Prologue

I knew being with him was going to kill me, I would still die a thousand deaths.

30th December 2016

Twisted metal was cold, burning in my side. Crimson moulded with my lips, as is rolled down my face. 

Alec? Where was the boy like the metal in my side, the boy who had been driving this god damn machine.

A groan escaped my lips, echoing in hazed world around me. I adjusted my vision, to the flashing lights that could be heard in the distance. I realised everything was wrong. I took several breaths, before I could see. I was covered in excessive amounts of papers, all of which had scribbled and swirled words from Alec.

Endless scrawls lay on the pages, Sometimes I love you, other times I want to throw you to the wolves. - Ten pages later and what felt like several painful stabs in the chest - I had almost forgotten about the metal in my side.

Then I felt everything all at once. 

Under the street lamp, lay lifeless on the concrete path. I saw him. Alec. Several men were huddled around him, but he lay on his front, eyes open, staring at the muddy bank, where I was. Perhaps he was looking for me, searching for my eyes. I’M HERE I wanted to cry, but then again, perhaps he was looking at his new car, that was now worth nothing, or maybe he was looking for the end of the world.

Men poked him like a dead raccoon on the side of the road, but blood covered his face, and his arms, and every part of visible skin. Was my sweet boy, who now bathed in blood, breathing?

“Indie?” a voice asked me, but lost in Alec I couldn’t find my way out. I dug and dig, but I heard sharp words and voices screaming, and sirens, things that I couldn’t comprehend.

 “I’m Jack. I’m a paramedic, I’m going to have to ask you to take my hand so we can get you looked after, sweetheart.” he rambled, his voice a high pitched whistle, but slow at the same time.

“Alec.” I uttered breathless, the ache in my chest, worse than my battle wounds. “He’s okay, but we need to focus on you.” he told me. 

Okay. 

Now I know I am not a doctor, but the poor boy, who had a porcelain face, which had now cracked was not ‘okay’. It would take months for his creator to make it right, to mould, to fix him. Every mark, every crevasse was scarred in my memory, and now what would I see? Would he be so broken that I wouldn’t recognise him, or worse?

I moved though, somehow. The metal rod was in my side, and I clung onto it for dear life, “Try not to touch it.” he spoke, but the more I touched it, the more it hurt. The more it hurt the more distracted I got. The more distracted I got the less pain I felt for Alec.

I leant on the stranger, as he helped lug me up the hill. The men still poked Alec, but now they grabbed him like a rag doll, pulling him onto the stretcher. 

“I’m going with him, please, get me the letters from the car.” I spoke, turning abruptly in his direction, “No, come with me.” he caught me, but I shrugged him off, pulling the steel from my side, throwing it to the ground with an almighty crush, it hadn’t embedded it’s self too far. Just enough for me to bleed through my shirt, but Alec’s shirt was soaked with red, but I could have sworn he left the apartment in white. 

I looked for his eyes, his pools. Clocking them, I went to him. Reaching his hand that fell off the side of the bed, they had wrapped him in blankets, but he looked at me like I was stranger, like we hadn’t an hour before been so passionate, so in love. 

Now he looked at me, as I had looked at Jack. 

“Hey. You can’t come in here.” I was stopped, and unwilling Alec’s hand tugged from mine, but the little grip he had, gave me hope that he was still in there, somewhere. 

He slipped from my hand like the last grains of sand in a hourglass.

“I’m his…” I stopped, as we had left the small two bed apartment of his in flood of tears, half drunk, half broken, and completely, helplessly in love with one and other. “Friend.” I finished, salty tear harassed my cheeks, and I wipe them away. He never did like it when I cried for him, but for months, that’s all I had done, and for somehow reason that made my blood boil, that’s all I knew how to do. 

I enclosed his ventriloquist hand with my own puppet one, bringing it to my lips, I couldn’t make him perform like he did me. Touching his icy skin, tracing my thumb around and around like it would enchant him, hypnotise him into waking up. It didn’t work. 

The drive wasn’t long enough. I wanted time with him before he was cut open, prodded and poked. Again. They rushed him out of the ambulance, I tried - I really did try - to keep up with them, but I got to the doors, and the blood was now covering half of my body, I had to watch them take him, as he took the other half of me with him. 

Moments later a nurse had taken me to a cubicle and was telling me to take of my shirt, and lie back. It won’t hurt too much. Was what she told me. 

Within thirty minutes, she had spoken more than I had spoken to any other person in my entire life. She had a pretty smile, hazel eyes, and curls of hair that just didn’t stop, to anybody she would have been pretty, and to me she would have been too, if she hadn’t have looked like her. My best friend. The Indian princess.

“Do you want me to get you anything, a drink?” she suggested, and I shook my head. “You can tell me where my… friend is?” I retorted, hating the taste of that word, but she coughed and crimson rose upon her cheeks.

“I’m sorry, I talk too much don’t I?” she laughed, that cinnamon laugh, that could warm up an orphanage on a cold winter night. “Don’t worry, could you find him for me please?” I asked, she took note of the desperate tone in my voice, and gulped nodding.

I lay back, controlling my breathing, trying to forget, but dying to remember. The shirt that had been lifted up above my chest, had a smell. Alec. He had bought me that shirt in the summer. It was now December.

 

Time had fallen through my hands far to quickly. It was only a year and four months ago we had met, but maybe that was what killed us. Maybe we loved to hard, and fell to quickly. This was not a scraped knee that could be bandaged up, this was a knife in our side that we ourselves had twisted. 

This was not just a bump on the head, which could be fixed with a few ice cubes on our lump. This was like being smacked sideways be a tornado, and spun and spun until all your bones were broken, and you just couldn’t bare to stand. 

This was a love so intense that everything was dangerous. It was a natural disaster, but it was more beautiful.

Somehow, his large frame would often let fabric dangle from him, he often held a boyish innocence, but there was another side to him, that he’d show to world, and sometimes me. He’d pout when told no, throw himself around my body, craving to be held whenever I left. He even hated the dark, yet somehow, some days that is exactly what he was.

That shirt was just a piece of our mangled past now, just a memory.

I wondered if that was all Alec would be now a mangled memory, just tethered together by strands of our past. What if because we had made so many fatal flaws, I wouldn’t be able to remember anything, his voice, his touch, even his eyes would be forgotten. 

That pretty nurse came back. 

“Your boyfriend is in surgery.” she told me, and I gulped, snapped “Friend.” then looked down with tears forming in my eyes, he was half way over the floor of the hospital, his blood on someone else skin that wasn’t mine, which I must admit was a refreshing change. Maybe they were the puppeteers and they would fix him, like I never could. 

“I need to check your wound. Would you mind?” she asked, her smile so sickly beautiful that I could feel my wound healing, “No, please, do what you need to.” 

I was numb to it then, the ache was there, but the loss of blood made it easy to sleep, it made me lighter. The nurse, who told me her name several times, was called Martha. Martha’s hands were like that of an angel, I was stitched up and had a delicate, swollen line from under my right breast, straight down to my hip.

But, her voice got deafening after a while, she left though. Giving me morphine to numb the pain. Letting me lie there with silence, of cubical 4a. I sighed, and rolled over onto my none-cut side. 

Don’t tell me you love me, cause I told you I just won’t say it back. 

The pages of the letter lay on my side table, scrawled in black ink on yellow pages. So many time’s I tried to say it, so many times he told me he thought he did, was he lying? 

I might not be able to ask him that now.

Martha stuck her head back around the curtain, “You’re more than welcome to stay here, besides, we want to keep you over night, and make sure that you will be okay.” that sticky smile covered me, so I was staying the night. 

I was staying the night with nothing but the knowing. The knowing that Alec was lay half open. The knowing that I wouldn’t see his hazelnut eyes, if he didn’t pull through. Would he even want to live with himself after everything he has done? Could I live with myself after what I had done? Just to get back at him.

I decided if he could, I would. If he couldn’t I wouldn’t.

“Would you like a drink or anything?” the girl asked again, and I shook my head, “I’d just like to be alone.” she nodded, but I grabbed her arm, with one final thought.

“Could I have a notepad?” I asked her, and she cocked her head, “Why?” she pondered, “Well, I want to write, writing calms me.” I lied, she grinned and nodded, skipping away.

I wanted to write, that part was true, but I wanted to write about him. I wanted to write about us. I wanted to write our story, the good and the bad, the heart ache, and the wonderful.

I needed to understand, how we got here. I needed some kind of timeline of events that could pinpoint our downfall, that made absolutely no sense, and had no consistency and with Alec in surgery and me here until morning, now seemed like the best time to understand where we went wrong.

This was the best time find out what killed us.

Alec couldn’t catch my tears. So I will stain the pages of this paper.

Reviews

[junXion]

Hey Georgia welcome to writerscafe! Great story, gotta read more now! What's on my mind though (get it? Georgia on my mind, sorry) is the face that you must have a great pair of eyes because this lettertype is really small. Still gonna read more, but maybe you could enlarge your text a bit? Sincerely yours, Jules.

[GeorgiaR]

Thank you very much! I'll make the next one larger :) Please do tell me more of what you think as we progress! :D - Georgia x