Counting Sheep // Chelsey

[loren]

E M I L I E A R D E N

"you just gotta let it go"
_____________________________

Pre-Hospital Emilie was one talented motherfucker.

I knew my fair share of crafts, and took to mastering each talent with shocking precision for someone who more often than not missed the toilet bowl when the tequila just couldn't seem to settle their differences with the gin. Which wasn't very often, because in addition to being beautiful and talented, I was also a peace ambassador among the many spirits I downed who knew how to hold her liquor.

Pre-Hospital,  I knew how to smoke like a chimney and drink like a fish without dying. I knew the very minimum amount of nutrients my body had to take in daily to keep me from dying. I knew what men to avoid to avoid dying. I could literally ignite my organs on fire like some kind of nightmarish choir from hell inside of me, and not die. I could toss back more pills than I ever learned to count, just to feel that narcotic hum in my veins that feels like what the love songs sing about and what the poets cry about and what the painters try and match in hundreds shades of red, but never did I die. I smeared my mascara on death's window as I peered through to look at his face. And death isn't a macabre skeleton in Gothic garb or some monstrous serpent with fangs of poison and disease. Death is a beautiful stranger with a foreign name. With honey colored eyes and blushing cheeks the color of the last sunset before winter. Death is the deep kiss, the sensation without the breath. All of the act, all of the regret. 

I knew just about every trick in the book on how to survive. And when the day came I wished to die, I just didn't seem to know how.

So I ended up in this shitstain of a hospital where half the residents are comatose and the other half have the personality of the prune muffin I did not eat for breakfast. And with all this free time I have on my hands, I've learned to cultivate a new set of skills.

Every morning before breakfast I'm expected to down two blue bitches to stimulate something in me they don't think is working, a little red fucker to keep me focused, and a giant gel capsule the size of my knuckles that make me trip such giant balls I'm so shocked they just give this shit out for free. It's the best. But just according to my personal "vibes", if you will, I'm not entirely up for clocking out first thing in the morning. On a daily basis. That used to be me, but not so much anymore. Going on a trip in a stark, bleach on plaster, cushioned and sanitized aquarium filled with the feeble and frail isn't only not as fun as getting high under city lights, but it's also downright depressing. Which was ironically the entire reason I ended up here...

So now I've perfected the art of solo pill-ball. I place the four in my mouth, hide the two little guys under my tongue, the blue bitch between a molar and my cheek, and nestle the capsule in my throat while a nurse who probably hopes I'll kick the bucket any day now and inspire some kind of excitement around here, checks my mouth and gives me the thumbs up to pretend to eat some oatmeal. 

I don't know when I decided that my "crazy" persona preferred skipping as her optimal platform for transportation, but I can admit I fucked up there. It is exhausting. But people tend to leave you alone if you're a perpetual reminder that somewhere else, life is continuing on while you're trapped in a measured and  medicated stalemate. No one here wants to be reminded that we're surviving, not really living. Which is why I'm keeping about five pounds of psychotic drugs in a puzzle box in the recreational room. Because I need to forget sometimes, too.

Or at least, I was keeping about five pounds of psychotic drugs in a puzzle box. As I frantically searched the dusty corner of faded board games and art supplies I tried to wrap my head around who which nurse caught me hoarding. This hospital is filled with with boring old soggy napkins, but no one in here is soggy enough to want to do a goddamn puzzle. There's loads of more things to do here to pass the time. Many take to smearing their feces on the wall.

Some of us even do drugs.

And then I heard that familiar spill, that sick symphonic tick! tick! tick! tick! tick! tick! tick! And then a face equal parts confused and shocked, a mini mountain of pills, and a puzzle box. My puzzle box. In Douglas Sepulveda's hands.

template by chelsey

[chelsey]

DOUGLAS SEPULVEDA

"To the outside, the dead leaves lay on the lawn
For they don't have trees to hang upon."

I know it’s time for a break the moment my finger painting starts crying.

In between painful physical therapy sessions, bland meals spent alone in the cafeteria, and watching every step I take around here because the crazies seem to forget where the fucking bathroom is and especially seem to have a fond attachment to the step outside my bedroom’s door, I’ve come to a pretty solid conclusion: Edith thinks I’m dead. It’s the only possible theory that makes sense in this pandemonium that’s been my life ever since I opened my eyes. She thinks I’m dead, has spent the last two years in deep, deep, deep mourning, and is now trying to make sense of a life that involves the tragic and sudden death of her soul mate. Makes sense. Accounts for all the returned letters, all the ignored phone calls, and all the questionable looks the nurses give each other whenever I tell them about Edith. I’ll be all “The second I get outta here, Rebecca, I’m heading straight for my girl. I can’t wait to hold her pretty little hands in mine again,” and they’ll be all “Sure, Doug, honey, I’m sure you will, now keep your arm straight,” before injecting that clear liquid into my IV tube, again. But, even when the black started to crumble in around me, I still felt that confidence gripping my heart. The thought of Edith being out there and waiting for me, missing me, loving me, was always enough to keep me going.

Until the day that she showed up to the hospital, a bump in her belly and a grimace on her mouth. I can see her eyes still, colder than I remembered them and filled to the brim with guiltless tears. “I just needed you to understand why, Doug.” And I needed her to stay.

And she does. Still. In my mind. On this crappy finger painting on the sheet of paper in front of me. Despite whatever my feelings towards her are, my hands still paint Edith on their own accord, not quite catching up to my head, yet. Muscle memory, I guess. They draw Edith angelically, innocent, and pure. These eyes that stare up at me are genuine, and the tears that cloud them are almost real.

My hands drip with watery blue colors (they don’t give us brushes, just in case one of us accidentally chokes on it or purposefully shoves it down one of our eyes or whatever) and I shake my fingers from the excess until the space around me looks like a crime scene involving someone who bled blue.

I used to think Edith bled blue. My precious, lovely girl, with so much sad inside of her that sometimes I thought that if I kissed her hard enough it’d spill out of her and pour into me. I’d take that weight, too, and bear it all just for her. My girl who deserved more than to love with a trembling heart.

“I don’t think I ever loved you, Doug. At least not in the way you thought I did.”

I’m also someone who deserves to be loved with more than her heart. Her sick, revolting, black heart, who falls in love with people who are not me, while I rot away on that deathbed of a hospital cot while still dreaming of her.

“Then, the baby came, Doug, and I knew it’d just be impossible for me to explain any of this to you in a letter. You deserve better.”

And just like that, Edith isn’t my sweet, lovely girl anymore. She is empty and foul and disgusting to look at. She is dead weight who sat at the foot of my bed, who cried tears that weren’t even for me, who begged for forgiveness that she didn’t deserve - for forgiveness I won’t ever give.

“A hell of a mother you’ll make” was the first thing I said during our entire encounter. “Gonna teach that baby to cheat and abandon people, too? Or does that trait just come genetically?”

She parted her lips, like she wanted to say something just as hard back, but eventually thought better of it and just pressed her lips together. She’s silent long enough for miles and miles to grow between us, that it seemed like I could hardly hear her when she eventually settled on, “Very funny.”

And that’s it. She leaves me with nothing but broken remnants of now irrelevant memories and her last two words to me lingering in the air. Very funny.

Maybe I’d agree with her, but the thing is, she gets to walk out these doors and into the arms of her lover, and I get to stay here. She gets to have a baby and build a family, and I get to paint her eyes with my fucking fingers. This shit isn’t funny, and if she thinks it is, then I need to have whatever the fuck she’s smoking.

The finger painting crumbles in my fist, and the paints and scattered sheets of paper are pushed aside to make way for the first puzzle set I can get my hands on. Because I’ve calculated in my head, over and over and over, of how this could have ever happened, but can come to no possible solution. The life I had before this - the life I had with Edith - is shattering into different pieces of a puzzle that I’m not sure will ever be whole, again. And if I can’t solve that, maybe I can at least solve this. I just need to solve something.

As I’ve come to learn, however, Life’s got a not-so-funny way of screwing with you. Blue starts pouring from the box in my hands, and, for a second, I think I’m bleeding blue. I know I’ve got enough of it in me. But then an all too familiar head of red swerves in my direction and the pill-shaped blues start coming into focus.

Emilie Arden stares at me, the puzzle box, and the pile of pills knowingly. I roll my eyes. “Is this your idea of a joke?”

Because I really need to hear something funny right now.