My arm hanging loosely at my side, I leaned back on the door of my car and let my busted, scabbed knuckles brush against the back of Katie's hand as she stood beside me.She wrapped her fingers around mine, and let her fragile hand become enclosed in mine. Neither of us sighed. Neither of us spoke. We just stared out across the lonely cityscape from our hill. Two and a half years ago, in a different time, we stood in this same spot giggling and laughing, having our first dance as innocent children whose lives were just about to spill over into hell.
I put two cigarettes between my lips, and lit them both at the same time. The light from the flame illuminated Katie's face for a moment, the orange light almost giving the illusion that she was still alive. She reached over and took one of the cigarettes from my lips and put it between hers.
I glanced over at her, staring straight out into the night, her eyes so dead that they couldn't even cry anymore. Her eyes had gone from that rich sapphire blue two and a half years ago to nearly ice blue now. Her hair, having once been such a vibrant, soft honey blond; was now straw-like and sickly like the setting moon. Her cheeks were sunken now, and she had permanent dark circles around her eyes. A permanent bruise near her ear that would not heal where Peter punched her had stained her pale skin in a heart-shaped purple splotch.
Katie folded her fingers deeper into mine, and leaned up against me.
And through the window of my car, the song played on.
*****
I burned all the good things in The Eden Eye
We were too dumb to run
Too dead to die
This was never my world
You took the angel away
I'd kill myself to make everybody pay
I would have told her then
She was the only thing
That I could love in this dying world
But the simple word of "Love" itself
Already died and went away
*****
Katie finally left Peter after a year of making excuses for him. After all, if her own father beat her, it seemed almost normal for her boyfriend to also. If her own father belittled her and made her feel worthless, it seemed almost normal for Peter to also. Her father still loved her, regardless of what he did -- so did Peter, she thought.
In that year, Peter had dragged her into his lifestyle of fast-living and the hard drugs that only the rich kids could afford. Katie had become addicted to the cocaine that Peter gave her. She started eating less and less, wanting to be thinner and prettier like the other girls. But no matter what she did, she never felt the emptiness and pain ease away.
I'd fallen into another kind of underworld.
Illyana had been bequeathing gifts to me in exchange for favors. I'd fallen into my own brand of hell. The idealistic young boy was gone now. The difference was though, Illyana actually truly believed what she was doing for me, that the place she had brought me to, was for the best for me. It was her world, after all. And being older than me, she saw in me what she saw in herself, and brought me up in her way.
I was like Katie, I thought. Except instead of being given bruises that would not heal, and instead of being given a coke habit, I had been given...
other things... in exchange for my soul. And to relieve my own inner pain, I began fighting. I enjoyed the feeling of going toe-to-toe with other fighters in basement brawls that were turning me into more of a machine than a human being. It seemed the only sensation I could feel now was pain.
I let go of Katie's hand, and slid my arm around her waist.
I pulled her around, and pressed her thin body against mine. She was so fragile now. And I had become as tough as iron. She sunk into me, dropping her forehead into my chest. I dropped my cigarette to the asphalt at our feet, and wrapped both of my arms around her.
Katie looked up at me, through her ice blue eyes, her lips spread thin. And she stuck her lit cigarette into my arm.
"
Mmmm..." I smiled.
Katie smiled her weak smile back at me, extinguishing her cigarette into my skin.
*****
Her heart's bloodstained egg
We didn't handle with care
It's broken and bleeding
And we can never repair
*****
I realized that night that I would never be more than a disembodied soul to Katie.
It was too late for me now. I would always just this empty thing now.
I was a bleeding Polaroid of an angel to her now. That as much love and care I had for her once, it never mattered. That Peter was real to her. But I would never be. That I would never exist in her world.
This was never my world. And she would never understand. And no matter what I did, no matter what I said, no matter how much love and friendship I had given to her, that this was just the way it would be now.
I had become as dead as she was, inside. I had lost the capacity to love.
The simple word of "Love" itself already died and went away. I could barely feel the sensation of her in my arms or of her lips and tongue on my chest. The only thing I could feel was her burning cigarette on my skin, temporarily relieving a deeper pain of
un-love.
I stroked my fingers and palm gently over the skin of her exposed shoulder blades, over her spine and down her back.
I let Katie kiss me.
I never told her how I felt.
