Red: Rinse, Repeat

The monsters you find in people can often become monsters of your own mind.

I’ll come home, but I can’t say exactly where I’ve been. My mom’s there, eager to tell me I’ve got a visitor in my room. Somehow, I know. The same way I know that even though I don’t want to see you, I’ll scan heads in a crowd for blood-red hair. The same way I know you’d be smiling even if I saw you, and it wouldn’t have anything to do with me. One step. Then another. Another. Another. Another. Slowly making the journey up to my room, where my visitor waits. 

The sound of my foot against the ground and the beat of my heart in my throat synchronize and it’s almost too easy to know what’s waiting. And it’s you. I’m shocked. Surprised. I play the part of the discarded toy: unused, outdated and long-since out of batteries. You turn in my computer chair, sunken into the brown leather like you’ve been waiting for months. Months. Months without you are gone in the first seconds I see you, because it seems like you’re smiling at me; like you’re smiling because of me. At this moment, I wouldn’t even mind if it wasn’t because of me. Just having you here right now makes this place feels like home again. You come up to hug me, but I don’t feel anything. Yet, I don’t care, because you’re smiling. 

We talk. Talk for minutes, though they seem to pass like hours. It’s all questions, because I can’t satisfy myself. As much as I want to just accept your existence, there’s a part of me that won’t shut up. That won’t accept you. That won’t go away, no matter how hard I try to shut it out. You say you want me back, and to no surprise I’m grinning like an idiot. Here, alone with you. Everything’s great. Not perfect, but great. I ignored everything else, everyone who said I shouldn’t ever consider taking her back after what she did, but honestly"who the f**k are you to know what I’ve been through? It’ll just be her and I.  Us. 

But something’s still not right. After I accept you, f**k everything, everyone else, there’s still something stopping us. But, now it’s you. Now it’s you who can’t stand to be next to me. You break from your embrace as if it was forced and it’s happening all over again before my eyes. Except this time, it’s worse; like being given your favorite candy, only to have it taken away and devoured in front of you. I try to reason with you, as if it’ll work now but it doesn’t. I eagerly/stupidly/instinctively spit out that I love you, I’ve always loved you and I never stopped loving you but all it does is push you farther away. You scream until your voice becomes a low roar, animal-like and ire, not in fear but in anger. 

Between each heart-wrenching sob you scream that I’m just another STUPID F**K, and now your eyes, like your hair, are blood red like his. The more I stare the harder it becomes to tell you apart and suddenly it becomes clear as you amalgamate. I can hardly tell whether you’re still crying or if you’ve started to laugh. I close my eyes, trying to halt tears, only to open them to a world far less eventful.

 

Author's Note

Ever had a recurring nightmare? Maybe not the exact same scene, but the same people or places? I've attempted to document one of these waking nightmares that are only worse when I am sleeping.