This is just the first part of something I’ve been working on. I’m not very sure if I’m a good writer, so I would appreciate some constructive criticism. YES, I REALIZE that there is NO sex in this part, but I assure you, if I get good comments on my writing, the next part will have plenty of sex. I just don’t want to spend the time writing something if no one’s going to read it … XD I have a strange style of writing, so don’t hate too much 🙂
LEVI
Night surrounded me and swirled around me and I suddenly wondered what it was. Was it a lack of light that created night, or was it more the absence of air that I felt overcoming me? Everything was spinning like a washing machine and the world was upside down like I had something to say but couldn’t form a sentence. The vague notion that I was stumbling across a gravely surface crossed my mind—but how could I know what was real and what was fake? Nothing I saw made sense. Swirling colors tye-dyed my field of vision. Honks flew like diamonds through the sky and lights smeared across the landscape of my mind as if nothing was wrong, as if today were only a stroll through the… city? Was I in the city?
The only thing that was true and burning in the front of my mind was desperation. Get home. Go home. He can’t hurt you if you’re home. But that didn’t seem right. A wisp of memory floated passed my eyes and caught my attention. I could have sworn… He was home. He was house and home and room and board. How do you escape from someone who…? My thoughts slipped away before I could think them.
Every second, my thoughts separated further and I couldn’t form any sentences in my brain, though I usually couldn’t anyway… Or I thought…
I didn’t remember what had happened that had made me so full of slowness and molasses and confusion. Concentrating as hard as I could, every other baffled sense faded further and flowed into my focus. Flashes of moving pictures like a slideshow played across my mind and seared into my skin. I could recognize main characters like actors in famous films, but I didn’t recognize me, or what looked like me, as if I were someone else.
Someone else was walking toward a door, trying it to see if it was locked like it always was when he was mad. It wasn’t. The person was me, I realized, dressed in my best tuxedo, bow tie undone slightly after the party’s wild dance floor and something else…
A feeling… shame? But shame about what? What had I done? I knew nothing.
Then a face—his face. So sweet and innocent and beautiful his face was, even scrunched in anger, even looking down at me on the floor with something like contempt. A foot replaced his head in the detached vision of my memory, ending the picture as abruptly as it had started. Loud sounds and tinkling glass shattered the ears of my dream and I pictured him shouting. It wasn’t my fault, it couldn’t be. If it was, then I had deserved it…
It was, wasn’t it? I made him that way. I did something, something wrong, unforgivable, inconsolable.
What have I done?
What if…
How…
My coherent train of thought was dwindling further into delirium… What is wrong with me? Thoughts interjected other thoughts and none finished themselves.
Then suddenly, everything dropped out from under me. Clarity of mind returned to me for the moment. I was walking on mist through a field of mushrooms. They were all whispering, whispering to me, I realized; tales of what had happened and why it had happened were revealed to me.
Jordan wasn’t my boyfriend, though he’d like to think that, wouldn’t he? Sleeping with someone doesn’t sell your soul. No, he was just a boy who was jealous of anyone who had my attention. Why I started in the first place, I’ll never know. The minute I had wanted a relationship, he turned into a jerk and made sure I knew I was just a piece of ass for him to waste. Then he started to act like he owned me and wanted me.
Last night… Last night, though, I finally had the chance to escape from him—I met a wonderful man. Funny, tall, attractive, interested in me, and he seemed nice, too. We danced a lot, got a little dirty, but in the end, we didn’t do it— he told me he didn’t want it to turn into a one night stand so he gave me his number. I almost decided that that was bullshit and threw it away, but I stopped myself when I saw Jordan across the room from me. I wasn’t going to settle for someone who thought I was a something. I didn’t care what he thought or what he did. So, I shoved it in my pocket, looking at him intently.
That was a stupid move.
Jordan didn’t like it. He was angry and… when I got home from the party (only God remembers how), way more out of it than I remember getting and dirty, he exploded.
“You whore! How could you cheat on me with that faggot?” My throat constricted at those words. He had never called me that before, even in the harder days when all we could do was fight… It had never come to that. I tried to be angry instead of sad or scared, to defend myself; if I didn’t, I knew something bad would happen. Don’t let him push you around. He’s only a toddler having a temper tantrum.
“Oh come off it, we didn’t even have sex!”
“Then why do you smell like it? It’s making me sick.”
As soon as he mentioned it, I took in the air around me and it caught my nose: the distinct smell of sex was strong. Once you know that smell, you can smell it a mile away. But he had gone home before we could do it… at least I had thought.
Something was very wrong.
I racked my brain for something—a memory, a word, a smell, a feeling, anything that could tell me if I had remembered wrong. Nothing. My heart skipped a beat.
What had I done?
But I had to hide my uncertainty. As far as he was concerned, I ate fish on my way home. Or… something like that.
“I can’t cheat on someone who isn’t my boyfriend! I don’t love you, Jordan, not anymore, and you don’t love me. Not after you said no. This relationship is just sex and you know that!”
“You didn’t answer my question, whore,” Jordan grabbed my collar and pulled my face close to his. I could smell the awful staleness of liquor on his breath: he had been drinking, more than usual.
Suddenly, fear spiked through my chest.
This couldn’t happen again. Not tonight.
Not after I had finally had a chance to be happy, to get away from him.
I knew then and there that I was going to die; I closed my eyes and prayed for the first and last time that at least someone would know what had happened to me, and get him some help.
But my prayer was interrupted by more stale breath and threatening whispers. “I asked, why do you smell like sex if you didn’t have any?”
I slapped his hand off the neck of my shirt and backed away, sneering. “Why do you care? You don’t care about me, so why do you care about my sex life?”
“Dumb-ass! Why do you think I get so jealous all the time?”
“Oh, I don’t know, because you’re a bastard?” I poked my pointed finger hard into his chest accusingly, glaring at him. “Because you can’t handle yourself?”
“No, you bitch!” Jordan threw his hands down in frustration. The house was completely silent as I waited for what was sure to come next. “Because I…”His voice trailed off and he covered his forehead with his hands, beginning to pace. Then Jordan’s face came flying back towards mine and he shouted, “You’re making me do this! You’re making me this angry!” His face went back into hiding behind his hands. Jordan was just acting, I knew. Always the melodramatic bastard.
“You can’t even say it, can you? You can’t even admit that after all this time, you felt the same way I did. I knew it. A coward. That’s what you are. And you know what?”
I walked closer to him, making sure that he heard my next words and felt first-hand all the disgust and hatred wrapped inside them. “You make me sick. I’m leaving.”
Jordan froze and started shaking.
At first I thought he was laughing. But then his hands flew away from his forehead once again and I saw the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes and streaming down his cheeks.
I turned to pack, to run, to get away, to do something, anything. I had to play this right; he would snap up any uncertainty or fear like a dog does a piece of meat.
“Don’t leave, Levi. I… I love you. We could be together. We could take a trip around Europe, kiss just because, make love because there’s plenty to spare. I know that you want to; I can see it in your eyes.”
There was so much longing and sincerity in his face and words, I almost believed him. But this had happened before, and I wouldn’t be fooled or weak ever again.
“You call me a bitch because you love me. You treat me like a piece of shit because you love me. You were the one who didn’t want a relationship. Now it’s too late. I’ve met someone who’s worth it, Jordan and you can’t change that! You don’t decide–”
“Bitch, you answer to me!” He raised his fist and clenched it, face scrunched in rage. I saw it happening in slow motion; I knew it was coming, but I was too distracted. His face was so beautiful… In that last moment, that’s what I thought of—how beautiful his face looked. Not the fact that I was so angry with him, I wanted to stick the kitchen knife into his stomach and smile while watching him suffer slowly. Not the fact that I had done nothing to deserve his anger. Not the strange sense in the back of my mind that I had had sex with that man I had met at the party, even though I didn’t remember. No, not any of those things. Just his beauty. That just gives you an idea of 1) how attractive Jordan is (and man, did he know how to use it to please a man) and 2) how utterly hopeless I was. Not even a life-flashing-before-my-eyes moment to my name.
Then, his fist came around to the outside of my head and connected with a jolt of pain and a thud. I was on the ground, shielding my eyes from the blinding ceiling light and protecting my face from the next blow. More hits came, but my ability to feel them decreased more and more.
I just wanted it to stop…
Just stop.
Stop.
STOP.
But I couldn’t speak.
I couldn’t move.
Nothing worked.
Nothing weighed on my mind more.
I knew I couldn’t feel my face, but I saw it in his eyes. I was smiling at him and his guilty eyes reflected it. Jordan was punching me in the ribs and stomach and I was smiling at him.
But what I was thinking was different that time. I was thinking of what I had done to get myself in this situation and how I had ever met someone so awful. I was thinking of what I would do if it never stopped, if I died like this, looking into his beautiful blue eyes as his rough, working hands broke my skin.
And then suddenly, it stopped.
I was still alive, though mercy or curse I could not say. I felt my heart beating feebly inside my chest. Every shallow breath was a struggle and filled with blinding pain as feeling slowly flooded back into my skin. I longed to return to numbness. Numbness was where I was safe, where everything was alright.
Then I heard distorted mumbles that sounded like they were coming from a mile away. I saw Jordan’s mouth moving.
I matched the indistinct mumbles with his lips. “Get out. Get out now. Just go,” he said.
Somehow, I managed to get up, walk to the door, open it, and walk into the street. The door slammed behind me and it sounded like a gunshot.
I came out of the vivid vision that had surely been a dream and remembered where I was—the misty mushroom field. Hopefully, the dream had not ended yet, or I would have even more problems to sort out later. The whisperings of the mushrooms slowly stopped and I could no longer think or speak in words, but in pictures.
One last image passed through me and I registered an inconspicuous man, a funny, tall, attractive, interested-in-me, and seemingly nice man, dropping an unseen substance into a glass of liquid. Another hand, one that was wearing the ring Jordan had bought me for my birthday on its ring finger, reached to lift it to the mouth of its owner.
Something was very wrong.