leave hope at the door

eric sheehy despair personified indie oc

[elpisiarchive-deactivated201504]

   they’re laying on her bed. they both now what happened moments before. and ellie feels crippling guilt about it. not because humans found it disgusting, or because she felt that she had to conform to that (she was bigger than that. she was just a concept, but she wouldn’t be here if it wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for humanity, it was confusing) but she just. felt odd and she couldn’t help but turn to him, her eyes slightly vacant as she tries to divorce herself from what she’s about to say. it could certainly get messy, that was for certain.

   a shudder as she takes a deep breath and he can probably feel her shaking from where their thighs are pressed together. not the best pillow talk, honestly. but she needs to know this. otherwise she would make him leave. she couldn’t do another loveless relationship, she’s already been in more than she would like, and she wasn’t going to succumb again. her hand is resting just above his stomach, warm against his cool skin.   

                “Can you. Love? Can you love —- me?”

[sheerdespair-blog1]

     he can already feel the self loathing creeping back in. maybe it’s not even his, it’s just bleeding across from his sister. or perhaps it’s both, their own hatred of self binding them together spiritually. they've lived long enough that it’s almost impossible to not have made enough mistakes to despise themselves. no matter how far they drift, they always come back, always leave their mark. was there really any point in deny it anymore? neither could exist without the other, even if eric had spent his entire independent life running from it. 

     “i don’t know.” it’s not meant to be dismissive, simply honest. it’s been a long time since he’s felt this confused, this lost. the cloud of apathy he wears like a security blanket has deserted him and he doesn’t know what to do without it.

                                              “but i’m willing to try”

[elpisiarchive-deactivated201504]

    when he takes his shirt off, she hiccups, fingers instead curling on flesh, the fabric thrown somewhere on the floor. she follows it with her eyes for a moment before looking back at him. her eyes are red and puffy and her cheeks are just as red. eyelashes sit in clumps and her lips look as if she’s been chewing on them. she’s all there, but she doesn’t feel angry towards him. she just feels hollow.

   she continues to squirm, trying to settle against him properly and yet she can’t get comfortable and a soft whine falls from her lips as she looks up at her brother. thin fingers curling into skin hard enough to bruise. she knows he likes that. after all pain makes him stronger, just like how empathy makes her stronger. their weaknesses are each others strengths. how was that for ying and yang.

   her fingers flick over his chest before coming to settle behind his neck, her crotch close to his own. she knows this is wrong. but she doesn’t care. it’ll make it hurt less, won’t it?

                                                            “Do you want me, Eric?”

   her voice is soft and cracks half way through the words, her voice hurting from how much she had spent screaming and crying. she had been pathetic in her behaviour and she wasn’t going to get any better. but at least she’ll be in control. and control is all that she could possibly want right now. 

   when he catches her lips with his, she pushes herself closer to his body, deepening the kiss quickly. her fingers dig into his neck, her teeth catching on his lower lip before pulling away.

                                                  “You can have me, if you want it.”

                this would be done on her own terms. and she would feel no regret for it.   

[sheerdespair-blog1]

     there are a million reasons why they shouldn't do this running around eric's head. strangely, we're related wasn't number one.       "i...yeah."  he admits more to himself than her. his arteries tingle, energy charging through his blood stream and making him feel so alive. he leans back, subconsciously tipping his head up and baring his neck. his hands find their way to her thighs, gripping them tightly, as if he's afraid she's about to disappear.      "whatever you need." it's permission. he's not going to stop her, whatever she wants to do. needs to do. it's him that wants. she needs this. it's a wonder they've never done it before, really. all the years, all the energy expended between them. are they really all that different from the gods of peoples long ago? zeus and hera, isis and osiris, what made them so special?     reaching up he tugs at her top, pulling it up and over her head. it's been barely clinging to her anyway. it joins his, discarded where he throws it across the room. his mouth finds her collarbone, sucking just hard enough to bruise. his hips press upward of their own accord and he realises that maybe he needs this too.

[sheerdespair-blog1]

elpisi:

    she’d never seen the doubt in his eyes, or the far away looks. she never had thought of herself as overbearing, she had thought of herself as loving. she had never realized that she had been too much for him. she’d been blinded by her love and maybe if they had talked about it, it may have not come to this. he hadn’t known about her pregnancy, and if she had it her way, he never would. “

                                                 I just wanted love.”

   she squirms in his lap and she whimpers, fingers catching on his shirt as she continues to bury her face in his shoulder. it’s hard to get comfortable so she continues to do that, not really thinking of any possible consequences.

   tears are starting to dry with his soothing touch, but she’s still broken inside and she knew she would take a very long time to heal. she usually did. after her first marriage (and only one. he would have said no if she had asked, she knew that now) it had taken her a decade to pull herself together, though that had mainly been because the marriage had been a violent one, full of anger and hatred and resentment. this one wasn’t like that, but there had been things that just hadn’t been spoken about and that had been their ruin.

  fingers curl tighter into his shirt as she looks up at him and she doesn’t really notice when she rips his shirt, tearing finger sized holes in the fabric. she doesn’t apologize, still staring up at her brother. she was a mess, but it was obvious that he was too. maybe that was one of the few things that they both had in common. they were broken and unable to be fixed.   

      he hears the cotton shredding, feels the snap of each individual fibre as they give under the stress. it's nothing new, he's had more shirts torn in fights than he can count, many of those in ...disagreements... with his sister. but there's always been rage behind the clothing destruction. ellie doesn't look as though there's enough her present to even be angry.       gently he pries her fingers from his shirt and takes it off (it's not easy with her curled up against him, but he manages eventually), tossing it aside. he'd hoped that it would make him feel cleaner but it doesn't. the warm sensation on his skin settling itself somewhere deep in the pits of his stomach, setting his insides ablaze with...whatever this is. fuck.

      fuck. fuck. fuck.

      he knows what this is.

      "el..." he starts but the words don't come. he should get up, leave, before he does something stupid. but he can't. not when she's looking up at him with such hollow eyes. this time...this time he'll stay.

      he brushes a thumb across her cheek. it's even softer than her hair. and then. (he shouldn't). and then. (it's a bad idea). and then. (in all honesty, he's had much worse ones). and then.

      he leans down and catches her lips in his.

[elpisiarchive-deactivated201504]

          “He loved me at first. He did, I could tell. He would do anything for me. And then it stopped. It just went away and we ignored it and——- he left me.”

      how isn’t he laughing at her? she knew how pathetic her behaviour was, it was all that ran around her head going backwards and forwards and around and around and it was demanding and crushing all at once. it wasn’t something that one could ignore. this had shaken her to the bones and cut her to the very quick. she should have noticed it earlier and yet she hadn’t. they’d been drifting for a while now and ellie had just thought it was because he’d been busy with work. she had never thought it would have come to this and her being left in possibly the most dramatic way possible. there was no closure here, and that was probably what hurt the most. she had no clue where to find the other, and she doesn’t dare try and find him at work. being arrested at a police department for being hysterical wasn’t her cup of tea.

          “I was going to have his baby. We were going to be a family.”

        she doesn’t expect the kiss and she jolts before calming and curling in tighter towards him before pulling away for a moment so she could just instead curl in on his lap before she was sure that if she wasn’t careful she would just slide to the floor in the gap between their chairs. this was much safer, it was that simple. 

          “He was a good man. He liked to drink. But we were happy. Until now.”

             and never again. she would never hold her beloved in her arms again.

[sheerdespair-blog1]

     Eric wonders how happy they truly were. He had no doubt that his sister had been happy, but no one leaves out of the blue. There’s always a reason, always a series of events that lead up to that final, fateful blow.

     “I’m sorry.” About what, exactly, he doesn’t know. Everything, he guesses. This whole situation. He does know that he’s never known a man who liked to drink that he would consider ‘good’.

     “I’m sorry.” He repeats it because there’s nothing else to be said. He strokes his sister’s hair, his rough fingers catching on the knots. There’s something wrong about this whole picture. He doesn’t feel like he’s gaining anything from her heartache. If anything, it’s as though she is draining him, sucking at the deep well of nothingness within him. Maybe that’s why he’s actually feeling...compassion? Is that what this is?

She is warm, her touch burning him at every point of contact. He’s overheating, melting. Normally he feels like icy, hard and cold. Shatterable. Not today. He let’s her stay, curled up tight and pressed against him. Keeps his hand in her hair just to remind her that he’s here. Not Don. Not Father. Him.

[elpisiarchive-deactivated201504]

      she grumbles unhappily when he takes the bottle from her hand and she tries to snatch it back, but she fails at doing that, far too drunk to have any good coordination. there’s a curse as her breath hitches slightly and she’s wiping furiously at any tears that had been resting upon her face. she must look incredibly weak. she would probably hold no resistance if he wanted to rip out her heart. after all it was one of the few ways to kill her and she wasn’t afraid to pass on her role to someone else, because she was practically useless. after all what can someone do if even hope loses the ability to believe in oneself and have hope?

                               you have to light the fire somewhere else.

        his footsteps get close and she stares at the table with pure determination. only then does she hear him sit down. but she doesn’t notice straight away that he’s holding her, not until he pulls her close does she startle and try to push him away. she only does that for a few moments before giving in and curling into him, her chest heaving as she tries not to cry.

                    “I loved him so much. I was… you already know what I was.”

      there’s guilt and pain seeping into every pore of her body. she’d been pregnant a day ago and now she wasn’t, her baby was gone. she had no clue what theo had done with the infant’s body and she couldn’t help but wonder if he’ll use it to torment her later. a sniff and she presses her head against his shoulder, as if she was trying to hide away from the facts of what had happened.

                            “He was my everything. And he left me.”

[sheerdespair-blog1]

     “you love too much.” eric says plainly, resting his head lightly on top of hers. she had always been so free with her affections, for as long as he could remember, in a way that he never had. eric never put too much stock in his relationships, never invested himself in what he presumed would be just another notch on the bedpost. maybe that was why they never lasted. because he never believed that they would. it kept him safe though, allowing him to maintain his calm, apathetic aesthetic. he hasn’t heard from his ex since he sensed his mother was around. that is hardly likely to be a coincidence. oh well, he is no longer in danger and that’s all that matters.

     “you don’t need him. i promise you, you don’t.” he adds, pressing a gentle kiss onto her head. is that too much? it’s a long time since he’s tried to be a proper brother. it’s strangely quiet, with neither of them shouting or throwing things. alien, almost. 

     “he never deserved you anyway. you’re better than him.” better than him. better than me. better than all of us.

[elpisiarchive-deactivated201504]

        her back is turned to him now and her shirt is practically falling off her, half her bra already showing and he may as well take it off. but she won’t, she can’t really do that in front of her brother now, can she? it would be rather important but ellie’s going to be soon teetering upon a time where she just didn’t care at all.

               “I can’t help but want more. He stopped loving me you know. it was all too much and he just. Stopped. I was. He left me the house. My cat. Everything. But he left. And he’s never coming back. I loved him. He was meant to be my forever.”

        she’s hurting and she wants to make him hurt too. because maybe that will fill the hole that was carved into her chest with the departure of donal. she shouldn’t have focused so deeply on him, she shouldn’t have placed so much importance in her life because she should have known that it wouldn’t end well, but she hadn’t and here she was no, hurting so much that she felt like she was once again on fire. another swallow of the bottle and she doesn’t stop, gulping the liquid down and down and down until she can feel fire in her lungs and she has to stop.

        her cat has hidden away after the first day of crying, unable to make her feel better it had curled up on the window ledge in her bedroom, keeping watch of her, but far away enough that it wouldn’t become a victim to her sadness or anger. but she was already her own victim. it was going to be the end of her, she knew that now.

[sheerdespair-blog1]

     forever. oh his sweet, naive sister. there’s no such thing. the only thing that stays with you always is yourself. she’s not looking at him. does she hate him that much? or is she simply ashamed that he is seeing her like this? rolling his eyes he slowly got to his feet and strolled across the room. he takes the bottle from her hands, not that there’s much left for her to drink anyway, placing it on the kitchen bench. then, as a show of good faith, he takes his lighter from his pocket and makes it clear that he is leaving it on the bench too. 

     he feels naked without it. vulnerable.

     he walks back over to her, making himself look as casual and unruffled as possible. then he sits himself down beside her, and after a moment’s pause, wraps an arm around her shoulders.

                                                  “that’s the ellie i know. hopelessly optimistic.” 

     it’s a stark contrast from the last time they met, all blood and fire and pain. the smell of despair is stronger now that he is so close to her, setting his veins and arteries alight as it flows through him as naturally as blood.

                                                                            “forever is a very long time.”

[elpisiarchive-deactivated201504]

      her knees jiggle up and down as she sits. she’s restless something wrong and her pupils dilated. if he asks she won’t tell him what she’s had (just a little bit of everything) he doesn’t deserve to know and it’s not as if it’ll kill her. her body could survive just about anything and it already had. there was only a white line on her stomach to say what she had done a few days previous. but it didn’t stop her from being bitter, the taste foul upon her tongue as she continues to smoke. a hysterical laugh when he speaks and she turns to look at him, her eyes practically blank, holding just about no emotion. but her mind is running at a hundred miles and hour, hurtling towards oblivion.

            “You don’t get it, do you? Everyone in this family loves you. Me, mum, dad. Everyone. Mum hates my guts, she wishes that she could have gotten rid of me. She’ll never love me because why would sorrow love hope? She won’t want to see me anyway, what is the point of warning me. I know she didn’t vanish into thin air all of a sudden. I know that she still exists.”

      a flinch when the click of the lighter happens. she remembers what happened last time, her ragged skin proof that it had happened. she wants to curl up in a corner and wail her heart out, but she was sure ms donasi would call the police if she did that. So here she was, stuck with her brother. So she opens the bottle of whiskey with one hand before gulping some down, scorching her throat, but she’d be fine later. she was always fine later.

[sheerdespair-blog1]

     he slides down the wall as he smokes, until he’s sitting on the floor. from there he watches her, gazing relentlessly across the room.

                                                                                  “is father not enough?”

     am i not enough is what he is really asking. he feels oddly calm, even as his sister attempts to press his buttons with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer. the miserable ache that had been in his stomach over the last few days was lifting, leaving behind it a hollow emptiness that felt like home (normally he hated that nothingness inside, but it had a familiarity that made it safe). even as she falls apart, she’s putting him back together. just another sign of how fucked up their relationship is. 

     he lights another cigarette as she drinks, his other hand tracing absently over the scars of his stab wounds as he openly stares at the scars he gave her. maybe he’ll get her a cat. she looks like she needs some regular company. does she even like cats? he realises he doesn’t know.

[elpisiarchive-deactivated201504]

        the burns are still obvious on her arm, messed up flesh climbing up and down to her wrist. there wasn’t a spot that her brother had missed and it was torn and ruined flesh that would be with her as long as she’ll live. if that wasn’t an i love you, ellie didn’t know what was. she’d never been told that she was loved, it had never happened. maybe she had dreamed all of this. maybe none of this was real.

           “Bullshit. You don’t care about me. You never have. No one ever does.”

      another couple of puffs on her cigarette and she blows it straight into his face. all there is on the kitchen table is a half empty bottle of whiskey. half the furniture was missing, with donal taking most of his important things. however, it didn’t stop ellie from feeling as if this was home. but it didn’t quite feel the same way as this used to. licking her lower lip, she slides down into the kitchen seat, smoke wafting around her.

[sheerdespair-blog1]

     he knows what she is doing, poking and prodding him. it’s strange, being on this side of the argument. he purses his lips as smoke drifts into his face, trying to focus on the pain in his tongue to stop him from snapping. he fails.      “oh. of course not. silly me, i forgot that you were always neglected and unloved because Mummy chose me. well guess what? mum’s back. i can feel her, even if i can’t see her. i thought you might like to know but i guess you’d rather wallow in your own self pity and tell me what i feel.” he growls, taking out his own cigarettes and leaning against the nearest wall. 

     a click of the lighter is all it takes, he guides the flame up without having to take the lighter itself out of his pocket. that last point is a sore one because it’s something she’s done for as long as he can remember. she’s so full of emotion that she assumes he is too, projects feelings on to him that he doesn’t have because he can’t or chooses not to. there must be something broken in him.

[elpisiarchive-deactivated201504]

          her hands are trembling, they’re visibly shaking as she shuts the door and she’s pulling a cigarette out of her pocket and lighting it and puffing away as she starts coughing, deep and rough and she doesn’t want to talk about it. she doesn’t want to even think about it and yet everything is revolving around it and she just can’t get away from the thoughts and she just wants it to stop. she thought that the weed would help and the booze, but instead she had just felt even more morose and hadn’t had a clue what to do to stop it. so she had just sat there for twelve hours without moving. and now her brother was here. what was she meant to do? stab him again and make him kill her? that sounded good, maybe she could provoke him into doing that.

        fingers clench together and she tries to look away from her brother. her eyes are red and her eye makeup from days previous is smudged. she probably smells and she hasn’t had a shower in at least three days. swallowing hard she manages to furrow her brows and then glare at her brother, baring her teeth at him.

        there’s an anger swelling inside her and she’s going to take it out on him, because the person she wanted to take it out on wasn’t here and never would be here ever again.

               “What? You don’t want to rub it in that your sister is nothing but a good for nothing slut? I thought you would enjoy that, brother dear.”

[sheerdespair-blog1]

     there’s no fun in this. she’s so far gone that he can’t take any joy in needling at her. there’s no need to push her for a reaction, it’s all there on the surface or just beneath it. she just referred to herself as a slut. her eyes are dull, not a single spark of hope in them, and that’s just terrifying.      “i’m not...i didn’t come here to upset you.” how could he explain that he hadn’t been feeling himself lately, that he was here because he hadn’t been feeling himself and he thought he knew why? he wants to reach out and touch her arm, to...to comfort her, but he worries that would only make things worse. which would be a spectacular achievement, even for them.

[elpisiarchive-deactivated201504]

        apathy. ellie isn’t for that at the moment. apathy is what took her boyfriend away, the love of her life away and yet now she has nothing. no boyfriend, no child. it’s all gone because she knew that she couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to look at herself, let alone a child from that union. so she had it cut out of her body and her body was neatly stitched back together by a man who she thought of as her enemy. and yet, he had done it and done it well. her body was empty and she wasn’t pregnant any longer. she had only been a few months along. but she wouldn’t talk about it. not now, not ever. it wasn’t something that was going to be on the agenda. especially not with her brother.

        at the knock on the door, she gets up from where she had been sitting in the dining room table, just staring blankly into nothing. she hadn’t noticed the drying blood on her face or the face that her top had practically slipped off her body. when she opened it she hadn’t expected to see her brother. one part of her had yearned for it to be donal coming back saying that he had made a terrible mistake and still loved her, but she knew it couldn’t be that. instead she had gotten her brother and she just didn’t know what to do about it. Her face falls and she knows she’s a mess, she knew that she reeks of despair, that he could probably know every single one of her dirty dark secrets and get away with telling them all to her and she wouldn’t harm a hair on his body. she steps to the side, moving to let him inside. 

                   “Get inside. I don’t want the neighbours to talk.”

[sheerdespair-blog1]

     eric allows himself to be ushered inside without a single word of protest. not even a joke about the neighbours. he’s so used to anger from her that he has nothing to counter this with. there’s too much emotion pouring from her for him to handle. it doesn’t so much wash over him as crash into him, pounding at him like the sea on a rocky shore. he’s had plenty of lost souls wander into the bar, listened to them as they poured out secrets and sorrows that he already knew. fragile human psyches that he took great pleasure in unravelling even as they thought him nothing more than an object that dispensed beer.

     it’s information overload. too many bits and pieces for him to piece together. enough that he gets a rough idea of the true depths of his sister’s despair. never pegged you as the type to have an abortion. he only just stops himself from blurting it out, no small talk or natural build up. he bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood.

     then he asks her a question, tripping over his words in the way that only she makes him. even in this state she throws him off his game.                                                                                 “do you...need...to talk?”

[sheerdespair-blog1]

     he finds the house with little effort. it's a proper house, all suburban and proper. there are even plants that aren't in pots for christ’s sake. it's enough to offend the sensibilities of any self-respecting immortal with a shit job who’s living in his sister’s flat so that he isn’t squatting in a different place every week. he steels himself, letting the nerves and apprehension drain from his body, taking all the tension he’d been carrying with it. apathy is his weapon of choice as well as his protection.

     he walks up to the door and knocks, not even bothering to check if there’s a bell. as he waits for an answer he rehearses what he wants to say (for the millionth time) and confirms with himself what he needs to tell her. well, he doesn’t need to tell her. but he feels he owes it to her since he hasn’t been paying rent (or fixed the hole in the wall. oh, and there was also the matter of that scarring, although the marks on his chest bore testament to the fact that he hadn’t gotten away free from that particular battle either). the door opens and he grins cockily but it vanishes when he catches sight of her face, his plans with it.

                                                                            “fuck, el. you look like shit.”

[sheerdespair-blog1]

there's an empty bottle of vodka in the bed and if that isn't a sign that everything is fucked beyond repair. his head is screaming in agony, and he's too late to do anything about it now. the alcohol has already been filtered from his system and all that's left is dehydration. the fact that his body even needs water when he can slip in and out of different skins is bullshit.

he throws back the covers and forces himself to his feet, staggering into the bathroom with all the dexterity of a kid who's just gotten off a roundabout. it was a few seconds before he noticed his reflection...

well fuck. he should have expected that this would be the face staring back, although it was a surprise that he'd manage to sleep through the transition. usually it hurt to become this miserable sack of shit. trying to summon the energy to strip off his underpants, he turns the taps on the tiny bath. he's never used the facilities in his sister's apartment before and he feels too god damned awful to bother with temperature testing. when he gets in (still in his underwear, because fuck it) it's too fucking hot, not enough to burn but still on the wrong side of painful. the sensitive skin over the healing stab wounds courtesy of his dear sister ached, even as the tension in his head eased slightly. 

the bath itself was tiny, probably meant more as a selling feature than an actual functional space, so in order to get his shoulders underwater he was forced to bend his legs almost double. he knew that some shed skins and changed faces like it was a game but he'd always found it so difficult. it's why he kept going back to the same familiar faces every time. he knew those faces, how they worked, what expressions looked like. but this face...

whether it was the face itself, the physical composition of this particular formation of his brain, or just the psychological impact of having this appearance, he always felt so absurdly vulnerable. it's why he refused to acknowledge this face as part of eric (even though he knew it was more him than any other). this face was naoise, a phase to be endured just like this shitty fucking hangover.

it might have been twenty minutes or it might have been two hours before he decided to drag his sorry ass out of the now tepid water, wrap himself in a towel and shuffle his way back into the living area where he lay down on the sofa and tried to let himself fall back to sleep.

[iamnotperfectiamsorry]

[r-endrick]

[anamorphosis-and-isolate]

Emil Cioran from On the Heights of Despair

[mikefrawley]

Depression is when you’re afraid it will never get better Despair is when you’re 100% certain it won’t

(via mikefrawley)

[myprettylittleworldofdreams]