I fell asleep in the ride over. Honestly, I should have taken the time to write the previous post out then, but I put it off till I got back home. Not only do I prefer to type it out on my stationary laptop rather than over my phone, I also had a lot of stuff to do once I got back.

At the top of my list was finding Clover, telling her what happened to the Channeler. Then Bob asked me what I was going to do as I got off.

“I guess you want to get home and see your folks, huh? I mean, you’ve been gone a whole month. Heh, I can relate. When I was your age... I’ll tell you about that next time I see you.”

I was hung up on the last thing he said.

“Sorry, stupid question, what month is it?”

He looked back before leaning against the door, as if he’d never broken down in tears, “Uh, it’s still July, but August is around the corner.”

I nodded, “Oh, ok.”

I had a nagging feeling in the back of my head, that was subsided by the awkward goodbye that was currently taking place.

We stood around in the same field he’d taken off from before, but now he wasn’t just a weird guy I'd encountered.

“Thanks. For helping us out,” it came out forced, though I was glad to have him.

“Hey, what else could I do?”

I feel like he wanted to say more, and to be honest, I should have kept in better contact.

“I’ll see you later, Agent.”

He just nodded; coolly is what he was going for.

I left first, jumping in the unmistakably familiar direction of home. I’d taken for granted how accustomed I am to my little life here; I’d wasted a lot of time running myself ragged trying to find where to go in that city.

This place makes me feel more human, I guess. Like I really do have a place I belong in this world.

Even if that place is as the guy who sits at the front of the biology class that only talks to one person.

With that thought, a sudden change of heart overtaking me.

All of a sudden, Sam’s life became a lot more appealing. I wanted to talk to Saoirse, not Clover.

It had been so long, my exhaustion had already left me, I was simply excited to have a bit of craig with a friend of mine.

The thought that she was a murderer had all but dissipated. In my mind she was someone who’d experienced just as much lose as me, if not more. She was somebody who could understand me.

I was doing short leaps, to the current me it was like taking a leisurely walk, to those watching I was some parkour try hard.

I shot up and over a hill, behind my mask, an unstoppable smile broke out.

It was just how I left it.

From that height I could see river, so about half the town. I was coming in from the south side, the area with single story and old buildings.

Sudden waves of nostalgia started hitting me. I recognised every turn off at that roundabout, I knew who lived in that house there, (an old couple, they’d shouted some obscure slurs at me.)

Then I came to the Mc Donalds. I got a warm and fuzzy feeling, not just because I liked to stash my costume up their before I moved my store to the mountains, but it reminded me of the first time I'd actually talked with Clover.

I stopped for a second at the gas station beside it, smiling dumbly to myself.

A half-assed whistle broke through the quiet country air. I unintentionally turned to face it.

At first, I was happy to see her, thinking to myself, ‘what are the chances?’

Then the irony. And then, when I realised I was in a costume, there was really only one person she could be trying to talk to here.

“Rocky, right??” She was asking, but she already knew it was me. Who else would be dressed like this?

My excitement died nearly instantly. I realised I’d be getting into business quickly.

She had stuffed a hand in her bag, “Took you long enough shit-head. What the hell were you doing??”

I was a little sore that she hadn’t been too worried about me, but my mind quickly jumped to the alternative, “So, you had complete faith in me, did you? Not at all surprised that I beat the Channeler?”

She scoffed with a sullen expression, “I would be, if it was actually you who beat Jack- and don’t call him ‘Channeler’, the last thing you need is to think those types of names are normal. It’s just the ints that call him that, they misheard his name when he first appeared, that’s it.”

She was walking up to me like that dirty roadside was a cat walk.

“Hey, I don’t know what you heard, but I beat the-”

She hissed in at me, “Far as I know, Charlie beat Jack. You're just the guy who turned tail and threatened her into giving that tech up.”

I shook my head and took a step back, “Now hold on, I didn’t threaten her. She- My face was melted off, so even though I was just asking for it-”

“Rocky,” she stopped me, shaking her head as if I was obviously wrong, “Out of all the people in this world, you’re the person who should have the least to do with time manipulation. Because you’re a fucking moron.”

“I wouldn’t-”

She tilted her head, “You wouldn’t be able to resist. Eventually something horrible would happen, something like Valentines, and you’d eventually try and stop every horrible thing in history. And that would kill everything. Ever.”

I hung my head. She changed her posture, becoming a little less aggressive.

I really wasn’t in the mood, so I just said what had to be said, “Right, so you and Charlie talked about it on the flight back over then? So you know what happened to him? What the time ball did?”

Clover shrugged, “She kept to her contract. I don’t know the specifics, but I’m sure they’ll send word to the Mountain sooner or later.”

I nodded, “Right, well, in case they decide to keep his fate secret, like they had done for that escapee, I’ll tell you right now. He’s alive. Him, the ball, and my left hand are frozen in time. Thing about stopping ‘time’ is that everything in its radius is frozen, including the air, the light. Apparently, I didn’t use the ball correctly, and that was the result. It was a prototype after all. Because time manipulation is uncharted waters for all of them, even Charlie, they don’t really understand the physics of it. They can’t undo it. He’s stuck in a big black ball until they figure out how to turn it off.”

She gave it some thought, an eyebrow raised.

“Good. That’s one less thing for the king to worry about.”

I knew that Chandler was planning on killing Clover, but I don’t think I could ever describe that as good.

“Well, if that’s everything, I sort of have a life to get back to.”

I turned tail, but she laughed, “Nope, not yet.”

She was holding out a red letter, what she’d been fishing around for in her bag.

I tried to feign interest and failed, simply shrugging my shoulders.

“It finally came. The letter.”

“And I’m supposed to know what that means?”

Her smile died away, “Oh come on, you remember,” she turned around looking at the chain restaurant, “I texted you about him here. Four people came up in our chat. My king, the guy in Belfast, Chandler, and-” she lifted the letter and her brow, leaving a blank for me to fill.

“How the hell do you expect me to remember something from months ago? With everything you were saying how could I possibly remember that I was going to get a mysterious Red letter?”

She raised a lip, holding back an unreasonable tantrum.

I held my hands out defensively, before taking it off her hands.

Clover was saying something, as I flipped it over and read the writing on the back, not opening it yet:

For the boy.

Contents not for Clover’s eyes.

Instructions for Clover:

Thirteen days from Jack Chandler’s assault, ‘Shamrock’ will return from The City of Babel. Clover is to pass this on for the Deliverer. You will use her ability to arrange a meeting on the day he is projected to return. Provide Shamrock with access to a telescope on August 1st.

Instructions for ‘Shamrock’:

Do not open this until August 1st, 10 PM exaclty. Before this time will result in death. After this time will result in death, with a slight allowance of ten minutes, and a leniency in the event of unforeseen circumstances, e.g the reader being the victim of an assault during the allotted period, or if the letter is in some way damaged in a freak accident.

For further details, proceed to ‘the place you keep your remains, the stone, the bottle; were you’ll leave the seed and the mud’.

-Schism

I was slightly roused by the last part, some kind of riddle? The part about remains makes me think of a graveyard. There are a few around here. The part about a seed made me think it’d be under a tree or something.

I shook my head. I guess that ‘additional processing’ Attrition was talking about is too busy deconstructing other people’s superpowers.

And my underreaction to the ‘will result in death’ part wasn’t because I wasn’t taking it seriously. With all the crap I've seen, sure, if I open this letter I'll die. That makes sense to me now.

It makes me say, ok.

It’s not like there was a lot to go off of, for me to understand what Schism was.

I handed it back to Clover which made her go wide eyed, “Woah,” she said, halting whatever passive aggressive insult she was making, “I’ve done my part. Just don’t open it till the day, and come by my house an hour early. So August 1st, 9 PM.”

I was only noticing something was different about her now.

“Understood??”

I nodded and turned away.

I hopped back onto the side walk and ran off.

I had to fix my helmet as I was running away, to keep it from slipping off.

Once I got to my neighbourhood, I scaled a flat roofed house, dumping myself in a chimney’s blind spot.

As the strap clicked, and the mask popped off, I could feel the heat flush out.

I took that dumb helmet off my head, finally breathing in some fresh air, after nearly a week of that thing on my head.

I might have been a little sweaty and a little red around the face. I guess without SP2, the heat might be a problem. I ran my hand over my shaved head.

After taking a couple of drawn out breathes, I managed a short laugh, keeping quiet, just to myself.

So... She dyed her hair back to blonde while I was gone... And it’s pretty well done this time.

…

I stayed there as long as I could. I’d been completely inactive for so long, itching to get back to doing something- But here was a perfectly good day. A bit of an over cast, but where I live that’s to be expected. It was just free enough of clouds that you could see up into that clear sky, the pleasant warmth of the sun.

I could just relax.

As I mentioned, it’d be impossible for me to live there, in that moment, forever. The sky doesn’t stay blue. It shifts and changes with the smallest pressure. The beauty in it is taken away be something as simple as evaporated water or unburnt carbon, by the inevitable setting of night.

So I headed for the nearest roof I could sleep under.

Nobody was outside, I’d been listening out for people passing by.

Slid down the side of my neighbour’s house, and started my slow walk back home. I slung my bag over my back properly and turned a corner.

There it was. In comparison to the hotels I'd been staying at, it was hardly a room. I gave the handle a quick jostle. Honestly, I couldn’t remember where I left my normal clothes a month ago, so I didn’t have my keys.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Her key was probably in the door. My mum had a habit of keeping it there.

I hesitated, gave the door a good knock.

I waited awhile. I knew full well she wouldn’t answer the door anytime soon, I’d have to call out whenever she was standing near the door.

She wouldn’t risk opening the curtains. Not when there’s a chance of it being... collectors.

From the government, or from people outside of the law’s reach.

I could hear a shuffle on the other side of the door, so I shouted for her.

After a second, I heard the lock start to open. Her key sticks a little.

The door pulled back, and the curtain came with it.

She stepped out of the way as I walked in. The front door opens into the living room and kitchen, so she was able to walk back to the sofa to lay down just a few seconds after I came in.

I fixed the strap on my shoulder, picking up some bottles as I walked to my room.

She asked me where I was. I gave her a weak lie; told her I was staying with some friends. She didn’t say anymore.

Two of the bottles clinked together, she heard; told me to leave it, that she’d clean it up later.

My quick jerk of a smile said, ‘yeah right’, though she couldn’t see it, not while watching the tv.

I put it into a carboard box we use for recyclable waste. I didn’t feel like cleaning the rest of the room.

As I got into my room, she said something.

I rolled my eyes and turned back.

“What was that?”

She mumbled it, hopefully she was just drunk.

I walked over to the sofa, patiently waiting for her to say something.

“Don’t... fall in. You’re a good wee boy.”

My nostrils flared, a sulk coming over my face.

Yeah, fucking right. That’s a fat assumption.

I closed myself into my room, squeezing by the desk and closing the door behind me.

Really this space was supposed to be a store room, and I guess it pretty much is.

I looked up at the low hanging roof, it was still clean. I studied the window overlooking my bed finding that while I was away, a large amount of black mould had built up.

I hung my head, crouching down and pulling a box out from under my bed along with some average cleaning fluid.

I kicked off my shoes, and got up on the bed. First, I opened the window, then I sprayed along the edges, giving it a good wipe with one of the cloths in the box. Going from top to bottom.

When I was done, I could see clearly out the window, though the streaky pattern did obscure it slightly.

Outside was a wall. I guess when they built this room they didn’t think much about how depressing it’d be to look out from it.

I turned my head sideways, put it down low, and looked up.

The sky had turned the same colour as the wall.

I held my hand up, it completely over shadowed the sliver of sky that peeked through the opening.

It made me think back. When I was a kid, I had an action figure. Well, not really, it was about three inches tall and you could only move its arms at its shoulders. Anyway, I used to be able to hold it up to that thin little triangle of light, and imagine that he was...

He wasn’t flying, but he was... he was up there.

Pretty boring childhood, but that’s how I spent it, more so than getting beat up in fact. By my peers.

Stuck in a dirty little storage closet.

I turned back to the room, my eyes had adjusted to the light outside, so it took me a moment to actual see it.

From this perspective, I could see the thick layer of brown mould that had built up on the wood of my closet. It was common enough, its an older wood. Even if I clean it, it’ll just build up again.

I can leave the window open, but that’ll just slow it.

At least my clothes don’t get dirty, it always grows on the outside.

And it’s just the closet that it builds up on, the wood of my desk is clean, the wood of the bed frame too. It’s just that stupid hunk of wood that takes up a quarter of the room in my- room.

I clenched the wet fabric in my hand.

Eventually, I threw it back into the tin box. Stored the cleaning equipment under my bed.

I sat for a moment.

This isn’t the life I wanted to come back to.

I walked out into the living room, looking around for the dog. I guess he was at my grannies.

It didn’t matter, it’s not like I needed an excuse to leave.

I went back into my room, getting out my clothes. I gave them a sniff, and they seemed fine.

A pair of jeans, and as I was leaving, I threw a raincoat on.

I glared off into the distance.

I needed to go somewhere, anywhere but here.

I didn’t run off, I walked briskly. There was no point using my powers when I wanted to be Sam. I ended up travelling north, winding around the town with no real aim. I happened to stumble into a shop. I had 2.50 Euro, so it isn’t like I could get much.

Maybe a protein bar...

I guess I still need to eat to put on muscle, it just so happens that the muscles I grow are impossibly effective, and I can get an unrealistic amount of energy out of 20g of protein.

I really doubted I'd be in the mood to go get dinner once this walk was over.

I drifted up and down aiels, looking for...

Shit.

I realised what was happening at that point. I walked over to the exit, just on impulse, like I knew Clover’d be there.

She was almost dressed the same as before, she was still wearing a green skirt and the same top, but she had a heavy looking black and white stripped coat.

Was this her luck at work or mine?

She looked up at me for a moment before stepping into the store and walking right past me.

My head turned after her, she sort of looked around the store like I had. Aimlessly.

At first, I was confused, then I was scared that she was mad at me or something.

Did she think I’d been avoiding her? I hadn’t talked to her, over the phone or face to face for two weeks.

After stuttering a little I called out to her.

She turned and looked at me for a second, before saying, “Holy shit!”

She sped over to me, sort of hunched, like there was a chance she was wrong.

“S-Saiorse, hi, I-uh, I’ve been staying with my granny for a while, she got sick. So, I- how are you?”

She bulldozed over what was saying, grabbing at my head, “What happened to your hair!”

I froze up as she brushed over the side of my face.

She kept asking, “You must have gotten a one all over- I'd understand getting it cut, but what’s with all this?”

I suddenly came back to life.

I brushed a hand over the top of my head, it feeling more like stubble.

“Oh, well...”

I hadn’t really thought about it much until now, but that acid could melt through my face, it could melt through my hair. I guess Rebirthing foam doesn’t grow back hair. I vaguely remember them shaving it while I was waking up.

That made me think there was a good portion of time where somebody might have seen my face, but I was completely focused on Sam at the moment. And it’s not like anybody there would recognise me.

“Well, the shorter you cut it... uhm,” I was searching for an answer, “the longer it’ll be till you have to go back to the hairdressers...”

She squinted an eye.

“I-it’s cheaper. Over time.”

She shook her head, “But still, they fucked you up. I’m pretty sure it’s uneven...”

She took her hand away.

“I could do a better job,” She smiled.

“Sure...” I avoided her eyes, turning towards the shop, “-You and what fashion sense?”

I resolved to get that protein bar. It’d be weird if I came out of there with nothing.

Saoirse laughed, “Right, I’m the one who doesn’t know anything about fashion, what colour is the plain T-shirt you’re wearing under that second-hand coat?”

I slightly smiled at the insult, “I’m poor, not blind. I also do art at school, specifically textiles.”

She tried to hide the fact she found that humorous.

That annoyed me a little, I turned, looked her dead and the eyes and asked, “What’s so funny about that?”

She questioned whether she should keep going or deny. The latter gave her a chance to turn this around in her favour, or annoy me further.

“Well, you’re like a dwarf.”

Or she could confuse me. “What does that-?”

She grabbed my forearm, I pulled back ever so slightly, she didn’t notice, pointing out, “You’re short, obviously, but you’ve got broad features. You’ve put a bit of muscle on too.”

She stopped to laugh, “And you make dresses?”

I was going to say no, but I thought about it.

Or maybe the problem was I didn’t think.

“Yes,” I lied, “and I could make something better than what you’re wearing now.”

She pulled her hand away to cover her mouth, a cackle breaking out from behind it.

“Sure you could, sure, sure.”

I felt the need to correct what she said, “If I'm a dwarf than what are you?”

“Uh?” she squeaked with a smiled as we reached the end of the aisle.

I put my hand on the top of my head, then moved it straight forward, just over her.

“I’m taller.”

“By an inch,” she pointed out, dancing past me.

She didn’t answer my question. But if I had to say?

She’d be a fairy.

Ephemeral, only half real.

When we left the store, I had bought a protein bar. She followed behind me, with nothing from the shop.

.

.

.

We went down. Down town. South, we were both aimlessly traveling together. Eventually, we came to the basin, just up river from where I’d fought Isaac. But that wasn’t on my mind.

We’d finally stopped. There was a good wall to sit on there. Sometimes it’s nice to walk and talk, but in all honesty, I prefer to sit still.

It was getting dark; the clouds were large and dark. The sun should have been setting then, but you wouldn’t be able to see it through the shroud covering our small country.

“It better not rain”, she groaned.

“It won’t”, I assured, “and you should know that. Your Irish senses should be tingling.”

She didn’t have the energy to laugh, “Right, like you just know when it’ll rain.”

I nodded, “Because I’m Irish. Maybe you can’t because your technically British.”

She shook her head, “You’re being dumb, stop being dumb.”

“Okay,” I gave in.

We stared over the dull water. At least it looked clean, it wasn’t polluted with algae like most freshwater sources around here.

“Sam.”

I turned, rubbing the sleep from my eye.

“Where do you get all those bruises from?”

She was holding her head. I was beginning to suspect she’d been drinking before meeting me.

I missed the irony of me trading one drunk woman I liked to lie to for another.

“I come from a rough area. Sometimes people pick fights with me, sometimes I pick fights with them.”

“Right...” she nodded, not satisfied.

The wind blew in, that’s when I realised the summer air had cooled off. I really should have been heading home, I still had to write this post and the last one.

“It’s just...” she straightened her posture, keeping her elbows on the wall.

She flicked her hair out of the way, looking up at me as I sat still on the wall.

“Well, when I brought up- you don’t have to talk about it, or whatever- but I feel like I've gotta ask about your dad.”

I didn’t react much. It had actually been on my mind, seeing as it was nearly August. I let the wind blow.

“He’s dead.”

She moved about a little, but didn’t comment.

I wasn’t looking her in the eye. “So no, I’m not getting beaten at home. Though if my mum felt like it, she probably could,” I tried a laugh, but I was tired too, “she could’ve.”

I think Saoirse was trying to smile, I let her know, “Seriously, I don’t have to go on- I'm fine with talking about it, but you just got back from losing your friend, I’d feel... selfish, if I just dropped this stuff on you.”

She sighed.

I heard the scuffle of gravel on the ground, looking to her, I could see Saoirse was making a lame attempt to throw her leg up and over the wall. After a while she eventually made it, her legs dangling over the basin.

“‘Used to do gymnastics’ my ass,” We spent what little energy we had left laughing at that.

After a while she told me, “Go ahead.”

She nodded, repeating, “Go ahead.”

I still had a slight smile on my face, “They split up pretty soon after I was born. My Dad didn’t do much to help with money, my mum... developed a habit. He moved back in with my granny, mum kept the living in that house.”

I wasn’t sure if I should keep talking, if I should be so open. It felt wrong.

“Years passed. I don’t remember most of it, I was too young. One night, while my mum was coming back from her night job, just outside our house a car had been waiting. They beat her. Not too badly, it was just to send a message. They were a loan shark’s guys; she was behind payments. I can’t blame her for what happened next.”

“That’s when I started working. At five, around that age. I was taken out of school half the time, and I worked most nights. It was clean enough, no drugs; I was in sweat shops and in the back of a few restaurants. At the weekend, I was staying in dingle. With my dad.”

I turned to Saoirse, not really taking in the expression on her face, “My mom had one rule: to lie. When I had cuts on my hands and my dad or granny noticed, I was supposed to say anything but the truth. And most of all I needed to smile. That was easy, I didn’t really have a clue that what I was doing wasn’t normal, so keeping it a secret, making up dumb stories about how the needle wounds on my fingers were from a snake attack, or- or that the burn from touching a pan that was still hot in the kitchen was from a volcano-”

“-it felt good. To keep secrets. To hide things from my granny and dad. I giggled about the stories as I told them, and I guess that’s what sold the idea of me being just a rough little kid. My granny bought it, though she never stopped worrying.”

There was a stop in my voice, I struggled to put my memories into words.

“I don’t think my dad ever bought it. I don’t know what he was actually like. But he must have known something was up. He had to. He knew my mum, dated her.”

Clover was quiet, “One day, he sat me down, and he asked me for the truth. I tried to argue that I had been telling the truth, but he didn’t buy any of it. I tried laughing it off, then crying, and then I threw a complete tantrum. What else’d you expect from a little kid? The entire time, when I was screaming and hitting him, he sat in that chair completely stoic. Or maybe that’s just how I remember it.”

I licked my lips, “In the end, I broke. I was tired, I wanted to go play. So I told him that mum would take me to places and leave me there with other kids, and that we’d be put to work. Still, he seemed completely unphased. When I told the truth, he just waved me away- or maybe he gave me a pat on the head and sent me out.”

I was smiling now, the reserved type that Sam would wear, that seemed like it fit best.

“I... wasn’t happy, with the fact that I'd been found out. But there was a slight feeling that I'd done the right thing. Because it got me out of there. The truth was good because it won in the end. But mostly, I felt dirty for telling the truth, for going against what my mum told me to do.”

“You’d think that- I guess normally, I'd have been taken away from my mum, she’d go to prison for child abuse, if laws decided how the world works, then that’s how thing’s would have gone.”

I took in a breath, this bit I could remember clearly.

“-But when the weekend ended, I went back to Tralee like nothing happened. I worked at the restaurant, cleaning dishes, the staff toilet, whatever. The week passed in a flash. I rode the bus straight up, my mum took me, leaving me at the door of my gran’s. When my granny came to the door, she told me that my dad was having a lie-in and not to bother him. She was heading out to a friend’s house. Hours passed by, and I was getting hungry. I hadn’t had dinner the night before, so I had been looking forward to some lunch. I couldn’t reach where we kept the bread and cereal, and I didn’t want to eat any of the fruit that was on the table.”

This part, I'll never forget. No matter what changes are made to my mind.

“I opened the door to my dad’s room.”

In one of my posts, I said that my dad had died under ‘strange circumstances’. That was a lie. There was nothing strange about how he died. Though I guess nobody expected it.

“He died, Saoirse. He killed himself. And I found him.”

I twisted around, hanging my feet over the basin with her.

I expected to see the sunset, the red and green sky complementing some sort of profound moment I was having. But the clouds don’t part because they should.

I wasn’t feeling anything.

The truth didn’t take any effort, and it didn’t make me feel any better.

I could have gone on, I could have told her that I had to wait hours until my gran came back, I could have told her I didn’t cry at the funeral, hell maybe I should have mentioned that it was nearly his anniversary, August 3rd.

Or that when you really break things down, it was probably my fault that he had done it, the life that I'd trapped him in, how I was the source of that overwhelming guilt he must have been bearing-

But the honest truth is, I don’t know how what he was thinking. All I know is that he chose to leave me.

We sat there, she didn’t say anything about it. I kept looking out at that body of water, eventually her head fell done.

She put her hands to her eyes, or maybe just to push her hair away.

She tensed up, like she was angry. I guess she was.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, she let out a hick.

I fully expected it to just be a drunken sound.

But she tilted back, so far that I moved to stop her from falling over, though I didn’t need to.

“Oh Glass God!” When she cried out those words I pulled back, my eyes going wide.

Clover had slipped out- no, she was always there.

That girl, who had known so much death that she refused to cry at the death of her friend-

She was sobbing for me.

That’s what I thought at the time, I felt a hope in my chest, that she and we really could understand each other.

But looking back on that moment, the pain on her face...

Was she crying... from the guilt on her shoulders?

Shamrock had reminded her over and over that her line of work affected people’s lives.

Now Sam had told her that his life had been defined by the effects of that place. That shit.

At the time, I struggled to find any words.

I’d had to deal with one sobbing person earlier, but this was more serious than Bob’s problem, at least that’s how I saw it.

Because this was Sam’s world.

“Oh come on... I’m not that bad, am I?” I smirked for a second, before it died.

She shook her head, touching her eyes, “God, no- I'm sorry about this. Shit,” she was trying to be supportive, but there wasn’t really much for her to support.

“It was years ago. I’m not going to pretend like I have my life together now,” I wouldn’t be aimlessly walking around the streets in my spare time if I was, “but Sorsh, I don’t want your pity, or your money. I don’t... even need to talk about it.”

She was in the same state, the alcohol wasn’t helping her recovery.

“I’m glad things are how they are now.” My eyes were half open, I tried to raise them, “Thank you. For being here.”

That was the only bit of honesty that did something for me. There was no light in the sky, but things looked a little brighter.

I’m content with my life staying how it is.

“Fuck that!” She blubbered, “you said something about being selfish right? Well, what’s wrong with wanting more?? God, that stupid fucking look in your eyes,”

That made me sit back, she moved in, “-like you’ve lost all hope, like your about to cry. You’re not going to do anything about it are you!”

She’d stopped crying now, though she still looked like a mess, “How the hell can I not pity someone like that? Remember when I said we should go to that shit hole, the giant’s causeway?? I’ll take you there, you’ll see, it isn’t- there’s-”

She gritted her teeth, “There are better things than this fucking world!”

“I have to go.” I started to think that this was a mistake.

I don’t know if it was or not. But I know that whatever she tries, it’s futile. I’m not going to feel any better than I do now, not through the actions of others.

I’ll find my way. I won’t be satisfied otherwise.

The only reason I looked so defeated was because I was talking about the past, I need to move forward.

I climbed down and she shouted after, “Shit, wait!” It was a struggle for her to get back down.

I got a good distance away before she let out a groan, similar to when she was trying to shoot me, on the day we met.

I waved, “I’ll see ye’ round.”

I guess something about my attitude made her give up. Or at least, she didn’t follow after me. I could hear her cursing with self oathing in her voice.

I went home, cleaned the mould from my wardrobe, sat done on my bed (there isn’t space for a chair), and started typing long into the night.

And now I’m nearly done. I’m just thinking of what to do next. I guess I’ll go...

Find some drugs.