"What about you?" she whispered.
"If you're okay with me."
Why had I kept putting myself into these positions, putting myself in a place where I could get hurt time and time again? What reason had there been to keep sticking my neck out, in hopes that everything would get better for me? That a fucking rainbow would show up at the end of my path, and I would live happily ever after with someone? Why did I never give up, even when I continually got hurt - even when I continuously got shit on by this obnoxiously cruel planet?
I would only end up letting her down, just like I had done to every other woman I had supposedly loved. I would end up hurting her, just like everyone I had ever known. I would end up breaking her, just like everything else I ever touched. I was toxic, yet these people continued to close in on me. Why? Why had they wanted cancer that existed in the shape of another human?
Could the human form and mind have, in and of itself, been cancer? Struggle and struggle, fake a smile and take it up the ass, then go home and do it all over again. Society blends in with itself, and blending in creates complacency, that complacency is confused with normalcy. What if that complacency is fault from its very foundation? If a castle is to be built on clay, it will one day crumble down the weak foundation is was created with.
How had life, people, or even love been any different? A humans life is a short one, led around on a leash by the elites of the world. People are fake. They fake their smiles and their happiness while choosing to rot away at a nine-to-five as they some other stranger that much richer. Love is flimsy, much like any easily altered chemical. If something as small as saying the wrong thing can "break" love, then how real is it?
Humanity itself is flimsly, as fake as the fairy tales read to children. A lack of strength and awareness to reality lead to sickness, that sickness invades and spreads. Human life is cancer, and it only spreads further with every lie spewed out of ones mouth. I am no different. I spew the lies and further the spreading of the cancer that is society.
If humanity is truly a cancer, then can it be stopped? Not really. It'll spread and spread, plague and plague until it has brought society is brought to it's knees. Only when people realize that they, themselves, are the problem will the world get back on its feet. Selfishness and hate, segregation and discrimination, those principles will not suddenly cease to exist because they are created by people. Society needs to change for the cancer to meet respite, but that isn't possible - for one reason, and one reason only.
People do not change.
"Stop questioning every decision you make." she spoke softly into my ear with her arms still around my neck. "Everything will be easier."
"You act like it's easy to change something you've done for your whole life." Ashlynn pulled back as I more so thought aloud than spoke to her. "It's not."
"I don't want to change you, and that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you should take your own advice - fuck anything that gets in your way. Ava, your thoughts, anything." she had thrown my own words back at me, and honestly, I hadn't had a word for that in return. She had been right.
"Maybe I will." I took one of her hands. "I'll try, at least."
**
I had been told that I had broken two ribs, both of which would have healed naturally on their own - provided I hadn't injured them again. The doctor had given me some bullshit tips on breathing and some pain pills to take when I had needed them. Just like that, I had been given the ejection protocol of being pushed out in a wheelchair - much to her amusement.
Three weeks and a few days had passed since then. We had continued staying at the hotel, yet I had been spending more time her room than I had in mine. We hadn't done anything more than that kiss at the hospital, and the contact had even been minimal. Had there been movement? Sure. A lot? Not really. It had been easy to guess why from her side, I suppose. Yet, why hadn't I done anything?
There had always been an unspoken rule in this shithole. You smile and tell them that you are fantastic, nobody had wanted to hear your side or your problems. None of them cared about your problems or who you were. They had only cared about themselves, and that had been it. Nothing and no one else.
From there, it had always been two types of people: the failures and the plastics. Mack and I had been the former, obviously. Lets just say we had been pretty well known in the area, for lack of a more concise word. The plastics, as most could guess, were of the same type as a Barbie doll. Fake and shiny with a metric shit-ton of makeup on. Both literally and metaphorically.
That unspoken rule had been something I lived by and with. It had always stood true, except with my fellow failures. Nobody had ever given two shits about me until Kylie had come around, and then Kylie had vanished. Maggie? The same. Ava? The same. What would have happened with Ashlynn? More of the same? Probably.
"Hey." she walked out of the bathroom with wet hair. "How long were you waiting?"
"I wasn't waiting." I approached her, my hands catching the curves of her stomach. "Have fun in the shower?"
"I'm not answering that, and you know why." she laughed as she pulled my cigarettes out from my pocket.
Reaching into my pocket, I grabbed my lighter and put the flame in front of the cigarette for her. As she lit the cigarette, my free hand had decided to take a detour past her waist and into the back pocket of her jeans. Ever so slightly, I squeezed and was given the pleasure of seeing her eyes widen. Pulling the cigarette from her mouth, she smiled and softly pulled my hand away.
"Not yet." she squeezed the very same hand she had pulled away. "I just want it to feel right, you know? I'm really sorry."
"I get it, I get it. You girls are emotional creatures." I muttered sarcastically, before suddenly wanting to ask an odd question - a question Ava had asked me. "Speaking of which, do you have something you want to do?"
"What do you mean? Like a career?" she fell back onto the bed.
"Pretty much."
"I like to film things." Ashlynn answered, her honesty was given away by the passion that lightened her eyes. "I want to film things, everything. Documentaries, music videos, movies. All of it."
Smiling as she spoke, I picked up her wallet and sifted through it until I had found her California ID. Finding myself holding back some laughter as I looked at the picture, I had found her birth date - which had passed by a little over a month prior. Tapping her ID on the dresser, I had thought of something simple that could have pleased her some. Rather, I had come up with something that could have killed two birds with one stone.
"Is there anything you want right now?" I asked. "Anything at all?"
"Anything?" she sat up.
"Anything."
As Ashlynn had seemed to think deeply, the shoulder of the shirt she had been wearing fell down just slightly, exposing what had looked like a pretty deep scar. How far had it gone down? Why had it been there, and why hadn't I seen it before when she had practically stripped in front of me? Had she covered it up?
"You mentioned filming, and I haven't seen a camera around you at all. So why not that? The price doesn't matter." I set her ID down and walked towards her.
Reaching her, I had lifted the shoulder of her shirt. It hadn't been something I wanted to actively look at. Granted, maybe I had just jumped conclusion and it had been from an innocent accident. Yet, something had told me that it wasn't. I had a gut feeling that it had been a reason why she had left her home in the first place - not the scar, but the meaning and cause behind it.
"Are you serious?" she looked bewildered. "Why would you do that for me? We've only been together for three weeks."
"Hasn't it been a bit longer than that? I mean, I think you're probably the only reason I didn't end up choking on my own puke." my fingers stroked her drying hair. "I was on a complete suicide mission there for a while, and did some pretty dangerous shit."
"I mostly just watched you, to be honest." she nearly mumbled. "Though, you kept saying someones name. I think it was Kylie?"
While Ashlynn had clearly been curious, she had never pushed the subject. Even at that moment, she hadn't seemed to want to pressure me into saying anything. Whether that had been because of her own secrets being untold, or she had truly not cared was something I couldn't have known without her telling me. What I had known was that I had been something of a loud mouth during my meltdown.
"You don't have to tell me anything, you know that." she removed my hand from her hair and took it into her own. "...But I'll be here when you want to."
I sat down next to her, brushing my hair out of the way. Ashlynn had clearly known that Kylie was someone special to me, and that special had been of the pretty obvious variety. So, what had she wanted to know? Did she want material for a movie or something? I looked at her, sighing, unsure of what to say. She said that I hadn't had to do anything, but that hadn't been the type of person I was.
Still. It bugged me.
"Why do you want to know about her when it's only going to hurt you?" I asked.
"Because it'll make up for the time I didn't have someone like you in my life." she answered, seeming to speak as the words popped into her head. "Maybe I can sit in her shoes for a little bit, and feel what it was like with you then. I want to know what both of us fell for in you."
Brushing my hair back, I cracked my neck, breaking off the morning rust that I always seem to have more of than anyone else. Through all of that, Ashlynn had looked at me with the same expression. I guess I hadn't noticed it until that moment, but had her features softened? She hadn't looked as unapproachable as she had when I first met her.
While she hadn't exactly been the "hard" type to begin with, she had this aura about her that made her hard to start a conversation with. She had acted like the bassist of a punk band, alone and with a bad attitude - sarcastic and snide. While that had been the opposite of her actual personality, she had used it as protection mechanism, and had become part of her somewhere along the way.
I had been the same way. Using a shield that would eventually be ingrained inside of me. A shield that would become impossible to break without breaking you down first. It was easier to attempt to find a person who could look past it, see past it and find the better parts of that person. Destroying hadn't been wrong, but it was more work than it was worth. If creation can only be accomplished by way of destruction, then aren't the two fated for each other?
Doesn't a creation need to be destroyed to create once more, to create something better than before?
I sighed, "I guess I'll tell you, then."
"Just don't go running off after I'm done."
ns 15.158.61.48da2
