Night Has Words

[nighthaswords]

I am in my desk

And my fight or flight is active

I could disembowel myself on the floor

I think my blood would work better than the ink

On these blank pages

[nighthaswords]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Summary: That time Johnny charmed some extras into joining our lake trip

Series: 20 minute challenges

Notes: I'm doing a thing where I challenge myself to write something in 20 minutes and see what comes out. This is almost entirely unedited, all I did was removed the last three words because it wasn't a complete sentence. Otherwise, this was all done in those 20 mins.

Been a while, but here's a taglist if y'all still interested:

@prettyvampy

Full story text below the cut:

Johnny was the sort of man who towered over people. He wasn’t very tall, and he wasn’t very imposing, but he had that sort of personality. He was of the size that could easily be picked up and thrown like an oversized softball, but he had no fear in any inch of him. He’d run up to guys at the bar at least five-times his size and start chatting away, daring them into shit.

The crazy thing was, Johnny never backed down on anything he said. You know the type, usually they brag and bluster but ultimately step down when pressed. They know when the jig is up, they know when to call it quits. Not Johnny. Johnny would say something and, by god, he was gonna do it.

I once watched him claim he could do the high jump at the pool, only to climb to the roof and jump to the neighbor’s pond to prove it. I’m not sure he knew what the high jump was. He volunteered to be tied to the roof of the van on the day trip to the lake last summer, so we didn’t have to take two cars. We got some of those bungee cords and tied him on, drove real slow but he still climbed down looking like he’d been through a wind tunnel. Never got hurt, either, just laughed and laughed.

Of course, then came the Fae. Johnny, oh Johnny, of course, couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He saw them first, and shouted out an invitation to join us. We thought he was yelling at the trees about getting them a beer before they walked out of the woods. I’ll admit that I was scared, but Johnny, he didn’t have an inch of fear in his body, never did and never would, and he just steamrolled right over everything. Asked them their names, laughed when they wouldn’t give them, talked classes and jobs and the game and swimming, and soon enough we were all laughing like old friends.

We weren’t stupid, we didn’t give them our names either. Used stupid nicknames for the trip. But, y’know, you haven’t lived until you’ve played chicken in a lake on the shoulders of a Fae. Chrissie managed to shove one into the water and it came back up covered in water-lilies and hacking petals. None of us could tell you where they came from, but it was the funniest thing we’d ever seen.

Johnny, being Johnny, somehow even managed a trick. He bet the Fae that he could find a phrase that none of them were able to say, and the Fae were just relaxed enough to agree to it. They got caught by Johnny’s charm just as much as any of us were. He bet his own name on it, so it’s damn good that he knew what to say, but he kept us all in suspense like a true showman. He turned and twisted, dramatically tapped his chin with his finger, hmm’d and haw’d like a detective, even gave a few false starts and bad guesses to set us all laughing. Things even I could tell wouldn’t work. By the end of it, we were yelling along with the Fae, calling out flaws like we wanted him to lose while the Fae called out suggestions like they wanted him to win.

He finally said, “I promise to tell a lie!”

Honestly, it’s a testament to his charm that they didn’t damn well hex him for it.

[nighthaswords]

Here is the monster

Here is the monster

Don't you get it?

Here is the monster

[nighthaswords]

My ribcage is constraining,

My ribcage is armor.

Should I be able to feel it like stone?

Lean against it like a wall

I can't tell if I want

To break free or hide inside

[nighthaswords]

The lungs are flesh filled with

Bunches of little pathways

Branching out smaller and smaller and smaller

Until they reach a tiny little pocket that fills with air

Sometimes, when I breathe, I can feel every single one of them

Strangling me

[nighthaswords]

Theres something growing in my heart

Like a weed

And it keeps cutting me with the thorns

[nighthaswords]

Somestimes i wonder how much of the world is real. When i stop paying attention to it, it all goes away behind a film, but its there when i reach out to touch it. If I invite it over for tea, it will knock at my door like it never left, and leave again once the tea is drank. The film is a settled skin and every so often i have to break it again, and again, and again, but it always comes back if i let the life i have sit for too long. So, with that all in mind, which is real? The skin or the without?

[nighthaswords]

The light bled onto the wet pavement from the stoplights, streaks of green, red, and yellow stretching down the roads. For once, it was actually a warm summer storm, the sort of night where the humidity wrapped around you like a blanket, even with the rain to cut it.

The lamp above you flickers once. You sigh and lean back against it's post. Behind you, the school sits empty, abandoned. The doors are locked and the windows are boarded up. The stoplights change, and the sign across the street starts blinking for you to start walking. You don't move.

The lights used to change their timing based on the time of year, the time of day. Long red lights at the start and end of the school day, so the kiddos would have plenty of time to walk across. Shorter, almost nonexistent, red lights the rest of the time, to keep the traffic flowing. Somewhere along the line, something must have fritzed in their programming. They act like school has just let out, no matter what happens. Always stopping traffic so the kids can cross, even in the middle of night, in the middle of summer.

The light blinks at you that it's time to cross the street, patiently signalling for children that haven't been here for years.

By now, all the cars around know not to drive through here. It's quicker by far to just go around, take another route, so the street is empty in front of you. You've been standing here for a good while now, soaking yourself to the bone, and not a single car has come by. It's just you, the lights, and the rain.

It's not like you mind the rain. It's warm for once, big, fat drops that don't immediately cut you to the core with their cold. If you were just a touch younger, or maybe just a touch less tired, you might even enjoy it. You might jump in the puddles, or stick out your tongue and try to catch the raindrops.

But you aren't, so you don't. You lean against the lamppost, watching the streetlights reflect off the wet pavement and the ripples in the puddles, until Jack finally walks up from behind you.

"Ready to go?" He asks.

You sigh. You straighten up and take one last look around. Red, yellow, green streaks stretch across the ground. The rain is starting to get heavier as the night cools down.

"Yeah," you say, "I'm ready."

Behind you, the traffic light blink, blink, blinks that it's time to cross the street as you walk away.

[nighthaswords]

Utopia cannot exist.

"Should we stop trying then?"

No.

[nighthaswords]

You ever think about finding your purpose in life

And find yourself thinking: "Man,

That sounds exhausting"?

There's supposed to be something better than this,

There's supposed to be something that will

Make me want to wake up in the morning,

Will wake me up in the morning, energize me

Better than the coffee and the caffiene.

Being so awake all the time sounds like

Such a chore, though.

Can't I want to rest?

But the thought of resting forever feels

So incredibly unfufilling.

There has to be something more than this,

There has to be something more than numb acceptance

of the day to day.

There has to be a way to live actively,

I don't want to sleepwalk for eternity,

But the thought of waking up makes me want to go back to sleep.

When the idea of purpose is exhausting,

And the feeling of the lack is suffocating,

Where can I find a breath of air?

[nighthaswords]

Experiment: Me

There is a terror in my soul

That prevents me being bitter.

You did your best by me

But the lab rat mentality

Made me unfit for polite society,

Left me stageless but still an actor,

Lineless but for a show no one knows,

And if i think too hard on it

I find my fingers wanting to snap and fall apart.

I find my bones constricted in

Unfitting flesh,

Or my flesh strung up on unyielding bones,

A coat hanger silhouette monstrosity.

I feel unclean.

I feel like a misshapen symphony,

Frankenstein's monster has nothing on me

All parts fit perfectly to make the doctor scream,

A tune told laughing in a minor key and

You

Were the one who did this to me.

I can't take it back.

I can not take it back, not given the choice.

For where would I be in the alphabet

Without the ordering of the lettering, arbitrary

In execution, but fundamental to organization?

I was a creature who should not have existed

But in front of god I was told worship,

So i guess that makes me ordained.

I am an abomination, made without even the

Courtesy not to blame for the pain

Of mine own misfiring lungs.

How disappointing, my claws, my teeth, my bite

Worse than my bark, silent unhelpful.

Still,

It is me.

Here is a prison: wrapped in electrical impulses

And confined to the body of but one human being

Made to be the test for this sort of thing.

Don't ask it what comes after, don't let it ask you.

This isn't a sentence, but here's the punishment

In the place of the clause, noun to phrase

It says:

It will continue to be itself, for the rest of eternity.

And it will continue to claw for itself,

For the rest of eternity.

Look at how it clings to itself, how it can't let go

Of even the worst of-

I

Find myself bitter,

Despite-

Here is another path

And there is another path

And here is a choice they made for you

And there is a choice you wish they had made

And when given the option of paths to walk,

Given the start, the over, the do again,

Here is the flinch from the path untaken.

There's a monster down the path.

They look like me.

They would be me, if i took the path

And left myself behind at the crossroads

With the mosquitoes.

Here is the sin that has been done to me,

Blameless in all it's glory, naked in Eden.

You ever so wanted the best for me.

Where do I put the hazelnuts?

I cannot devour them, nor

Should I make you, nor

Could I make you.

The best apology is behavior that is changed,

But I am the behavior and the change is not

Wearing my clothes.

On the side that faces inwards, to my heart

From my ribs, drips smoke trails like caressing syrup,

Cold as the liquid nitrogen grave.

I am the failed project that you made,

But I am the failed project that you made.

Though agony I can't convey

Lives vicariously in my marrow,

I lack recognition or even insight into

The funhouse mirror I could have been.

I find myself flinching from the uncanny valley

Of a myself who is not fractured.

Here so goes:

My willingly unwilling roommate.

[nighthaswords]

My truck gets horrible gas mileage.

Some sort of manufacturer error

Made at the factory

That never did get recalled.

(Or if it did, I never heard of it)

Oh, it runs just fine,

But it costs me a small fortune

To do the chores and errands.

It gets to the point where

I skip some,

Just until tomorrow.

Just until payday.

But then tomorrow comes

And the errands still need to get done,

So up and down the street I go,

Watching the tank tick down

To empty

Sooner than yesterday.

Picking pennies out of my pockets

To pay for more,

'Til my rainy day change runs out.

Fine, I think, I guess I'll have to do

What's left

Tomorrow,

When I get paid.

The check seems smaller

And the list of chores get longer,

Some are late, others are too late.

Fine, fine, it's all fine,

I put myself into debt at the gas station

Taking out more than I can afford

Because I have to get this done,

Deadlines biting my heels.

It's fine, the truck runs fine,

But payday hasn't come in a while,

And the overdraft fees are

Starting to kill me,

Spending all my time driving

Up and up and up the street,

And the garbage hasn't been taken out.

And the homework isn't done.

And there's not enough hours in the day.

Not enough gas in the tank.

In the end my reward

Is another lecture on disappointment

[nighthaswords]

For years now,

I've been sitting across a room from myself

And I am all the things I hate about me.

I glare myself down from across the room

Forced to reckon with the disgusting comfort

That if I wanted me gone

Then I would have to leave, too.

[nighthaswords]

Once upon a time, Jack met Sheila.

To her, he said, "How do you do?"

She turned and she sighed,

delivered a white lie,

said, "Better, now I'm with you."

[nighthaswords]

Words

Words words words, where have my words gone?

I kissed the blarney stone, stood in line as I climbed through the castle. Leaned out over the ledge as my friends took a picture, my lips against the castle wall, trying to channel an Irish blessing.

I'm a writer, I'm a writer, I'm a writer, so why will my pen not move?

(I've heard the locals laugh about the tourists, all climbing to kiss a rock.)

[nighthaswords]

I'm moving in with my partner soon.

My parents love me. I know this in a logical, intellectual way. They love me, and they worry about me, and I'm not sure they know anything about me. I text them if I'm going somewhere, and when I'm at school, my mom tries to call once a week. My parents love me.

Ever since I learned it was an option, I've looked forward to moving out of the house. One of the things I was looking forward to most was being able to be anywhere in the house without worrying about being watched. The house became an apartment once I got old enough to understand finances, but the want to exist in a space free from eyes stayed.

I've never lived on my own. I've lived in the dorms, and I had roommates then. I've lived in my childhood home, and I had siblings and parents then. I have never had a living space that was solely and totally mine.

I don't anticipate breaking up with my partner. No one ever does, but that's not the point. I'm realistic, I know I should wait until we can be together in person for a while before we do anything, but I think I want to marry them. I'm giving it six months, at least, I'm waiting that long to make sure, but I think I could marry them. I think I want to spend the rest of my life with them.

I don't think I've ever been given the space to be alone.

My parents like to joke about how I never come out of my room. They ask why they never see me in the living room, or laugh about how strange it is to see me in the kitchen.

There's some nasty, nasty part of me that can't help but mourn. I'm excited, of course I am. My partner is coming down and we're moving in together, of course I'm excited. But I've never gotten to be on my own. People don't just move in with their partners and then move back out without breaking up, and I don't want to break up. I'm happy, I am, I want them here, but I wish I'd had the chance to be on my own first.

[nighthaswords]

Why does writing sound so posh? The things I want to tell you aren't fancy, and they don't deserve the turns of phrase they perform. I want to rip out all the sophistication out of my throat until the words come out raw and bloody and real.

But every time my fingers find the keys, my tone takes a turn for the fantastical. The words twist and dress themselves, and the phrases turn so much they pirouette right around the point I want to make. I take a thousand words to get around my point, outlining the shape of it by the things I can't describe, using the empty noise to make a silhouette out of the silence.

This would be so much easier if I could just say what I mean.