Page 37 of My Lovely Tragedy
My fingers twitch along my thighs, itching for more. More of something that I have no right to—but want all the same.
* * *
Nightfall has longsince settled around the cabin. The trees outside are dark, looming shadows through the opened curtains, bringing me solace on another night spent alone.
Brooklyn’s still sound asleep above me, as he has been for the last… I glance at the clock at the top of my screen. Seven hours, it seems.
Each breath of his brings me comfort. Even the sound of his snoring isn’t an annoyance. It’s quite lovely, actually. The sound of not being alone. Aside from that, I don’t believe the darling boy could ever make an unpleasant sound.
Air fills my lungs, and I hold it there, stopping it in its tracks.
The thud of my heartbeat grows stronger, heavier. The lingering edges of panic setting in as every cell screams for oxygen. For relief.
A reprieve of fighting.
An instinctual part of physiology.
One we cannot control, no matter how hard we try. The fight—the desire to live, to breathe—is always there.
It’s why when you are underwater for too long, you can’t help but let the water in. To feel the rush as it enters your lungs because the desperate,uncontrollableneed for air is too strong.
Even if it means your death.
It is a fairly ironic, unfortunate reality.
The screen in front of me turns black as it goes to sleep from being unutilized. I drag a finger across the trackpad to wake it up, but after I rest my fingers over the keys to type my password, they don’t move. They rest limply against the keys, knuckles bent. A radiating numbness spreads throughout each digit, adding to my extremity weakness.
I pull back and flip my arms, so they lie wrist up atop my lap, computer forgotten as I wait for the sensation to pass. My head drops against the chair, glasses resting halfway down my nose as I follow geometric patterns behind closed lids.
Each migraine is different, and yet, they are always the same. Each one starts with these congruent and dimensional lines. Sometimes they’re in the form of zigzags as they quite literally act on their name and flash across my sight.
Other times, there are these rather large blurs of light that settle at the focal point in my vision, nearly blinding me completely until they pass. Then, there are days where I get the best of both worlds with lines striking across my peripheral and blind spots dotted throughout the center line of sight.
The shapes today tell me it’s only this one, and for that, I am grateful. The lesser of many evils, if I think in that sense. And I know they are inevitable, a condition I can do nothing about, but knowing what’s coming when the distortion ceases…
It makes me sick to my stomach, which is why I was hoping to work until the pain made me too ill to look at any form of light, but it seems my body has other plans tonight.
So, instead, I bask in the memories of Brooklyn. In the form of the past and what is to come.
Every version of him brings me immense joy and the desire to bring every aspect of him to life on paper, to give my readers something—someone—unlike any other to ever exist, fills me with elation.
By the time feeling has returned to my hands and I have the strength to use them, my migraine is steadily throbbing at my temples with a particularly blinding spot at the base of my neck.
It takes effort to swallow it down and force my laptop awake, the brightly lit screen nearly blinding me. I wince as I lower the display brightness, then type in my password.
The browser is still pulled up with none other than Brooklyn’s band’s website staring back at me. Their band name—The Disorients—is written in some sort of graffiti, death metal font mixture. It’s all colors of neon green, gray, and black.
As I scroll down the homepage, determined to go through every menu option, I come across a scattering of photos posted either by the band or others, indicated by credit beneath certain pictures.
And it’s the one in the lower left corner that steals the very breath from my lungs.
It’s Brooklyn,my Brooklyn,center stage, green low lights behind him, casting his muscular form in a glowing light infiltrated with smoke, body bent over with his left foot up and resting on a speaker—or something of the sort.
His hair hangs around him, wet and slightly stringy from sweat. A few strands stick to the back of his hand holding the mic near his mouth—which is opened impossibly wide, eyes scrunched shut as he belts lyrics to songs I have never heard.
A picture has never felt so animated, so palpable andalive.I can feel the music pulsating in my veins, the thunderous beat of bass. His voice, elegant and ethereal and void, screaming his pain for the world to hear. To feel.
To relate to.
