Chapter 6
And I know your life is such a hell
You wake up early and you work until
You have your drinks at 5 o'clock
The hours blend and your thoughts all haunt
Nevershoutnever!, What is Love?
You wake up early and you work until
You have your drinks at 5 o'clock
The hours blend and your thoughts all haunt
Nevershoutnever!, What is Love?
March 26, 2012
4:20 am
It was the giggling. That incessant, aggravating giggling that seemed to echo throughout the house she was meandering through. It was a dream, she knew, because she was in a house that she hadn’t seen since she was 10. And the house was completely void of life save her grownup self, and the giggling little kids she could hear but couldn’t seem to find. Everything was covered in a dark blue tint, as if she were walking about in a fog. Which was completely plausible, she mused, as she had been in a fog since the news two months ago.
She found herself in her old bedroom, and the source of the giggling. An eight-year-old version of herself was in the middle of an animated story being told to her little five year old brother, arms stretched way above her head. She roared and dove to tickle the little boy. He squealed and shouted “no, sissy, no no!” and giggled and thrashed about on the floor.
Brielle remembered that scene. And many others like it. It had been her favorite thing to do for her brother growing up ever since he could understand the stories she told. She would repeat her own versions of stories Mother or Daddy had read to her, or that she had heard at school and would ham it up for her appreciative little brother.
But the dream brother suddenly stopped giggling, and the dream-self stopped tickling. Both stared at the adult Brielle with hollow, mournful, accusing eyes. Why didn’t you protect him? Why didn’t you protect me? She found herself backing away and backed into the graveyard in Boulder, CO where she could see a flood of mourners, all of which turned to stare at her with the same expression, all voicing the same question. Each voice overlapping the other, forcing her dream-self to back up until she hit a wall. The voices grew louder and angrier and she screamed in a feeble attempt to drown them all out.
She awoke with a sob, sitting up violently, awaking Vigo with a start. He simply looked at her, and settled his head back down on her leg and she stroked his head absently, the tears building and slowly falling down her cheeks. Glancing at the clock through her foggy eyes, she sighed at the early time. 4:28 am. She didn’t need to be awake for another two hours, but there was no way in hell anything would convince herself to sleep now.
She rolled onto her back and lay there, motionless, the tears leaking down each side of her face, soaking the pillow below her head. Why hadn’t she reminded him not to drive the Mazda in the snow? Why had she simply assumed that at 24 he’d be smarter than to drive 90 on icy roads? She closed her eyes, pulled the pillow over her face, and let out a single scream of agony.
Two months had gone by and the pain had only grown. The thought of dressing for the day and heading into work made her entire body resist moving but she knew she had to work. There was a project due at 5 for the big-wigs in the building next to them and this job very well could mean another huge promotion for her. She snorted. Like she gave a damn about the fucking promotion. What was the point of making more money when she stopped spending any? The bills for rent, utilities, amenities , and WoW were paid off each month. Outside of that, the money simply sat in her savings account, accruing useless interest.
Glance at the clock. 4:46.
The lights from outside painted dancing pictures on her ceiling and she found herself staring at them, almost mesmerized. Anything to get her mind off of the hell that stared her in the face everywhere she looked. The longer she stared at the lights, the more they started to look like a picture she couldn’t quite identify. When the picture revved its engine, she realized it was the Mazda her brother had owned and she watched in a horrified stupor as it crashed into the pole in slow motion.
She had never moved out of that bed as quickly as she did in that moment. The contents of her stomach, not much really, became her sacrifice to the porcelain gods as she gagged and heaved her horror out. When she stopped retching, she slid down the wall and huddled there in a mass of quivering flesh and tears.
The visions were getting worse and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could last with them haunting her. A sudden vision of her brother as a brain eating zombie flew into her mind and she let out a choking, sob-filled laugh. That would be Nathan, to come back as a zombie just to cause terror on Boulder. The laughter faded to tears once more and she buried her face in her arms, wishing not for the first time that she had stayed that extra week with him.
She contemplated showering and a glance at the clock forced her to stand and move towards the bathroom. Even with all that had happened since the beginning of the year, she had never been late to work and wasn’t about to start now.
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She was hurting. She knew, her boss knew, her friends knew, and she knew they knew. But she also knew there was nothing she could do to change the hurting. And they knew it had to be her acceptance that would begin the path to healing. They knew they couldn’t do anything to help her.
But still they tried.
She attended the office Friday games, but the spark was gone. The frivolity, the joking, the certain je ne sais quoi she would bring to the games.
But that was gone.
She continued the bar hopping with Rachel, the babysitting so to speak, and remained the designated driver. She would continue the way she always had at the bars: sitting at the bar and drinking a coke.
But she still drank.
She drank when she was home alone, with her computer, running instances on her low leveled toons and heroic dungeons on her 85 toons. She got to where she was excellent at playing completely smashed to where no one in the group knew the difference. She would drink until she passed out, sometimes at her computer, sometimes in her bed. Never outside of the house. And not every night.
Rachel, Grant and his wife took to taking her out on the weekends to the park with Vigo. They would go to Hippy Hill and listen to the music and watch the people, running Vigo ragged. And she would laugh, and smile. But she knew, and they knew, that it was all fake. The pain was obvious in every movement, every action, absolutely everything she did.
She saw him everywhere she went. In the crowd, in the restaurant, alone in her apartment, she saw him. And she was okay with just seeing his image. It was when the images started to talk to her that she started to question her sanity.
Rachel, when she had been told, just looked at Brielle with pity in her brown eyes and wrapped her friend in her arms. “Lo siento mucho, mi amor. Que Dios te bendiga con la paz pronto mi amiga.” The two had cried together, one for the sorrow that she felt could never be helped, and the other for the sorrow of her friend.
She drank at night to rid herself of the visions. But some nights, the visions still came through. Sometimes the visions were of cars, sometimes of her brother crashing, and sometimes her brother actually came and spoke to her.
She nearly peed her pants in fright the first time the apparition spoke to her.
It first happened during a run of Ice Crown Citidal, in heroic mode. Later, she would be grateful that she was simply a damage dealer rather than a healer in this run.
“Dang, sis, you’ve dropped further than I thought you would.”
She screamed, and jumped up out of her chair, ripping her headset off her head. “What in the hell?”
The Nathan Hallucination, as she would come to call him, looked around in surprise. “Well, I always thought San Francisco was hell, but I never thought I’d hear you call it that.”
“I’m hallucinating, I must be.” She looked at her glass of vodka and Mountain Dew with suspicion.
“Then I am one good looking hallucination.” The Nathan Hallucination flexed his muscles and grinned.
“What do you want?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. Just chilling here watching you get behind.”
“Ah!” She put her headset back on and pressed the squiggly line button on the top left corner below the escape button. “I’m sorry, guys, I had a bad lag for a moment.” She turned back to say something to the apparition but it was gone.
She shuddered and focused back on the game. She felt chilled and frightened and depressed and it confused her. She looked back at the Vodka Dew concoction in her glass and pondered the implications.
She downed the rest of it in three chugs.
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April 25, 2012
She was done.
Done with the comforting, done with the attempts to cheer her up, and done with dealing with it all.
She wasn’t sure how long she drove or how she ended up there, but she found herself at the Southeast parking lot at the Golden Gate Bridge. Parking her van, she slid out and walked doggedly towards the pedestrian sidewalk, completely forgoing the parking meter. The moon was bright overhead and the bridge was surprisingly empty save for a random car here and there, and an even more rare truck. The air was crisp and cold and with every breeze that flew by, salt water sprinkled on her face. But she walked on, completely oblivious to everything around her save one thing: her destination. The middle of the bridge was ahead, far ahead, and she needed to make it there before she changed her mind. Then again, she mused, she wasn’t complete sound in her decision anyway. Nathan would not want her to be living like this so that left her two options. Join him, or change how she was living now. And as she didn’t have the spark to continue life without her brother, she figured there was only one option left to her.
The walk took longer than she anticipated, having not walked the distance for months, that by the time she arrived in the center of the bridge, she was tired. The tears were mingling with the saltwater drops from the wind and she screamed at nothingness below. Her hands clutched at the handrail with a vice-like grip until her knuckles turned white.
Calculations and formulas that dealt with gravity and the effect on impact with the water membrane flooded her brain as she stared down to the dark water rippling below. It would be incredibly selfish, she knew, if she jumped. But how could she not jump? What was there worth living for? The roar of a semi passing sent her coat waving about her and rustled her dreds but she scarcely noticed so focused was she on her intentions.
Destiny. Her almost-sister-in-law’s cut and bruised face flashed through her mind’s eye and she hesitated. Coma, her mind screamed. She’s in a coma and the doctors say she won’t ever wake up. But what if she did? Destiny would need someone just as much as Brielle did at this time now. Her brother’s image came to mind and it was if she could hear him speak to her. Take the trip, Sister. The trip? The road trip? The one they planned together? Without him or Destiny? How could she even think of doing such a thing? How could she drive all that distance without driving into a river or off of a cliff?
She stared at the inviting black water far below her for what seemed like hours before backing away from the rusty colored railing and headed back towards her van. She would take this trip. And she would return to this place in one year, for better or for worse.
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