A friend visiting my home happened to sit down at the desktop in the living room (of course with his obnoxious ass preppy bitch hand-ground coffee) and begin reading through my blog posts. Intrigued by what he read, he began to ask me questions, like:
"At what point did you stop Running?"
"What made you lose yourself enough to start making these Faustian deals to begin with?"
"You keep talking about these people you loved, even the dead ones, but you never tell us about them. Why? You Gather stories on all the rest of us, and tell us what's going on now, but you never bother to tell us what happened to you Before. What brought you from that scared teenager running from the Fears, to Gathering, to who you are now. We're missing so much of the story!"
I go, "Why would you want to hear all that ugly shit? All it will do is make people want to cry."
My friend, Navi, aptly named for his love of video games and his endearing (annoying) habit of constantly asking questions, shook his head. "It doesn't matter. All of this shit is ugly to begin with. We've all had ugly lives. But, you want people to trust you. You want people to know who you really are, not just what you used to do. In order to do that, you're going to have to start opening up."
I scoffed. "What, so I should start telling these people bedtime stories? Because that is what it would sound like. My life is like a really fucked up version of The Brothers Grimm fairy tales. It'd all be true, but no one would believe the things I had to say. Who's to say they wouldn't just distrust me more?"
Navi stared intently at me over the rim of his dark glasses, waves of blonde and gold and copper hair waving downwards in a half-assed curl, obscuring one eye, making it easier to withstand his gaze.
"I told you, it doesn't matter. Even if they don't believe you, you'll know you told the truth. You'll know you did right by them. That's what really matters. The other shit is just details."
He took a deep breath, let it go, and pulled out his phone. I looked at him strangely, my head cocked like that of a curious feline, wondering what the hell his phone had to do with anything.
He placed it square in the middle of the coffee table, opened the really shitty recording app we all have on our burner phones, and glanced back up at me. "You know you gotta get it over with."
I sat down across from him in one of our many armchairs, putting my weight on my arms, my elbows jabbing into my thighs, and bent forward and to lean my chin on my clasped hands, apprehensive.
"What do I get out of it?"
He gave me an incredibly fucked up look, kind of like a cross between a bitch, please and pity. "You get to finally deal with your shit. You've started telling the truth this time around. It's time to keep that ball rolling, get whatever shit off your chest that you need to. No matter how old."
"Besides. You record this, I'll share my weed with you anytime I visit."
My eyes opened up wide. "But you get that really good shit from Colorado! The expensive shit."
He nodded slowly, taking his time. "Yeah, I know. You know I can afford it with the income from my coffee shop. Hell, I could start setting you up with a regular supply.. if it means you'll talk."
Without a word, I reached forward and turned the phone around so the tiny mic was facing me, and pushed record. This is what I chose to say. Reluctantly. Hesitantly. But truthfully.
-begin transcription-
So once upon a time, a proxy needed to stay under the radar for a while, but he had exhausted all of his typical options for forgiveness or safe housing. He knew of one option left to him, but he had burnt his bridges in typical proxy fashion: a lady named Dia would've helped him, before he went and fucked it up being himself, so she had banned him from her home, and blocked his calls.
He transformed himself, with but a few movements. He shed his trademarked proxy gear, removed his face paint, and left his hair down instead of pinning it back. She had never seen him as a regular person before, never seen him smile outside of malice or lust. He looked.. almost normal.
Then, he manufactured bumping into her on the street near her new home.
Introduced himself as Nicholas. Basically, imitated who he would have been if his life would have been different. If he had never met the Wretched Man... knowing he could capitalize on her kindness. She was still a very silly, sympathetic girl that hadn't learned to distrust the world.
Not yet.
She was entranced.
She fell head over heels for him.
And he played along. Of course he did.
It was an easy enough deception.
He had studied enough human interaction (and soap operas) to pull it off.
So for one year of her life.. she lived the way she had always dreamed of.
Like she had finally escaped the Fears.
She was able to move on.
Until one day he disappeared, one year to the date from when they met. No note, no warning. His cell was disconnected. He entirely vanished from her life, like he was never there.
And so she began to wonder, had she imagined him? Was it all one long hallucination? No one knew.
Time passed.
She mourned his absence. Eventually, she met someone new, a sweet young religious boy that we'll call 'Ladybug' for his absurd choice in headwear, began to date, and she fell in love once more.
Until the day she showed up at his door for their weekly date, to find he wasn't answering the door.
Concerned, she used his spare key to check on him...
Only to find his mutilated body, splayed out on his living room floor. Discarded like a broken toy.
Distraught, she fell to the floor, sobbing and raging against the cruelty of the horror that was her life.
She desperately shook him, trying to wake him, in shock and denial over what so clearly had happened. In her efforts, her elbow brushed against an object she had previously missed:
A hand tool. A farmer's sickle, sticky with blood, the metal blade cold to the touch.
As she picked it up, her mind struggled to comprehend what her subconscious had been desperately trying to tell her since the day she first met the man on the street:
There was a reason he smelled familiar. That when he held her, she got a sense of deja vu. That when he sang for her, she would swear she had met him in a past life:
She had. The man she fell in love with, Nicholas, her sweet, funny, and viciously intelligent Nick..
had really been GallowsTree the entire time. Her Nick had never really existed.
She jumped up as quickly as a scalded cat would and twice as angry, dropping the sickle, it falling with a soft thud to land on her dead lover's chest. Mind whirling.
Her thoughts and memories hit her all at once with the impact of a freight train.
Their kissing.
Their holding hands.
The first time they fell asleep next to each other.
The first time they made love.
On and on, every significant moment in the time they spent together, until it all screeched to a halt on one memory:
the first time he told her he loved her, hand cupping her face as he gazed into her eyes.
His promising her the stars, the life he wanted to have with her at his side.
That he never wanted to be without her again.
Coal black strands of hair falling into his eyes as he smiled down at her.
All lies. All fiction. And boy, did she fall for it all.
She flew into a hysterical rage, smashing pictures, throwing vases, hand sweeping across the kitchen island's surface to scatter as many objects to the floor as she could.
Glass crunched underfoot as a wild urge came across her... and she smiled. She ventured out back, seeking the spare gas canister her lover had kept out back in the shed next to his lawnmower.
She whistled as she walked, some senseless tune her father had crooned to her as a child. It became a waltz for her with an invisible partner, dancing across the room, splashing kerosene as she went.
When the can was empty, she dropped it where she stood, careless as to where it landed.
She walked over to her lover's body, knelt down, and held him one last time.
The embrace lasted only but a moment.
As she went to stand, she paused to brush his lips with hers one last time. She wiped her hands on her jeans, absentmindedly leaving blood streaks as she did. She no longer cared.
She knew she would have to burn her clothing as soon as she got home.
Dia casually strolled her way towards the back door, palming her Zippo and flipping it open as she went, setting fire to every piece of cloth and painting as she did.
She stopped just short of the back door, pocketing her Zippo and putting her phone to her ear as she grasped the door handle to walk out, dialing 911.
"Hello, operator?! My boyfriend won't wake up, no matter what I do, and I can see smoke coming from under the door. The crack is all lit up orange!"
"Yes ma'am, our address is 13 Broadview Drive, Sacramento, California. Please hurry, the door handle burned me, I can't get out, please help us, I'm scared.."
-click-
She smiled to herself once more, quietly letting herself out of her lover's home for the last time to wait in the side alley for the firemen to arrive.
-end transcription-