Friction fitting

Chapter 8[title: we reap what we sow]

I sit in the middle of a large room, blinking tears out of my eyes.

There is a couch and an actual doghouse with a cushion inside. Not a bullshit plastic one like the ones Faith had seen in Home Depot and chuckled about, with their fake wood grain and warped edges. It is actually wood, painted, with an attached floor.

A pizza box and three cups of mountain dew sit on the low coffee table, still bubbling. An old projection style TV is positioned so that it can be seen from the sofa or the doghouse, with a TV box already attached with Netflix open and the remote on the coffee table.

In front of the dog house there are a pair of chew toy style rubber bones, the type that squeak, There’s a dog-bowl of water, and a dog-bowl of cereal.

It feels like Faith could sit on the couch and Screw could curl up in the dog house and they could coexist in peace.

Before I can fully process what I am looking at, tears are dripping from my cheeks, and my chest is shaking with buried sobs. I try to strangle the emotions, but find them overwhelming me too quickly. I lay down and let myself cry for a while, trying to even understand why I am crying, and failing.

When I get up, I go to the pizza first. IT’s greasy and unhealthy but it’s hot and covered in a variety of veggies. After three slices I look to the TV. It takes some fiddling with the remote, but I start some documentary about penguins playing, and finally I’m left with a decision. The couch, or the dog house.

I look around, checking the room and even the sofa to make sure there aren’t any cameras, that I’m not being watcher or mocked for letting my guard down. Then, once I feel safe, I take one of the cups of soda into the dog house and curl up to watch the show, some itching in the back of my mind being temporarily soothed, giving me a moment of peace.

It feels a little like a performance for my own benefit. No audience, but these are still actions I am taking that fit a script, a certain narrative. If I was being watched, I would feel like a fool.

I growl, I bite the chew toy and grin when I find they’ve washed it so there isn’t some bad flavor on it. I run around the room in a tight circle before returning to my dog house and laying back down, panting a little from the sudden burst of energy.

I can feel my identity dying, in a way, as I stop second guessing everything I have been doing. As I stop holding such tight control on my actions and emotions. I am slipping into an absence of self that feels wonderful.

I become aware again as my teeth sink into the arm of a nurse, and I taste blood. Something about the coppery tang brings me back from blissful oblivion, but I do not come back peacefully. I’m thrashing, kicking and snarling. Though my heart isn’t in it. It fades, it slowly becomes a weary exhaustion that creeps in as I’m pinned to a familiar steel table and strapped down,

George is watching, his expression frightened and concerned.

For the first time since we’ve met we’re both bare. He is letting his emotions show, his true reaction to me, and I am just barely regaining control over the darkness within me.

We look at eachother for a bit as the nurses catch their breath, staying nearby in case I start fighting again.

“You seem to be more aware now,” George says, his voice carefully steady. “So I’ll ask again. Why did you attack the TV?”

I remember. It’s colossally stupid, but I remember just barely because it is so recent in my mind.

“There was a bird,” I say with a grin, trying not to laugh. “There was a bird and it was green, and the darkness wanted to catch and kill it!”

I can’t stop myself, I start to laugh. I laugh until I cry, unable to stop, head hanging low and my whole body hanging from the straps as I try to curl in on myself.

George puts his hand on my back and stays with me as I cry, a small and unexpected comfort as I repeat it to myself.

“I wanted to kill it. I wanted to kill it.”

/chapter 8