I want a xenomorph costume :(

the silence is ripping and singing through my ears as something like gravity pulls my heart beneath the surface.  i am fading into the endless layers of the darkness that i have found here, so deep and full.  but then there is something else, the taste of sea salt on my tongue and it pulls me back to you. i can feel nothing but the soft breeze and your quiet pulse as your chest continues to rise and fall through the sound of the dead waves that caress the now barren shorelines of the east coast, the carcass of a once great civilization spilling from scorched sands.  

all there is now, is this; my fingers delicately woven into your’s  

Mostly everything is silent now and I am apathetic and lethargic.  The sound of the babbling streams and the leaves rustling as the cool midnight air dances restlessly through the trees does not reach this place.  It is quiet here, so very quiet and still, so still.  I am at peace in this obsidian palace, tall, black, and gleaming, impenetrable.  Sometimes though, I will think of you, remembering what it was that came before this place.  A lump will form in my throat.  For a fraction of a second I will feel true despair, aching to fracture my mind and devour my soul.  My eyes will sting, hot and wet.  Rumbles from deep inside the earth will shatter the silence that once was as the ground shakes and cracks run seamlessly up the crumbling, fragile terraces.  There is no longer hope, for I am here now and there is no going back.  No escape.  No salvation. But as quickly as it had onset, that fraction of a moment will pass and I will return to normalcy.  It will be quiet again, and still.  I will once again be calm, apathetic, and lethargic, at peace.

I’ve been trapped beneath the waves for such a long time now and I’ve run out of air.  I’m no longer capable of swimming to the surface.  No one is coming.  I sit heavy on the sea floor, I am done.  It’s so quiet.

 As I left the room my eye caught a glimpse of something in the black framed mirror that hung beside the door frame, stuck up by two tacks pinned into the stark white wall.  It was for a fraction of a moment, but I knew I saw it.  A man, or what appeared to be a man, in a grey suit.  Startled, I quickly snapped around to see there was no one there.  Just my bed, covered in a tangled mess of a white comforter and one sheet, my tv turned to channel 39 set on mute, and a digital clock that read 3:33pm.  The mid afternoon sunlight filled the room with a silver glow.  I hesitantly looked into the reflection once more.  There he stood, tall, calm and cold; unmoving.  It didn’t register, my synapses didn’t fire, no signals were sent from my brain to my body, no, everything had stopped as fear crept up my spine.  

 It lunged at me in a blur of grey, too quickly for me to react other than a quick turn, away from the mirror and into the empty room.  There was nothing, just my few minimalistic possessions.  And then it grabbed me.  I felt lifeless fingers clenching around my shoulders, pushing me hard into the wall.  As it grabbed me I could then see it. It was old, not old in the sense of an old man, but rather it was ancient.  Something that had existed far before any of this, something that had always been.  The thing looked deeply into my eyes, a smile creeping up the sides of his face.  This was not a smile of malice, however, but the smile of a loved one who hadn’t seen you in a very long time.  The smile of someone who missed you more than anything and did not have much time before they had to leave once more, this time never to see you again.  

 The melancholy smile turned into a concerned look as tears flowed from its eyes.  They were piercing, yellow golden iris’s that sat gleaming from within its pitch back scleras, as dark as its fiercely undilated pupils.  The tears streamed down its face which seemed to be that of a freshly carved marble sculpture, smooth, clean, cold, perfection.  Its grip on me relaxed.  Or had it always been that way?  It had been my fear that turned this ancient thing into something terrible.  No, now I felt all the sadness of the world flowing from its fingertips into me.  

 It opened its mouth.  The sound that left it was incredibly beautiful, more than one can imagine something to be so.  Its voice sounded that of one hundred thousand people in one smooth tune, though as one single entity, not overlapping, delicate, light, but powerful.  Not a single note misplaced.  Its phrases strung together with not a syllable wasted, as if there was a finite amount of words that could be used and each more precious than mankind’s greatest treasures.  ”You are the next -” it trailed off into something I could not understand.  ”You are the great tragedy,” it sobbed.  ”You are to be the one to fall.”  I felt unimaginable sadness and despair as the creature shed its tears for me.  It pulled me close in an embrace and I understood as wings of bone, feather, and stone enclosed around us.  ”I am so sorry,” it whispered.

 I knew I had not done anything to deserve it.  I had done nothing wrong.  I was no more evil than anyone else, no more good.  But it had to be me, and I knew.  I did not want this but it had to be so, and so it was.  I was to be the second of two.  

I do despise being toyed with, dragged along like a cat drags a freshly slain mouse, still clawing at the bloodied rag doll for any sign of life, still wanting to play.  My hands are numb and my breathing labored.  Each breath is like a knife dug into the side, eviscerating through the flesh that lay between my ribs with a soft, wet, pop.  This makes me cringe.  The pain can be dealt with, I’ve dealt with plenty worse before.  It’s that nauseating sound, the pop, that’s almost too much to endure.  As always with a pnuemothorax, I imagine the air seeping through the tiniest rip in my lung, pushing my internal organs as it pleases.  My stomach flips.

 I am uncomfortable here.  I forget how to live, how did I do it before?  Here I do not sleep.  Instead nights are an eternity and filled with my endless, exhausted thoughts and inquiries.  Was this the right choice?  Have I done the right thing?  I can’t say it was, yet here I am, in a far away place, learning life lessons from someone who does not care for me.  People scare me because I know how they really are under that facade of skin they wear so cleanly.  They do not truly care for one another.  They care only when it is of benefit to them to care and even then that benefit must be substantial.  I know this because I too am like this to an extent.

 My vision is distorted beyond that which could be considered appropriately functional.  This is solely due to the fact that I am wearing only one contact lens rather than two.  This results in everything having a sharpness to it yet remaining unrecognizable.  Everyone becomes a stranger, yet they had already been so.  I cannot see their gazes but I can feel them resting upon me.  I am different, I don’t belong here, they know this.  I don’t seem to care as their teeth shift in their salivating jaws, lubricating for a meal that is me.  I remain calm, cold, and lethargic. Their gaze shifts away from me as I remain unprovoked.  

 It was when I woke up at four in the morning in order to shower in the all girls dorm with out reprimand, that I had discovered one of the lenses absent from the green and white case they normally reside in.  The left one.  After some searching I spotted it on the floor, shriveled, withered, a fraction of what it once had been.  I knelt above it for a moment pondering my next action.  I reached for the pathetic thing and it had assimilated itself to the floor so that it peeled off with a tiny click. It was small and disgusting but I thought maybe if I returned it to its liquid solution it could revitalize to its former self.

 This morning I had awoken happily to find that my hypothesis had indeed been correct.  I took it out of its liquid retreat and placed it carefully on my right index finger.  It had been torn.  A large gash reaching to the center of the lens now held my attention.  I remember smiling at this, not because this was something that I had come to consider unsuprising due to my luck as of recent, but because I saw it for what it really was.  A torn contact lens.

I wonder if you could understand.  Have you ever loved someone as much as I?  On that midsummer day when she whispered those three words into my ear I cried.  Had you ever heard words strung together so beautifully?  Had a simple phrase ever impacted you in such a way that it rendered you speechless, hot tears streaking down your face?  It had been so long since she’d said them.  No, the words themselves weren’t special, it was because she said them, in a mere exhale, that made them so.  Three little words that caused everything to fade away.  At that time her eyes became my whole world and there was nothing else.  I was made whole in the mellifluous tune that was her voice.  So now I ask, can you truly understand?  Can you still tell me, in all honesty, it will be okay? 

Eventually everything balances itself out.  Things will always get better and in the same sense they will always get worse.  From the lowest point things will get easier, but the thing is no matter how good things get, you will always remember the day your heart stopped.  I guess I’m still trying to come to the terms with reality in that some things never heal, they merely become manageable.  Never take anything for granted, treasure all the good while you can still hold it because eventually, everything ends and something new begins.  Never let the memories of the good things fade, if you throw them away, for they are too painful, you will lose yourself.  Just the same never let those memories hold you back, because that’s what they are, just memories.  You can’t live in a pretty memory.  Oh but how I wish I could.

I woke up and remembered myself.  I remembered everything and who I really was.  And so I destroyed the person who I was pretending to be, or rather who I thought I was while my true self was asleep.  I destroyed you, I destroyed them, I destroyed everything and left nothing in my wake.  I knew who I was again.  I was, I am the end to all. Quod incepimus conficiemus.

Love is just as mortal as any one of us, only much more fragile.  Cherish it when you attain it, for as with everything else, the love you experience and come to depend upon will die.  Just hope that you die first.