BitterSweet

This is a story told in a letter. I don't want to give away much before it doesn't make much sense out of context, however, it's short and fun to read.

Hello! 

It’s been a while.  I wish I could tell you that this works out well for you, but we both know how this has to end.  It never really was a choice was it?  We both knew our fate, it was part of the agreement so why did I feel it necessary to tease myself by thinking this could work.

I regret letting them play us like they do.  Taking two things with wonderful possibilities and morphing us into a caricature of fate.  We never had endless possibilities, we always had an end, a limit, and expiration.  We couldn’t do anything we wanted, we were restricted, in chains since we were born.  Maybe the possibilities we had were the reason we wanted this assignment for bloodlust, a command for desire, for death.  I don’t regret it enough for empathy to win.  Empathy is simply an excuse to be a coward, that’s what they taught us right?

So I left this letter to prevent my empathy from acting up again, looking into your swampy glistening eyes would trigger everything.  All the emotions we worked so hard to conceal would just come pouring out of me like the tears you persuade me with.  You know that you expose my empathic side, as much as I’d love to deny it.  As much as I’d love to have one more stroll with you, peace had no place in our agreement.

I remember when I first met you, supposedly as an enemy.  You had your selection of possibilities, and you chose this.  We met at a coffee house and you ordered a hot chocolate with whipped cream while I had an iced coffee.  You taunted me about it, in your opinion when it’s below freezing, it’s too cold for an iced coffee.  It only made sense to mock you back, “I can’t even think of eating or drinking anything bitter,” you told me, like a sweets-addicted six-year-old.  You had this innocent look to you, that’s what I found the most intimidating.  You could have been seven, twelve or thirty and I wouldn’t know which.

We talked casually, ignoring the obvious topics, mainly family.  It was light, you slurped from the edge of your mug, making a gurgling sound I cringed at.  The lack of depth was alluring though.  When I was inducted, I expected the shallow conversation to put me at ease, but it was just uncomfortable.  We were holding back, we were holding everything back which I just wanted to hear more about you.  You looked interesting, you didn’t like anything bitter, so I apologize to you that you put yourself into this situation.  Bitter.  That’s the only word appropriate to describe what we’re in right now.

No.

It’s a mix of us.  It’s bittersweet.  It’s my unsweetened iced coffee and your sweet hot chocolate.  It was also a gamble, you either get the bitter or the sweet.  You were a scavenger, sweet was your native language and you put everything out there to get it.  I don’t think you will though.  I think this is where we’re supposed to switch.

Afterward you shook my hand, your gangly fingers dangling over mine lazily.  You could have been agreeing to anything and you agreed to be mine.  Not in a romantic sense, just in a contractual way.  We were each other's to do whatever we must.  I guess it is that simple with all the blood and lust taken out of context, but that is the simplicity of it that made it that much more complicated?

We exchanged numbers.  You texted me random things.  “The sky is blue tonight,” you said, “I’ve always thought the sky was black when it was at night,” you said, “The sky is a canvas and the stars are speckled.  Shooting stars and tracks of paint.  The rain is when the paint drips.”  The paint was surely too dry by then, but I didn’t contradict it.  Your words painted a picture more valuable than the sky you painted to make sense in your mind.  Some things were programmed to make sense and then there were the things that made sense to you.

The night sky was never particularly a thing that made me in awe (much the opposite to you).  It was above my head, it was a canopy to my existence.  Rain dripped on my head.  It was water.  It wasn’t the glaring yellow or menacing red.  It was just water.  Water was too thin to make sense to you.  You saw everything as something more, that was your weakness.  It’s not paint and the sky is not a canvas.  It exists the same we do, it exists to one day not exist.

Unfortunately, we existed then.  I continued to read your texts, focusing more on them than my textbooks.  That isn’t a good comparison is it?  I told you not too long ago I abandoned my education once I realized death was inevitable and I was trying to break a caffeine addiction.  

Seeing you became part of my schedule.  You’d pick me up from my university in your car that smells like moldy french fries.  The back of your car had cardboard boxes teeming with random things, toy trains, old hats, books with peeling covers, and browning pages.  Everything that contained a story was thrown in there.  Most of the time you covered it with a dusty baby blue sheet.  Sometimes it would pull back I would ingest the contents that spilled out.  My opinion?  You like to hide all the bitter memories.  In some alternate timeline, the stained coffee mug I gave to you with my name written in swoopy cursive letters on the handle could be in there.  Instead of picking me up to hang out in your apartment, you’d be driving past a dead silent cemetery so you can throw my mug in a fire.

As you know, the fire is a big part of life here.  Every year when we gather around the fire to burn everything we don’t want to keep.  Burning through means burning its memory.  In this alternate timeline I put us metaphorically in, I just hope that you will not burn my memory.  I wouldn’t burn yours, you taught me too much.  You painted a whole universe for me to explore and if I forgot it then I would have nothing else to look forward to except the day someone would burn my memory.  I’d be another wandering soul without limitation, without connection therefore without a reason to fear.  People have always been my weakness, so I would flourish.  I guess this changed with you.  I saw myself not wanting to be without companionship.  You were too persistent.

I told you once to run away.  We were in the car, you brought me an iced coffee and I was slurping down.  I hadn’t drank caffeine for four months until you gifted me with that coffee.  It was warm from where your glove was clutching it.  You even held it while you were driving for fear that the cup holders will drink my coffee for me.  You were as animated as ever.  I broke my addiction for you, if someone happened to be watching this they'd almost say it’s ironic.  “You don’t have to be here,” I said, “You don’t have to masquerade this whole act.”

You asked for clarification.  “You are enchanting.  You have a daunting glow while I’m just-”

“You’re iced coffee.  You’re cold and bitter,” you told me.  Then you said you were something sweeter, something more people can agree on.  I thanked you, my voice dripped with sarcasm.  “You’re only looking surface deep,” you informed me.

“It’s always surface deep.  Iced coffee two inches down is the same as the iced coffee on the top.  It’s all iced coffee in the cup.  Nothing changes.”  I have a profound affection for your metaphors and rambles of everything you can make philosophical.  This one, however, was not coherent.  Iced coffee is iced coffee.  It doesn’t sink and turn into coconut milk.

But then you opened your mouth.  I’ll never forget what you said.  “People think of things differently.  I don’t like iced coffee, it’s disgusting, seriously.  I like you though.  You don’t like sweets as I do, but you like me.  Everyone looks at things differently through different sets of eyes.”  That made sense to me.  It made sense, and the only thing that made me realize it was you and iced coffee.  The fuels to my addictions.  

I never sought the truth, I always just sought a way to escape.  You had answers, but not the ones I needed.  You just had answers to the most random questions I couldn’t even fathom.  I wanted to burrow in your mind and just saturate myself in it.  You somehow made it work.

The next thing I said to you was that you should run.

You of course denied it.  We weren’t saturating in each other's mind, you didn’t know what I was thinking.  You never listened to anyone but yourself.  I don’t blame you for that.  This is proof as any, you can’t trust anyone who you don’t know their thoughts.

We signed up not to trust each other, we signed up to have paranoia.  Were you distracting me with trips to your apartment to distract me from that, distract yourself?  Was I the distraction?  Your goal, which I am unaware of, was fulfilled.  You asked me to move in.  

Two weeks later my apartment was dumped into yours.  There we were, lounging in his room like nothing was happening.  We did everything as a pair, inseparably inevitable.  I should’ve known I was getting too close to you.  I should’ve known I was too close to the person I was appointed.

So this is why I’m recapping everything from my point of view.  I don;t have remorse, if I have remorse then all the sweetness you injected into my life.  You get to read opinions you won’t listen to, and by the time you finish this...well I don’t want to dwell on it too much.  So now you have read this and it must be pretty clear what’s happening.  If I said I didn’t love you, it would be a lie.  I owe you honesty at the least.  You must understand from reading this that these are all the reasons I must kill you.

Sincerely,

Well since you’re reading this, you already know

Author's Note

I don't really like my title, so if there are any alternate title ideas I'd love that, I'm also trying to improve the vocabulary used since it seems very repetitive