Page 13 of Poison Aches

I ignore her.

“Y-you know what I want to do?” she stutters.

When I hear the familiar stutter in her voice, I glance at her from the corner of my eye.

It’s obvious she’s freezing cold, but I doubt she’s feeling it yet with all that adrenaline and whatever is going on in her head.

“Do you?” I counter. “Do you know what you want to do?”

“It’s not what you think!” she quickly defends herself.

I snort loudly this time. “That’s very presumptuous of you.”

“What?”

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“Well… you just said I should continue.”

This time I look at her fully. Something about her voice made her last words sound like a question, as if she’s begging for permission, a push, some encouragement…but for what? Does she want to live or die? I can only do the latter, after all, it’s what I know best.

The floodlight from the lighthouse to the left of us is shining so bright now, so much so that I can now see her face a bit clearer.

She has huge brown eyes…the kind you have to quickly look away from or else you’ll be stuck.

Stuck where or how? I don’t know and I’m not sticking around to find out.

But now, as she looks at me, wet trails turning into ice on her cheeks, I see what she’s begging for.

So, I decide to help her…

“Just jump.”

Startled, the girl’s mouth drops open. “W-wait…what?”

“You want to punish yourself, isn’t it?” I go on, looking away as the thing in my chest tightens, and then it flops like a bursting balloon.

The pain is on another level, but I stand there, making sure I don’t buckle over. Not yet anyway.

“Punish myself?” the girl gasps, as if she’s confused, but I know she’s figuring things out. “Is that what I want to do?”

This time, I do roll my eyes.

“It’s incredible how you don’t even know what you want,” I mutter, feeling impatient and annoyed. “If you’re just going to ask the world to make a decision for you then you definitely deserve to just continue and jump. You’re pathetic.”

“What?” she gasps. “Y-you’re a horrible person!”

I shrug, not at all perturbed.

“Go ahead and jump. I won’t tell anyone.” I smirk.

The girl looks at me in shock.

“How can you be so nonchalant about death?” she whispers.

I freeze in my tracks. The thing in my chest groans to a stop.

Sometimes it struggles from one beat to the next.

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