September 24, 2018 | Occasus | Issue 8 | Fiction

You Still Up?

You wake up in a cold sweat. Chest heaving, heart pounding as you try to reassert yourself in your bed. Your hands grip the light blue sheets as the little voice in your head screams for you to shut up shut up shut up shut up, but your mind is still racing from that dream, that nightmare, that life you were living.
 
Where the hell was Charlie? You think to yourself as you rub your eyes, still breathing deeply. You forget how to breathe. Is it in and out or out and in? Does your stomach always concave when you exhale or when you inhale? Why does your chest puff out like that?
 
Your eyes scan the room as you wait and wonder and wait for Charlie. You turn your head to the clock on his side of the bed, bright red numbers screaming at you from the dark telling you that it’s exactly four hours and thirty-seven minutes past when he said he would be home, and exactly one hour and thirteen minutes from when your alarm will yell at you to get out of bed and into those confining spandex shorts to bike in your basement for 30 mins before you get ready for work. Before Charlie will be up and meeting you in the shower; before you both use the short amount of time to get off because that seems to be the only thing the two of you have been doing for each other lately; before he kisses the nape of your neck and mutters something about how he doesn’t like the smell of your shampoo anymore.
 
You pull your knees into your chest, hugging them to your body as your mind goes out on a dark and twisted tangent. You know Charlie loves you, there’s no question. The gold chain necklace you wear around your neck seven days a week reminds you of how long you will spend your life with him, forever. You shiver at the thought and let your head drop to the dip between your knees. You sit there, in this position with your breathing slowly regulating. Your hair cascades around your head. It’s getting pretty long, should you get it cut soon? No, Charlie loves it long. You take a deep breath and then stretch out on the mattress, starfish style for yourself because if he’s not going to come home then what’s the point in confining yourself to one side of the bed. No, screw Charlie. You deserve the whole bed tonight.
 
You hear a car door shut from outside. You close your eyes and take a deep breath. A double honk of the car locking at 4:39 am tells you that it’s that son of a bitch Charlie and you shrink into yourself. Your mind is racing from that dream you woke up from and waking up into that nightmare, that life you are living.
 
You move yourself to your side of the bed, your left leg stretched out and your right leg raised at a ninety-degree angle as you face away from the centre of the bed on your side, the right side. You take another deep breath. You try to slow your heart rate. You know that’s the best thing for you right now because Charlie is probably drunk and if he isn’t convinced you’re sleeping he won’t just go to bed. He’ll just want to get off. He’ll just want to get you off. You’re so tired of getting off to the smell of gin and tonic that you feel yourself gagging at the idea of the scent. You like getting off in the shower because at least the water rinses away the alcohol leaking from every pore on his body. You don’t even flinch when he walks into the room, you hear his footsteps thumping across the floor like an elephant. The bed creaks from his weight as he falls onto the mattress, he yanks all of the blankets onto his side and off of your body. The sweat that has coated your body seemed to attract all of the cold air in the room, like bugs to light and you have to steel yourself from shivering. Charlie moans, turning towards you and presses his face into your neck. He whispers your name in his raspy voice and you feel his hand slowly drift down your back, over your butt, over your hips and between your legs. You groan and roll away from his hand and into the pillows, into the mattress, hoping you’ll sink away from him. He mutters something about how much of a prude you are before rolling away and into a deep, snore-filled sleep.
 
Grit your teeth, and squeeze your eyes shut as you hold back tears, hold back ear-piercing, world-shattering screams at the thought of this ignorant man. This self-absorbed asshole of a man that shares your bed. Think of exactly what got you into this place in the first place. Think of the exact moment, January 1st, 2016 at midnight when he had been the closest person to you, your first kiss at midnight. The intriguing, charming man who seemed to be the only one at the party without a man bun. You liked that he was different, you liked that he paid attention to what you were drinking and you especially liked how he brought you more and more of it as the night went on. You remember that night as a blur, as a series of severely unfortunate events that ended with you sleeping with him. You remember it being the best sex of your life, you remember breakfast in the morning. You remember a backrub and a walk that lead to the house around the corner from his drab apartment where he said he would like to raise a family one day. You remember going home and refusing to believe your roommate’s opinion that this was just a meaningless one-night stand. You remember Cindy telling you that no guy has a house like that in mind, because Charlie did. You remember going on a second date with him just to prove her wrong. A third date just to show her it wasn’t a guilt second date. Then a fourth date just to prove her wrong about proving her wrong. It wasn’t until you were a house, a proposal, a year, seven months and nineteen days in that you realized that second date was a guilt date. It really should have been a one-night stand. But you are stubborn. It would be so much work to move all of your useless, meaningless shit back into that apartment with Cindy, that was really far away from your office. If you were to move back in you would have to get a car. You just sold your car because Charlie thought it was useless for you to have two cars. When you think about that car you sold you should think about that job you passed up in New York. The job you should have just taken to get yourself out of this shit town, with this shit guy, and this shit neighbourhood. You take a deep breath in, try to calm yourself down, you just want to sleep, you just want to sleep through the night, shower before Charlie is coherent and sneak off to work.
 
Your heart stops when you smell it.
 
It’s faint, but you can smell it. It burns the inside of your nostrils almost as much as the scent of alcohol. You can make out the faint scent of lavender that wafts off of his clothes. You choke on the scent. You know exactly what, who, it’s from and your insides burn from hatred. You sit up in bed. You walk over to the dirty laundry bin and start to rifle through it, until you find the shirt he wore out last night. You smell it there too. Lavender. You sneak over to his side of the bed, his mouth is open on his pillow, drool spilling onto the fabric as he snores. Dead in sleep. Dead in his dead-end life, with his dead-end job and his dead-end fiancée, you. You seethe in anger as you pick up his phone and press his thumb against the home button. The screen lights up the room and you have to press it against your chest so the brightness doesn’t wake him up. You wait a second, he snores again. You walk to the bathroom attached to your bedroom. You shut the door behind you. You don’t turn on the light, you put the lid of the toilet seat down and sit on it. You take another deep breath as you pull his phone away from your chest and begin to scroll through it.
 
You grit your teeth.
 
You hold back tears.
 
You bite your lip so you don’t have to scream at the messages that blink through in blues and greens from different girls about different times and places for different dates and hook ups and you feel yourself breaking down faster and faster. You read the names. seem to be never ending. The pictures, the praises, the drunken texts. You see it over again. Over again. Over again.
 
1:58. Julie. ‘u up?’
 
2:03. Melissa. ‘u up?’
 
3:14. Olivia. ‘hey u still up?’
 
3:47. Lisa. ‘u still up?’ ‘yes ;)’
 
Your heart pounds against your chest. You grip his phone in your hands. You’re internally screaming, sitting on the toilet in your bathroom, in the dark as you hyperventilate. You bite through your lip. Blood bubbling on the surface of your skin, rolling into your mouth so all you taste is metal. You click his phone off. You stand up. You turn on the light. You stare at yourself in the mirror. Stare at the bags under your eyes. Stare at the smudged mascara because you were too tired to take it off before you went to bed. Stare at the loose pony tail your hair is tied back in. You open the medicine cabinet, your hands clenching the pair of scissors in Charlie’s shaving kit. You make a mess, knocking pill bottles over, knocking the toothbrushes off the shelves, knocking his contact lenses into the sink so that the case pops open and they’re exposed to air. You hope they dry up. You slam the mirror door shut.
 
That son of a bitch.
 
You take your hair out of its pony tail. You shake your head to fluff your hair up. You collect a fistful in your hand and raise the scissors to it.
 
You cut.
 
You sigh in relief. Freedom, rebellion, revolution coursing through your veins as you do it again.
 
You cut.
 
Hair falls into the sink, decorating the contents of the medicine cabinet with thick black strands. You go wild with cutting as every single lock invigorates you.
 
You stare at yourself in the mirror. A grin spreads across your face. Your hair ends at your chin, its jagged, but it’s perfect. Your big brown eyes are glowing with pride in yourself. You take down your makeup bag. You search through the bag for that one tube, that well-used tube of dark red lipstick that he loved on you. You write a list of names on the mirror. Julie. Olivia. Melissa. Lisa. You don’t stop until they’re all up there. You take one last look at yourself.
 
You look free.
 
He’s still passed out as you rip your clothes off of their hangers, stuffing them into your suitcases. You pack up your useless, meaningless belongings, one at a time. All while grinning more than you have in exactly one year, seven months and nineteen days. You don’t even think twice when you leave the bedroom. You leave the house. Clutching the keys to his car in your hand as you.
 
You are driving away.
 
You have never been more awake in your life.

RYLEE LOUCKS is a first year Arts and Humanities student hoping to do an honors specialization in Creative Writing and English Language and Literature. She likes to use words in new ways in hopes to bring fresh perspectives to creative non-fiction and fiction pieces where she gathers inspiration from her own and of those closest to her.