There are some suicidal themes near the end of this chapter. Consider this your trigger warning. Though, if you've made it this far into the book, I'm sure you'll be okay.
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Life had a funny way of fucking with my head. I had been on a turnstile of emotions and feelings for months on end. Had there been an end to it all of it? When would I be freed from the nightmarish reality I had created? Kylie, Maggie, and every girl in between - coke, marijuana, and even meth - were they an answer, were they my truths? Or had I been just trying to escape my own pain and force it onto others?
Cassidy sat up, putting on her plaid button-up shirt back on. "That was fun. Nothing like I had expected, but fun."
"If you say so." I brushed my hair back, lighting a cigarette. "You were boring. You lied there like a damn zombie. In what reality is that fun, again?"
Cassidy clearly hadn't liked what she had heard come from my lips. Who would have? I would have expected any girl to get hurt over what I had metaphorically punched her in the face with. Why had I so ruthlessly spoken to the girl who had just given me her body? It had been like a parent screaming at a child for being hungry. Unnecessary and cruel. I, however, had done this on purpose. My immaturity had thought it would have been best for the both of us.
I hadn't needed another girl to get close to me. It was for her own best interest. There was nothing more to it, she had been the good girl. It had been foolish of her to mix herself up with me, one of the most deplorable beings a person could meet. Why me? Why had these normal girls been around me? Why had they insisted on pushing themselves on me? Why had it been so hard for them to leave me alone? I had only ever wanted to be alone.
I just wanted to fucking rot away. Alone and separated
"Sorry. I guess I should have left things as they were." Cassidy got up, offering a hand to me. "But I needed to do that, I couldn't have lived my life always wondering what could or should have been between us. Even if you had girlfriend, it was something I needed to know for myself."
Shocked by the offered hand, I shook my head - nearly laughing. "All of you self-serving fucks need to go jump off of a bridge."
"How is letting you fuck me being self-serving?" Cassidy's eyes slightly sharpened.
"Letting. You were the one who wanted it." I hissed. "Don't think you're that special."
"I can't believe I actually thought that this whole bad boy thing you had going on was a facade." Cassidy nearly bit through her lip. "You're actually a waste of space and oxygen. You find faults in everyone else so you can hide yours away from others. You make it clear that you can't stand other people, but what you really can't stand is yourself, Cyrus. You really are the worst."
"You're repeating shit that I've heard a thousand times over." I pushed myself off of the ground, and took a long stride towards Cassidy. "If I'm the worst, then what does that make everyone else? What does that make you, the person who just got fucked for no good reason? What does that make your mom, a teacher that tries way too hard for what she is paid? You, yourself, are an answer to your own worthlessness - as am I."
Cassidy stormed out of the classroom just as the bell rang for what appeared to be second period. I stood in the dark, empty classroom with a burning cigarette in my mouth. Shirtless and alone, my tattoos had been exposed to the ghosts that loved to follow me, to torture me every waking moment of my life. Why had these demons latched onto me? Had I been nothing more than a useless vessel of misery and contempt?
"Fuck!" I had kicked the desk in front of me, having finally somewhat lost my composure.
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Entering the cafeteria moments after having experienced that adventure in the classroom, I was met with what had appeared to be a fight between two guys. The older, aggressive male threw errant, wild fists at his fellow student - completely missing his mark. What had transpired next had been a mix of my awful luck that day and bad timing. The younger freshman moved backwards, and just as I had began to move out of the way, he tripped over my foot. As he fell, the older guy had thrown a punch. Not only had he entirely missed the freshman, but he had punched me directly in the eye.
The force of the punch and the freshman falling on me had forced me backwards, causing a fall to my back. Within a few short moments, I had sat myself back up and began to crack my neck. If I hadn't been pissed before, then I had been then. Royally pissed. I had been the bull to a red rag. I had stood up, brushing the dirt off of my hands and jeans in one fell swoop - then my eyes made contact with my target. Only him.
Seeing red, I had taken excessively large strides forward toward him. Moments before reaching him, my fist had pulled itself back, like a pitcher to a batter. There was a deadly silence in my head as I had released my fist, sending it forward like a torpedo to an enemy submarine. As contact was made, it had felt like the earth shattered before my fist, sending a violent wave of inertia through the young man's face.
Enough to send him to his back, I had taken the opening and pounced on top of him. Momentarily, my demons had come back to life - I saw red, I smelt blood, and had felt the need to kill. Elbow after elbow, and fist after fist had met his face, propelling blood like a gunshot to the head. My violent motions had kept coming with no end in sight, with no finish line.
As though the torrent of pain would never end for the young man, I had been pulled off and tugged away - struggling all the while in my rage.
"Cyrus!" a yell got through. "Calm the fuck down."
"What the hell were you thinking?" I faintly heard another female say
_
Detached, I sat, covered in the blood of another man. My fists, blood stained and bruised, had throbbed with some of the worst pain I had felt in a long time. My elbows, much like my fists, had been cut open and stained with the dark blood of another man. I had been soaked in it all - everything had been stained by his blood - my clothes and myself. Why had I done all of that? Was there ever a good enough reason for that?
"Was it self-defense?" the dean asked me. "Everyone is saying he hit you in the eye first, while engaged in a fight with someone else. Is this true?
"Probably." I responded, staring at my blood-coated arm. "Can I go yet?"
I had been so calm, like I had lost any will to maneuver my way out of anything. I had no fire, as though my will had been permanently extinguished, done for the final time. My head had become an ocean of thoughts, the feelings I had so deeply shoved down began to arise. I had left - so far gone that I hadn't heard anything anyone had said to me. I had been alone in myself, left to dwell in the darkness.
I was the worst. I was everything that everyone despised, yet I hid it to fit in - to be something that I hadn't. I had worn the mask that I had so purely despised, and all for what? I had nothing real, I no longer had nothing of value in my life. I truly had been worthless, to Kylie, to Maggie, and to myself. I had deserved to suffocate on the air that I had breathed and wasted my entire life. I deserved to rot away, alone and in a hole made just for me.
"He's missing nine teeth, you've broken his nose, and fractured his jaw." the dean continued. "Yet, everyone here is saying it's not your fault. I can only go by your words here; what exactly happened?"
"Do you expect me to tell you the truth, or do you hope that I do?" I smiled, near mockingly. "My word is like a moth to a flame, useless in the grand scheme of things. It's pointless if I say anything or not."
"...You need help." she murmured under her breath. "I'll be recommending that you be taken to a psychiatric facility, along with being punished for the damage caused."
"Ciao." I stood up as my hair curtained my eyes. "I'm going home, probably gonna take a shower or something. I dunno, maybe some people are hoping I blow my brains all over a wall."
_
Alone, and clean, I stood in the apartment that Maggie and I had shared, though it had technically been under her name. With my hair soaked and the curtains completely blackening the windows, the apartment had been void of any light from the outside world. What had I been doing with myself Why had I been doing all of this to myself? Why had I been going through this torture? What was the point of all this?
If I had been destined to be alone, then why had I been given people to love to begin with? I had everything I love taken away, thrown to a bottomless ocean. As though it were bait - tempting me to swim deeper and deeper - drowning in the process of rescuing the things that I loved. Maybe it would have been better that way, to leave this world alone. Without attachments, without connections, without love.
If I left this world alone, I could rot. I could rot away peacefully without thought or worry. Forever alone.
Had I been ready to let go of myself, this world? Had I been through enough, felt enough to say that I hadn't felt the need to be alive? Where had my worth stood? What did I have left, where could have I said that I had mattered to something or someone? I had only one place where I belonged, and even then, it had been a question. Had I truly belonged, or had it been a farce - a telling of a love made up between desperation and guilt?
Opening the closet door, I reached up onto the top shelf and had found what I had been looking for - the gun I had put there for protection. Fully loaded, I carried it into our room and sat down at the foot of the bed. A short moment passed as I raised my arm, cocked the gun, and then pressed the barrel of the gun to my head, ever so slightly pressuring the trigger.
With my hair curtaining my eyes once again, I hissed my words. "Do it, pussy. Do something good for the world, and rid yourself of it. You're beyond help, beyond love. You're just a shell of what was already a putrid person. Nobody is going to miss you, Cyrus."
"Yeah." I spoke to myself. "I'm done with all of this. I'm done with myself."
My head began to replay memories of Kylie, the simple moments of just walking around, the moments of her smiling so brightly that outer space could see it, the moments of normalcy - the memories of normalcy. So real, so fulfilling, as though Kylie had been asking me to follow her into death, to rejoin her in another world. Had I been ready to go, ready to move on from everything human? Had I been able to say that this life had been worth living, then and now? I couldn't.
I had grown up with nothing, and I had nothing. My life had been built upon empty lies and promises, loss and more loss, hope met with failure. I had now been all of those things. Cassidy had been correct, I was worthless. I had been hopeless, empty to the core that was my shallow existence.
Gone. Hopelessness. Faithlessness. I had been born only to be destined for dirt - living day to day fighting the same war - hoping and hoping only to have it blow right back up in my face. I had been done, fully ready to pull the trigger of the gun in my hand. Seconds away from meeting death and reuniting with Kylie, I had inched the trigger further and further inward, ready to blow.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
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