November 30? 20XX

“I listen to the Smiths.”

That was the first thing Mikayla said to me. I didn’t listen to anything she said past that point because I felt like any other word she was going to say was just going to make me lose even more interest than I had before. Why’d I talk to her? Easy answer. She looked really good in that gray sweater.

“That’s so cool! I’ve never really listened to The Smiths before but I’m always open to any new music.” I answered. We talked for a while longer but at that point in my life the conversations just came naturally. What’s your number? She gave it to me with a smirk and a few days later she wore a skirt to our date.

We ate dinner at some pseudo-barn in the downtown part of our city, and ended the date at my apartment. I felt butterflies in my stomach as she left. looking back? I hope she feels the same way I have these last seven months. I hope she’s regretful, I guess I hope she cares because maybe it would add meaning to what we had and everything I was doing with my life. That was back when I was taking college seriously. But I was doing everything too late, and not paying enough attention to what I should’ve been doing.

I think every female around me could smell the desperation and depression on me and knew to stay away. It was the same problem I had in high school, I was too weird on the outside to like but cute enough to maybe talk to. That changed within the last few years. First year of community college I more or less spent in random womens places. Millennials, cougars, co-eds, classmates, co-workers. Tinder was my best friend but most of the time I would just talk to random people I would meet by chance. It was a total mindfuck for me then. Going from playing league of legends alone for three years to being endlessly wanted by women, but not really being wanted by them.

I always felt the same way afterwards though. “Get me the fuck away from this person right now.” I would come in, fuck and then just leave, usually without a goodbye. By the end of that part of my life I was just hate-fucking and it was three or four of them, a redhead, a blonde and a brunette, I can’t really remember the fourth one too much, she might’ve been bald. They would always put on the music they wanted to hear. It was all stuff I either didn’t care for or straight up hated. With the blonde though, I could kind of stand it. Even if we had arguments about Beyonce or whatever other musician she liked. We don’t talk anymore.

The second year of college just kind of went by, nothing particularly interesting, that didn’t happen til the summer.

Meeting Mikayla fills me with regret. She was such a sweet woman. She lived a life balanced around work, school and biking. She loved old 80’s to 90’s alt rock, she dressed like a hipster, had these thick rimmed black glasses and beautiful big brown eyes underneath them. She was incredibly patient, supportive and from the get go I never deserved her. I also had no idea who Mikayla really was, she always seemed to have a lot going on in her head but I guess I didn’t know how to get her to open up, so we just had sex mostly, it was pretty much all we did. She was always distant unless we were fucking and if we weren’t I was always just on the brink of opening up, it was like there was something there but also nothing. But that was pretty much it, we wouldn’t really go out on dates but we’d just lay around my room fucking, cuddling and waiting.

The whole time I just wanted her to be someone else, someone who cared, someone who I could open up to. Some days that ache of missing certain people just screams and screeches inside my head, those days it gets so bad that it takes everything not to just end it all. I miss them and then I don’t. It’s not like I’m 18 and can sleep around anymore to deal with my problems, or maybe I can? I don’t know. Part of me really wants to and then a much larger part just wants to lie in bed until the screaming and aching stops. A lot of the time it does stop, but the last two weeks have been fucking hard.

It doesn’t feel like depression, actually never mind. It is depression, but it’s over something that I should just be over but I know I will never be over. I never even treated those two like they were worth a damn when I was with them. Why do I miss them so much now? I just want the screeching to stop.

I miss feeling numb. I miss being so utterly yoinked out that the world could be on fire and I just wouldn’t care. It was the only thing that got the screaming to stop. The only thing that got me feeling halfway sane. Off that edge between being depressed and ending it all.

I don’t want to die though. I just want things to get better. I just want to feel better. I’m tired of being hurt all the time. Am I just hardwired this way? To always feel and get hurt? To always be depressed and fucked up over someone who I could've been better with? It’s worthless to think about while I’m sitting in a gutter of my own emotional filth. I wish the rain would come already so I can flow down to the ground and drift off to where all the other dirt and muck goes. I can’t though, I’m just sitting in my underwear crying with a bottle of jack wrapped in my arms, wondering where things went wrong. But It all just blends together and sometimes it feels sort of good? Other days I just want to slit my wrists. Today I feel like there are bugs all over my skin and I just want to rip all of it off. I just want to feel pain, not this emotional internal bullshit, I mean real fucking pain. Like getting stabbed, choked, fucking just absolutely destroyed by somebody, like the first time I fought my brothers, or when Farth really wanted to beat me. I’m tired of being hurt the way I’ve been hurt. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I just know I fucking hate The Smiths.

I feel scars on my body where there aren’t any. They spell my name.

“Why are you like this Arthur?” I think she said that.

“Let go of me Arthur. You don’t need to hold on anymore. There’s more out there.” I know she said that. The one before the rest, (REDACTED) . I lost her and I lost everyone else like her in my life. She’s gone now. The news today said they found her in a ditch a few miles outside of Milwaukee. Last I heard she was in fucking Roanoke. What the fuck is she doing in Milwaukee? It’s cold and flat and filled with creepers. What was she doing in Milwaukee??!! She hates the cold, she hated the midwest, she absolutely fucking hated it. So why was she there?

Who fucking knows. But it’s bullshit. and on occasion, a whore. But who doesn’t cheat on their long distance boyfriend who's living in an abusive household? I didn’t know about all that then, but when you hurt her as much as I did secrets become unbound. I haven’t heard her sweet voice since I was 15 years old and around then is when I got kicked out, too much fighting. Too raucous, too shameful, brought shame to a last name as solid as silver.

“Silver lines the streets and pockets of the rich and wealthy.” Dad wanted them all to think that, but really he was just as scared of them as they were of him. He always had the same look whenever he’d talk about the humans, but he isn’t human, he will never be human, always the monster hiding in the shadows. Those monsters. they all have the same egos as wild and dangerous as the shit they supposedly do behind closed doors. I wasn’t born a god like them, but I still saw them in their natural habitat. Cruel monsters are what they are and I lived it until I couldn’t take it anymore.

15 years old, sword in my right hand, shield in what was left of the other. Brothers lying all over the remainder of the living room, last thing I saw was this terrified look on my father’s handsome mug. I am giving you a choice, stay here til your 18, leave and never see us again. Or leave right now, and I promise we’ll never reach out to you. But the first time we see, not we, the next time I see you? You won’t even have a second to run.

I don’t know why I didn’t just run into traffic, or take that short sword and just stab myself with it. I don’t even know why Dad let me just leave. Ma didn’t though, she found me that very night. Her black red eyes would’ve been terrifying on any other night but right then it just felt like an escape.

I can’t remember why I’m like this. My mind is gone, my memory is gone. I am so fucking gone. I feel the memory assault me. My sister Elaine was the one to tell me what actually happened “It was a family issue, I remembered her from you talking about her when you first moved into this place so I thought you should at least know what actually happened. Please don’t push it, dad had nothing to do with it and you’ll just get yourself killed” I fell off the couch puking. I’m hacking up something I haven’t been able to in so long and I’m crying all the way. Why can’t Elaine just let me die? I let (REDACTED) die? I mean, we hadn’t talked in what? Fuck. It’s been like, five years? Maybe six? I had plenty of other heartbreaks and girlfriends, I’m sure I hadn’t crossed her mind in years. What should it matter? Well obviously it does, a fuckin ascended killed her. Someone that I’m probably related to, couldn’t be a brother, Elaine wouldn’t have told me and dad would definitely know about it. I have to make it better somehow. I have to make it better.

“What the fuck happened?” was the first thing I asked. Tears were in my eyes and Elaine just looked at me stuck. I couldn’t tell then whether it was because she didn’t know the answer or because she didn’t want me to know. We sat in silence for a few minutes. The numbness left me during it.

“Arthur, Art, I really can’t tell you this, you’re not even supposed to know.”

“So why are you telling me?” It actually hadn’t been silent, I was bawling for those few minutes.

“Because, you’re my brother and I care about you. Look…fuck, just, it happened last night. It was in a major city. Not anywhere near ho-” she stopped herself before she finished the sentence “Here I mean,” I gave her the angriest, cryingest look I could. “I’m not lying Arthur! I don’t want you going off and getting yourself killed. Just, keep doing therapy okay-” Something punchers me in the gut. “If you need someone else to talk to, don't hesitate to call. Mom’s worried about you so maybe give her a call too okay? Here’s some cash cause I know you’re not gonna be able to work. Fuckin take it or I’m kicking your ass.”

Elaine left after she said that. I couldn’t get a read on what was going on behind those pale green eyes of hers, and I was just confused. I spent the rest of that night crying. That was a few weeks ago. So I’ve just been sitting here, crying and remembering worse days and hoping for better ones. But I know (REDACTED) will never get to have better ones ever again.

I’m on a smelly couch and haven’t showered in two weeks (I also haven’t really been sober ). The house is clean except for where I’ve been, which has been the couch and my bed. I stare at my phone’s black screen and wonder if it’s appropriate to call Katherine and talk about my dead ex. I run to the sink as I puke up a bottle of jack. I conclude over the steel that it’s very inappropriate to call my ex. The bile tastes disgusting in the back of my throat. My teeth feel terrible and I have a hankering for water. I down a bottle of water as I make my way to the bathroom, I realize the terrible mistake I made by not rinsing my mouth first before drinking. I ignore the thought because I’m alone and allowed to be gross, I’m in mourning anyways.