#a pill for loneliness | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

spookyspaghettisundae · 1 year

Text

His Words Cut Deeper

Blood. Skin. The lines had not just blurred, they were melting together.

I don't know why I had thought it was a good idea to come out here. If I had even ever thought that. I struggle to remember anything with any clarity if I'm being honest—anything of the time before the knife and after the murder. I don't even know if any of that really happened.

I remember a red rage; how it filled my being with hatred and how it clouded my vision. How every insult, lodged inside my gut, bubbled up to the surface in a fit of explosive screaming.

He screamed back at me. Mocked me, even as I held the knife up in between us. Its shiny, pointy tip, aimed at his neck. My hand trembling with terror and fury. And where the blood now clouded my vision, the rage had fogged it then.

And now?

Blood dripped. In a thin rivulet running down my fingertips, sending droplets to plummet to the depths. Crashing into a growing pool on the floorboards of the cabin.

Drip. Drip.

Drip.

I groan as I stir in bed. My hand tingles with the sensation of pins and needles, the last part of me to lurch awake. My hand is hanging over the edge of the mattress, and the cool air is kissing my exposed skin with its frosty lips.

I am alone here.

My fingers twitch before I manage to ball them into a fist.

Another groan escapes me as I fail to uncover myself. I lay tangled in the sheets, half-covered, half-bare to the wintry air inside the cabin. Fire still crackles in the fireplace, but my distance to it chills me.

Only with delay do I register that smell of wine. Tears return to the corners of my eyes, which I wipe away.

There is no blood here. No pool of it on the ground. None on my hands. And with that realization, the dream fades away.

The dream? Or hallucinations? Memories?

It must have been a dream. It just doesn't make any sense.

Two empty wine bottles rest on the floor where I expect to see blood, but there only burgundy drops of wine staining wood and nearby rug.

I am all alone here. My winter hiking boots rest near the door, a pair by itself, one of them haphazardly drooping over the other. Alone.

Frost covers the small windows, shaped like weird spiderwebs made of shiny blades, through which I see the vast, gray sky outdoors.

I feel numb. The sleeping pills in their tiny plastic bottle rattle with a pleasant sound, reminding me where that numbness is coming from.

But… I'm not supposed to be dreaming with any of this. The wine and the pills were the point. I was hoping for the warm clutches of darkness, for a bottomless void to swallow me whole as soon as the sleep took over. To devour my dreams and spit me back out without any recollection of them.

Why, then, did I see that blood? That knife? That trembling hand of mine, and his hideous face, mocking me? Tormenting me like an evil spirit?

Could it really be my memories?

My feet are not entirely numb as I shuffle to a window to look outside. The sun was setting early over a horizon of mountains and trees, rolling hills all covered in snow. All different shades of white and gray wherever I gazed, with the thick patches of thin lines of pine trees poking out from the landscape. Not a single other building in sight, so far removed from civilization. So quiet out here.

So safe.

My calves remember the hike, muscles twitching as they threaten to cramp up again.

I feed more logs into the fireplace. Wood crackles and pops and the flames hiss at me, melting into whispers as I talk to myself, reassuring myself, telling myself that everything will be alright. I am alone, and nobody can find me here.

When my whispers grow louder than the flames, I stop myself. My stomach growls.

I could make some food. I should make some food. I feel lightheaded. Instead of checking the cabinet, I produce another bottle of wine. The numbness has left my hands. All I feel is the chill in the air and the cold steel of the corkscrew between my fingers, twisting until I uncork it all with a loud pop.

Gulping greedily, I drink straight from the bottle. The taste is fine, considering how cheaply I bought it all before lugging it all the way out here. But I'm not drinking it for the flavor, I am drinking for the effect.

I want to numb myself. Drown it all in one big haze. I want to dispel those images of blood and knives and trembling with rage. I want to tell myself that it all only lives in my imagination.

I wish I knew what the truth truly was. My escape from the city was a blur.

Thunder—thundering knocks against the cabin door—startles me. I nearly jump and cower as I back into a corner near the fireplace, hugging the wine bottle like a child.

Still light out, I cannot see anybody through the foggy windows from where I am cowering like a coward. The merciless thumping has already stopped, yet its echoes still make my head throb, and send a sensation into the back of my head like a knife slowly sinking deeper into my skull and brains. I even see stars on the edge of my vision for a brief spell.

I am not alright.

As I gasp, I flinch, expecting more of those heavy knocks to follow.

My wheezing breaths either drown out any other sounds from outside, or there is truly nobody there.

Or the person who was knocking on my door is still right there. Waiting in silence. Making me think of the knife.

There is no sound of crunching, no boots trudging through the thick layer of snow outside.

Just dead silence.

My heart is pounding, and I am frozen in a paralyzing panic. Like a deer in headlights. Who would even know to look for me here? There's nobody who knows of this place—nobody alive. It was always supposed to be my refuge, to escape from the world.

Maybe it was just some hiker who had seen smoke coming from the chimney?

And here I am, cowering in the corner, one step away from screaming even though there is nobody out here in these mountains who could possibly hear me and arrive in time to help.

Though I am dressed, I feel naked. Alone. The thunder of that knocking is almost louder in my mind, the echo of it still haunting me. It reminds me of his knocking at the door, all violent and forceful. A precursor to his yelling at me, ordering me to unlock the door.

But there is none of that. No such sounds, no such screams.

Still, nothing. Nobody outside.

I can't do this. I can't stay like this.

Trembling with terror and fury, I set the wine bottle down, then creep and crawl towards the counter. I wince as the drawer scrapes too loudly and the corkscrew clatters while I fumble around in the drawer bowels until I fish a dull old kitchen knife from it. All the while, I cannot see nor hear anybody outside. No telltale crunching of steps through the snow. No angry face peering inside through the window, no towering shadows lurking.

As little sense as it makes, I keep expecting his presence to pop out and surprise me, which keeps my heart pounding with tremendous, violent force.

I am wobbly on my feet as I finally unlock and rip open the door. Though I am weaker than him, my every movement is driven by anger, quick and rash and with a force of my own to match.

The blast of cold air robs me of my breath, and what I see makes me gasp. There is nobody outside. Nothing.

No trail. The ground remains undisturbed since last night. Last night's snowfall has already filled the holes of my own tracks halfway. Only I have visited the cabin. Hiking out here and carrying firewood inside—these are the only trails I can see. They all only my match my own hiking boots.

I gasp again as the freezing wintry air envelops me in a gust of howling wind. I poke my head outside, leaning out the door to confirm there is nobody else around. Still, only my tracks as far as I can see.

And there is, indeed, nobody here. I think back to the blood and the knife in my hand, in my mind, punctuated by the stinging headache that is making my head throb, to the rhythm of my racing heartbeat.

What even is real anymore?

It's just not fair. It's not fair that this is happening to me. I did nothing wrong enough in my life to warrant this kind of torment. I came here to be safe. To get away from everything and everybody. To clear my head.

The cabin door clicks back into place, and I lock it up again. I lean against it and wait until my breath and my beating heart steady. Calm.

Calm.

The door grows colder against my back, or my back grows colder against the door. It all blends together, just like the dark fantasies and the muddied reality and the wide, melting threshold in between. Where flesh and blood melt together.

The pill bottle rattles as I pop its cap and pop a few more. Wash them down with more wine.

Though I cannot tell if I'm dealing with memories, dreams, or hallucinations, I know they are not entirely products of fiction. Their dark roots reach deep into my reality.

But then—the knocking? I must be losing my mind.

Wrapped in a thick and fuzzy blanket, I huddle in front of the fireplace. While I drink more wine and wait for the chemical fog to blanket my mind anew, I let every thought come and go, like drifting clouds. I don't want them to stick around. It's almost like meditation, though I've never been one for anything esoteric.

I'm just trying to empty my head. Like spilling the wine from the bottle, pouring it out onto the floor. Like that blood dripping from my lifeless fingertips, pooling in a sea of crimson below, the payment for my failure to wield that knife against him.

Just images.

Just my imagination. Inhale, exhale. Let the clouds drift in and out. Let them go.

The throbbing of my skull subsides, slowly but surely. Though it takes far longer to go than the panic I felt from the knocking—knocking I must have imagined—it all steadily dulls. It dulls until it fades.

Outside, a wolf howls, though this does not even make me flinch. The animals out here never filled me with fear.

I'm only afraid of people. Or—no, wait. I'm only afraid of him.

Like the knife in my hand, my trembling hand, between me and him. How easily its sharp tip can break through skin and sink into flesh, its edge scraping past bone as it pierces organs, and releases that crimson fluid of life upon exit. That image startles me awake from what feels like another broken daydream.

Still in a haze, I stumble back to bed with the extra blanket. More swigs from the wine bottle, and I'm curled back up into a fetal position. Gaining distance from the fireplace, the cool air kisses my cheek, the only skin I leave exposed after plopping back down onto the mattress, tangled back up in the covers within seconds.

He made me so angry. Blaming me for his shortcomings. Demanding that I shoulder his failures for him. Like a petulant child with the power of a giant, screaming at me that I showed so little sympathy for his misfortune.

Like it was my fault that he refused to get a real job. That he spent so much time sleeping on the couch, late into the day, hungover, or when he expected me to cook and clean and satisfy all his needs whenever I got home after a long day at work.

His words cut deeper than any knife ever would. He had known me for so long. He knew my every weakness and exploited them mercilessly whenever he mocked me with his insults, whenever he played armchair psychologist to point out and complain about my flaws and how they were to blame for all our problems.

Making light of my struggles. Belittling me and telling me that I just needed to get over it like everybody else, that I needed to toughen up, that I just needed to grow a thicker skin.

He never hit me. His breed of violence surfaced in those cutting words, made worse by the volume of his voice, roaring and belligerent as he could be. And his physicality, exploiting our years of intimacy when I needed distance, cornering me as he towered over me.

And as I held out the knife in between us, pointing its tip at his neck, he laughed at me. I trembled with fury. That fog of rage clouded my vision, like fog on the cabin windows. The rage danced with the fear. Crackling and snapping like logs in the fire, like bones snapping under the weight of a murderous hammer.

His laughter boomed, like thunder, thunder in my heart and the thundering blows of a fist against the cabin door; a door he should not know of, that nobody should know of, because only my family had known of this cabin, and they had all passed away.

His hideous laughter, booming, breaking only to tell me that I needed to stop being ridiculous, that I needed to stop acting like a child.

The absurdity of it all.

When he reached out to grab me, I lost control. The knife cut his flesh, leaving a curving line down his arm and wrist, from which the crimson quickly wept, pumping to a quickening pulse.

The look of shock on his face stunned me. Even through the rage, even through the trembling, and my shortening breath. I felt like I was suffocating.

Because I was.

His face twisted in a rage so violent, so bright that it eclipsed my own, like the fire of the sun overtaking the flames as the sun set fully over the mountains, sinking into the dark abyss of the horizon, and dragging all light and life down with it.

I was suffocating not from panic alone, but from his big hands around my throat. Crushing it, squeezing the life out of me, robbing me of my breath. And the knife in my trembling hand, it would always connect, even as blinded as I was through the fog of rage and terror and freezing air.

I swallow. The taste of wine in my mouth turns dry. I stir in bed again, flopping onto my other side, exposing my other cheek so the cold air in the cabin could caress my face like a gentle lover.

The fire in the fireplace had shrunken again, and I blinked away the fog of slumber.

Had that all ever happened? Could it have really happened?

I sat up in bed. The headache was a distant memory, as distant as the absent sunlight. Only darkness loomed outside the cabin windows, a deafening quiet of the mountains interrupted only by a snap from the fireplace.

There was no blood on my hands. My trembling hands. I stare at my palms, and there is no blood.

I'm not supposed to dream like this. I dream of that violence, of what could have been, or what might have been. The border blurs, the difference is nothing I can grasp. And I cannot be sure what's real anymore.

Can he find me here, against all odds, or has someone found his body, drained of life and blood by the knife? A sip of wine to wash it down, I cannot tell these things apart. Dreams or reality, dark wishes, or nightmares. Daydreams or hallucinations, bleeding into reality like memories, whether they are one thing or the other.

Or both.

I expect someone to knock on the cabin door. Many heartbeats pass, melting into an eternity of thoughts, like gray clouds drifting by. Only somber silence follows. The fireplace crackles again.

The pill bottle rattles as I pop its lid and pop more pills.

Washing them down with more wine, I stumble my way to the fireplace and feed more logs into the fire.

3 notes · View notes