I saw at my chest again, trying to make it breathe easier.
“I thought you wanted her?”
“I do.”
“Why are we talking about the pills then?”
“Because …” I don’t know why, but if they were inside me now I wouldn’t have to deal with this feeling inside me. She’d be a nothing. A no one. Just another something that was of interest until she wasn’t. “Because that’s who I am. They’re what I am.” I look at the scattered bottles and shards of glass, eventually falling my ass back onto the arm of a chair to sit. “They’re what I have been for so long I don’t know what this person I currently am is.”
He sighs and dares to try walking closer to me. I slant my eyes, warning that that still isn’t sensible considering my mood.
“You know exactly who you are,” he says.
“What?
“Well, the Malachi Jones I met all those years ago, before the pills, would never have let someone get away with taking something of value to him.”
I sneer, looking away. “She isn’t of value.”
“No?”
“No. She’s a nothing. I’m just pissed that someone would dare.”
He chuckles for some unknown reason, annoying me further with his self-righteous tone. “Even if the first part of that were true, wouldn’t the second part of it need rectifying?”
“God, you’re a sanctimonious dick.”
“Probably, but that doesn’t need investigating. The whereabouts of something extremely relevant to you does.”
“I told you, she’s not of value.” Value would denote importance, and while she’s been relatively immersing and I am, no doubt, furious she’s been taken, she’s just another woman – an attractive one – a truly mesmerising one - but she still means nothing more than this continued pain in my chest. “It was just because of you taking my pills away.” I stand and walk over to the window, eyes scanning the horizon for answers I can’t find at the moment. “Without those, things mean more than they should. Her included.” True or not, it’s the only thing I’m willing to finish this argument with. Saying anything other than that would mean a truth I’m not ready to acknowledge. “I just want to be left alone. Go.”
He doesn’t. He stands there looking at me looking at him, still the same smug expression until it turns into his thinking face. I eventually turn away from it for the dark sky again, bored with the thought of carrying on this discussion. It’s over as far as I’m concerned, and as long as I stay here alone I don’t have to consider the possibility of something other than that.
“Did she kill Faith?”
My frown deepens, another wave of sensation rushing over me. “Yes.” We didn’t get to the whys, but I know the answer, anyway. She took something from my world that made it worse. She tried, in her own fucked up little way, to make life easier for me – more bearable.
I wish I could tell her I only needed her for that.
A small smile begins to weaken the frown, as I imagine her doing that for me.
“Malachi, why won’t you try something other than your version of norm? She might need you. You were the one that took her in the first place, and now you’re just going to let her be swept away from you on someone else’s whim?” I don’t answer. Why should I? Nothing is worth anything now. And my norm is already being pushed to non-existent because of both her and him. “I thought perhaps you’d found something to give you hope, or a future, or the possibility of one without all this bullshit around us now,” he says, pacing behind me. ”I thought more of you than dismissing it because it caused actual sensation.” My spine stiffens. “Especially after your work for Hannah and me and-”
“You’re still here. Leave.”
Eventually I hear his feet walk from the room, and I continue staring out into the night rather than bother conversing any further. What would he know of me and how I think – how I feel? Nothing. No one does. I only helped him to prove to myself I could. Nothing more than that. I just want to mend things. Inanimate things. Things that will be faithful and true and loyal and won’t try playing with me. Maybe I’ll talk to them if I don’t have her. One thing my Alice doesn’t need is mending. There isn’t one thing bent or broken about her. She’s entirely whole.
Entirely true to what she is.
I glance back into the room at the sound of him returning, and watch as he drops his bag of pills and needles on the table. Pointless. I don’t want them near me, no matter how much they might make his pain go away. I’m enjoying it in some ways, truly living in the minutes that pass by to make me hurt more. It means something to me, is severing me in two somehow and making me question why I’m abandoning something and trying to justify that thought to myself.
“There it is,” he mutters, putting a syringe down. “Help yourself. If you want what you had before her, put it straight in the vein. I’m done if you can’t be honest with yourself.”
I look at it lying there, and then look at him. “I am being honest with myself.”
“No you’re not. You were downstairs, but now you’re lying rather than admitting she means something to you. You know it as well as I do.”
Frustration fills his whole demeanour, as his hands find his pockets. I turn away again, not caring for the thought of explaining myself or arguing. I will either stay and wallow in my own sense of grief and monotony, or I will let my body take over with its obsessive sense of need for her. But what I will not take, what I refuse to tolerate, is him telling me what I should or should not be feeling in this moment because of a game he hopes to win. They’re my moments to clarify.
