Page 3 of Lessons In Grey

Thr—

She turned away, lifting a hand in a half-assed wave. “Goodbye, Rags.”

“You leave me with nothing but a shared conversation, Snowflake?” The name just slid out, but it felt right. She was the rare snowflake you never got a picture of. Fractals of knives and nebulas. She was beautiful, dark, sharp, deadly, and if there was anything in this world that attracted me to it, it was the scent of death.

She chuckled but kept going.

My heart thudded. I wasn’t ready for her to disappear. I wanted to hear more of her strange words. Her broken poems and heartfelt nothings. I needed to hear more of it. I needed more time to figure her out, to get in her head.

I stepped after her. “In a world filled with raining stars, don’t be the ones they wish on.” I wanted to meet her in her broken poetry. I wanted to find her in the trembling notes of cracked organs. She has seared herself into my mind, onto my bones, and she would not get away.

She slowed and glanced back, her eyes finding my lips.

I ran my tongue over it, just to entice her, to tease her, to keep her attention.

She watched that motion until my tongue disappeared again. “I’m not a star, Rags, I’m the ghost of Christmas Death.” She turned back around and disappeared into the night, leaving behind the scent of sour gummy worms and a wicked taste of need in my mouth.

I took another drag on my cigarette and turned towards that brick wall. I wasn’t worried. I would find her, get her name. I needed to know more about her. I needed to know everything about her. I just found my new vice and I wasn’t going to let it go that easily.

I wasn’t like my brothers, I was less unhinged, but less didn’t mean not at all. We each had a bit of psychosis within us, it just took the right person to bring it out, and I think I found mine.

My eyes lifted to the roof of the gas station, and I frowned as Iscanned it. God-fucking-dammit. There were no cameras here either!

Fuck!

2

Snowflake

September 1st, 2021

My therapist asked me once why I had such a problem talking to her, to anyone, about the things that are whispering through my head.

After some pushing, I finally sighed and gave her a little shrug. “I don’t know,” I said, “it just feels wrong burdening someone with my problems, my worries, the thoughts that scream, shredding my throat, forcing blood to my stomach just trying to escape. I can’t tell you,” I explained, “I can’t tell anyone. It’s not fair that both of us have to suffer for something I can’t even fully understand.”

She left me with this. “But is it worth it? To allow yourself to suffer in such silence that you force yourself to suffocate on those screams that will never be?”

I didn’tanswer her then.

I simply drove home, undressed, and sat at the bottom of my shower, letting the cold water burn my skin.

“Yes,” I had told the void. “Because at least I know that nobody else can hurt because of me. The pain is confined to my skin and my skin alone.”

I can carry the emptiness. I can carry the abyss. I can carry the shattered fractals of a life unlived with me forever, I was strong enough for that, I knew that. What I couldn’t know for sure was that this other person, whoever they were, was strong enough too.

What if my pain and suffering caused them to end? I couldn’t handle that, it would be the straw that inevitably broke the camel’s back.

I strummed the strings of my mother’s old guitar, staring at the lyrics scribbled on the pages of a notebook my twin had made for us a decade ago. This whole singing, composing music bullshit was supposed to be for the both of us. A publisher and a fashion designer, corrupting the world with our thoughts through our very own music.

It didn’t pan out like that.

I was born this way. Broken. Mom once said that God gave me a twin knowing I’d be born missing something vital. Charlie had held those pieces within her. The Joy Gene, I called it. She got extra.

But then she died. And that piece of her, the Joy Gene, she had taken that with her, along with whatever thread we identical twins are born with that connected our souls. Except, when the thread snapped, it didn’t snap in the center like it was supposed to, it snapped out of my own chest.

She didn’t just take the Joy Gene, she took my soul too, leaving me with an empty chest and a fractured mind.

My parents really hit the lotto with that one.