deerfield, or Brown, or Paris. Just now. With him.

Why isn't he home, where is he, where's Michael? I can't breathe. I can't even think straight. I can't move my legs to get off the bed, and I can't, I can't do this here, I can't, I won't be able to fix it, I'm alone and I'm helpless. I can't do this. I can't. I can't, it's too hard. I don't want to do this.

My feet hit the floor and I'm not walking or running but more like throwing my weight in the direction of the bathroom. I stumble and lurch and my head screams and spins, and soon I'm folding onto the tile and everything I've eaten in the past day comes up. The bites of that deli sandwich, a bowl of broth, ice water, a glass of apple juice. My stomach heaves and my throat burns and I am choking and coughing and gasping for air. At least it wasn't the bed. At least I didn't throw up in the bed. He would have killed me. I would have had to strip it and clean the mattress and find new sheets. The bathroom tile is cold and I'm wiping my mouth with the cloth and flushing and curling up against it. Just for a minute. Just until I can breathe.

I'm back in the bed with some aching effort and a few minutes. I curl up, shivering, my knees to my chest. It's just a bad day. I'll feel better in a few hours, or tomorrow. There are tears running down my cheeks and I'm gasping for breath, but I don't really know or care why. I prefer to do this now, to be weak and useless and miserable when he isn't here.

Come home. Please, just come home.