Beginnings...Rarely Any Endings

For every great love story — for every boy who stops flitting around with the wrong girl and finally realizes he’s in love with his best friend — for every girl who finally feels what it is to be loved by the boy who’s been with everybody else and finally sees the beauty in her — there is a girl who does not receive a happy ending. She is simply a mistake of the past — she is the last girl he was with before he opened his eyes and got up the balls to ask out the amazing girl he’d met and befriended so long ago. She is the girl who he deems not good enough; she is the past that he laughs at as he holds his new love. 

He never told her he loved her because he never did. She was a pawn he played with before he knew what love was. But everyone forgives him now — because he has found the one. 

For every love story, there is a girl who was denied a happy ending. She isn’t mentioned in the main text of the story. Perhaps she is mentioned in passing; merely to help provide background information for the main character. Nobody wants to read about her; she’s not the one. 

For this girl, life doesn’t become magical or warm or enchanting. This girl falls asleep every night alone. For a while she would clutch her pillow and pretend it was her that had received the storybook ending — just once. But after a while she gave up on that. She isn’t pathetic. Now she just falls asleep with her arms around her own body and tells herself that’s all she needs.

Every morning she wakes up to herself and herself alone. Usually she’s cold. When she was younger, she would awake each morning and hope wistfully that today would be the day she met her prince charming; now she wakes up every morning and just prays that she doesn’t fall for somebody else’s happy ending again. She isn’t pessimistic — just realistic. 

For every love story, there is a girl who holds nobody but herself. She reminds herself that she’s beautiful because she’s afraid she’ll forget otherwise. Sometimes, boys come asking for her — but she isn’t stupid enough to fall for that anymore. Her prince charming isn’t among them. All these men are other girls’ princes. Hers is away somewhere. 

She writes about him sometimes. Tears fall down her eyes and smudge her letters because she misses a man she has never met — and a few she has. Meanwhile, he holds the girl he actually loves. He kisses her. He looks into her eyes. He has no problem forgetting the silly girl he played around with for a while. Nobody blames him. Love cleans his slate. Nobody pities her. He’s in love. 

For every love story, there is a girl of the past. Her job is to forget and fade away. 

Broken.

Her left hand lie flat, fingers splayed, against the creamy skin of her firm stomach. Her right arm lay bent at a ninety degree angle at the elbow with her forearm extending straight up towards her head so that the hand tethered there lay open palm-up on the pillow. The hand was open though the long, graceful fingers there furled towards the center like the petals on some just blooming flower. One long silky chestnut wisp led from her delicate cranium to the open palm and lay across it like a ribbon across the smooth end of some gift-wrapped delight. Every once in a while, her middle finger twitched as though eager to encourage the other fingers to join it in hugging the lonely looking strand.

So lonely.

She was like the strand; but if she lay in somebody’s waiting embrace she could not see it. She had lain in his embrace only about ten minutes before – but it had done little to abate the loneliness wracking her being. In fact, his touch seemed to intensify the feeling.

She hated him.

His vile smile as he had suggested she “get cleaned up” before class. The cocky way in which his body had descended from the lofted bed. She hated all of him. If he loved her he’d have read the vacancy in her sapphire eyes and stayed in the bed to hold her. He’d apologize. He’d reassure.

But instead of taking in any sort of love radiating from his crystal blue eyes, hers were now staring aimlessly at the stained white of the dorm room ceiling mere feet above her face. Her gaze focused on a coffee-brown blotch resembling a four-fingered hand as her mind re-played Mason’s last words before he had disappeared into the garishly lit bathroom of his dorm room.

“You don’t know what sex is,” he’d guffawed, staring at her with a smile that somehow managed to convey both belittling amusement and absolute contempt. “Not yet.”

He didn’t need to add the word “whore” to his last statement – the way he had turned on his heels and indifferently strode in the direction of the bathroom had conveyed this last syllable perfectly.

A large tear began to gather just under the dark blue iris of Calista’s eye. The moisture gathered fast and soon became too heavy for its current position. It rolled slowly down her smooth cheek and became lost in a cluster of her luscious hair.

The hand on her stomach moved, finally – but not to wipe away the tear’s residue. She bit her lower lip and creased her forehead just slightly as she stretched out her body to help her now extended left arm navigate its way under the pillow. The slight creases in her brow turned to a scowl as her fingers felt the smooth plastic hidden just to the left of her temple.

He had broken her – but slightly. He had put a crack in the foundation of her life: a foundation built on a firm belief in love and some higher purpose. There is no love, every kiss harsh kiss from his soft lips had told her, there is only now and there is only this, for you.

You’re a whore; trash, his roaming hands had informed her. For you, this is all there is. There’s the fact that I want you and there’s the fact that, most of the time, you don’t disgust me.

These are facts and they are the most you can possibly hope for.

Part of her desperately screamed that he was wrong – but he was so powerful within her mind. Maybe she loved him. It seemed so wrong; so fucked up – but she couldn’t walk away from him. So maybe he was right. That could not happen to her. He was definitely right about one thing, however: time to get cleaned up.

Her head turned to the left to glimpse the bright blue Bic-lighter as her left hand extracted it slowly from beneath the pillow.

She heard the water from the shower pouring over Mason’s body and hitting the tile floor below. Silly boy; standing behind that curtain trying to wash off all his dirt and grime and malice with water and soap.

Calista sat up suddenly and maneuvered her naked body to the bottom of the bed. She shimmied down the supports as gracefully as she could while clutching the lighter. Her feet hit the carpeted ground and carried her almost soundlessly to the silver mini fridge waiting on the other side of the room. She opened it; extracted a nearly full bottle of Grey Goose.

Showering, she thought with amusement. Such a stupid man. That insignificant spray of water could never cleanse him.

She unscrewed the top of the bottle and poured a bit of the biting liquid at her feet. It soaked into the thin carpeting so satisfyingly. Tears poured from her eyes but no sobs burst from her to accompany them. She worked silently

She walked towards the bathroom, allowing the open bottle to create a trail of vodka everywhere she walked. One bottle completely soaked the edges of the medium-sized dorm room. Perfect. But it left none for her. She tossed the empty Gray Goose bottle to the corner of the room absentmindedly. It clinked against the wall and a crack ran up its side. The fissure was small and barely distorted the blue and white label – but it was there. It couldn’t function like it should anymore. It would have to be thrown out.

It happened all the time, thought Calista as she strode with grim purpose back to the still open mini fridge. Her hand reached in and found a handle of Taaka. It was full. Perfect. She hoisted the bottle to her lips and took a shot. Straight. No chaser. It burned all the way down. Now that was how cleanliness worked. Burning – not rinsing.

She wiped her mouth crudely with the back of her hand and strode towards the heavy wood door separating Mason’s dorm room with the still silent third floor hallway of dorm building 1516. She stood up against the doorway so that her feet squished on some of the vodka she had dumped there – her and her full bottle of Taaka completed an alcoholic circuit winding its way throughout the dimly lit enclosure.

The sound of shower water stopped abruptly. Mason baby thinks he’s all clean, Calista thought as she poured two more shots of the eighty-proof poison down her waiting throat and into her empty stomach. Bullshit. He was still as dirty and disgusting as when he’d stepped into that bathroom.

Calista’s eyes no longer poured tears. Her face showed composure – beautiful and even sensual composure, as she lifted the handle high in the air and began pouring its contents over her small, silky head. She closed her eyes tightly against the torrent and felt the stuff soaking through her hair.

Vodka cascaded down her cheeks. It swept down her neck and pooled in the tiny craters created by her clavicle; seeped slowly down the slope of each of her breasts and found its way deftly down her stomach. Her belly button ring sparkled and danced in the deluge. By the time the damp and delicately clumped dark feathers rimming her eyes again separated to reveal the deep pools of blue there, alcohol was trickling down her long slender legs.

Mason opened the bathroom door to this scene. She was straight in his line of vision – a mere few feet from him. She was still naked. Her small, hourglass figure gleamed and her hair fell wet about her shoulders and down her back. Those seductive blue eyes were glued, almost trance like, to his face and her lips were parted ever so slightly. It was so perversely beautiful that Mason blinked once and felt himself rooted to the threshold of the bathroom.  Both her arms fell limply by her side and, as he gazed, an empty bottle of Taaka fell from her right hand to thud dully against the carpet. Her left hnd clutched his blue Bic-lighter.

“Calista,” he managed finally, unable to tear his eyes from her seductive and deadly calm gaze, “Calista, what the fuck…? What the fuck are you…doing…?”

“Getting cleaned up,” the vision before him stated matter-of-factly. Of course. Her face never changed and her gaze never wavered as her fingers flicked the lighter waiting there into action.

A flame. Fire. The entire room smelled of booze.

“Calista. Calista,” Mason’s voice was a terrified and angry moan now, “Calista, what the fucking hell…?”

The tiniest of smiles danced at the corners of Calista’s pink mouth, but her gaze never wavered as she lifted the hand holding the cleansing flame level with her vodka-soaked head.

“Honey,” her voice sounded calm and low – so low that Mason’s ears strained to intercept it, “you don’t know what Hell is. Not yet.”

Her left hand flicked the flame at the end of the lighter into her hair – into the alcohol permeating her beautiful hair.

Torture ended where fire began. 

As of yet, she had no idea what vengeance tasted like - but she hoped it tasted like Dutch Mocha. She hoped it was hot and sweet. She hoped it slid down her throat replacing the originally sugary taste with its base of bitterness. Would it make her jittery afterwards? Would it course through her veins with all the pumping intensity of caffeine? 

Or would it settle in her stomach and, hours later, suddenly send her spinning into blissful delirium like Vodka?

What if you were to mix vodka and mocha? How dangerous would that drink be, do you think? Would it be akin to dying — to the slow-motion spiral towards nothing? Like being thrown from a cliff or more like being shot in the left temple?

Would it be like going off the edge?

She was sort of in to the edge lately. Actually, she’d pretty much set up residence there. 

There. See? Her thoughts weren’t even making much sense anymore. Time to snap out of them. 

The shine of Chelsea’s thick chestnut brown ponytail came to life. It flirted shamelessly with the eyes of the young man sitting directly behind her as she jerked her young head upwards suddenly. The dense forest of lashes on her top lid beat against the softer feathers of her bottom lashes as the eyes contained between the pair broke their focus on the diary before her. The dark black of her pupils expanded slightly within their baths of dark blue.

She couldn’t be more ready.

Her dark hair fell into her azure eyes. Her stringy dark hair.

Straight, she thought morosely, my hair looked straight this morning. In the mirror. I looked for hours. Was almost late. Straight.

More of the stringy, scorched, tortured locks fell tauntingly into her eyes as she chewed with determination at the fingernail belonging to the ring finger of her left hand. The vaguely terrifying smell of half-assed sterilization and student fecal matter could have attributed to the scowl painting her porcelain face as much as her recent dejection or her intense concentration on the fast approaching quick of that damn nail.

Jessica Lawrence was sitting in the only woman’s room of Barbourville High School. That would probably explain the shit smell. She twisted to spit a tiny sliver of nail into the back corner of the large handicapped stall she was currently inhabiting.

Becoming, she observed inwardly, I am such a lady. So beautiful. So delicate. I’m a regular fucking flower.

She spit another nail fragment; this time with zest towards the graffiti ridden door of her chosen stall. Straightening her hair had been a bad idea. It didn’t look like the pretty girls.’ The kinky curls covering her head had not smoothed into shiny, flowy locks useful for reflecting sunlight or twirling suggestively around one slender finger as she flirted with some hot guy. His name was Jason and he tended to show up in fantasies where her hair looked this good. Typically, he rode off with her on the back of his motorcycle or convertible – her fantasy hair flowing behind them in the breeze.

Her hair had certainly seemed fantasy-Jason-good to her this morning as it steamedto death in front of the full length mirror dangling precariously from her closet door. She guessed that these sort of delusions were more than likely typical when one attempts to beautify oneself at six o’clock in the morning – especially if the one in question is far beyond the help of any beautifying techniques.

Jessica furrowed her brow tighter and drew her legs up to join her on the toilet seat. She rested her greasy head on her jean-clad knee and continued to gnaw at her disappearing fingernail. She supposed darkly that perhaps she should actually count her blessings. Afterall, it wasn’t as though she had had the misfortune of carrying her six a.m. delusion with her long – it was only in second period that Mrs. Mayfeld had pulled her aside to ask her whether or not her family could afford shampoo right now? Would she like to sign up to receive monthly donations of soaps and canned goods from the school’s Committee for Needy Families?

Mrs. Mayfeld was fifty-five years old. She taught chemistry and wore dresses that simultaneously swallowed and distorted her short, lumpy frame. Her hair most closely resembled road kill which had been flung by the wheels of some uncaring semi-truck before coming to a final resting stop on the top of her constantly quivering dome.

RIP, small rodent.

This was the woman who had pointed out how “greasy and, pardon me, but stringy, dear” Jessica’s hair was today. So stringy, in fact, that she had been willing to compensate Jessica and the entire Lawrence family for what just had to be a “tough economic time” for them. Nobody’s hair could look so gruesome otherwise, could it?

Wrong, road kill head – so very wrong.

Horrified by Mayfeld’s misguided good deed of the day, Jessica had fled to this lovely bathroom stall midway through chemistry class after murmuring some excuse about nausea caused by over-exposure to the chemical they were using that day.

Salt water fumes made her barf? Oh, she really was such a genius. Really. Well done, Jessica, you sly fox, you.

Her fingernail began to bleed. It got in her mouth. Fucking perfect. Now, on top of embarrassment, shame, and human fecal matter particulates, she would also taste her own blood all day long. Yum.

To make matters even worse, she was rather sure that a boy had followed her from chemistry class, all the way down the hall, and was now waiting patiently for her outside the bathroom door. She could also be about 99.9% certain that this boy was not, nor did he in any way resemble, fantasy Jason. She sighed heavily and pushed aside the door of the handicapped stall in order to begin the six-step trek to the nearest sink. She was rather certain that she was being pursued by that loser from chemistry again.

tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?

You’re freakin’ me out, tumblrbot. Just read my unfinished prose.

It was while fixing the grout in his downstairs bathroom that Jake Mason realized he was completely and irrevocably in love with Catherine Olsen. He loved every word she used. He loved every gesture she made. God knows he loved every curve of her body. There just wasn’t anything about her that was wrong to him. He was fixing grout and thinking, so it would seem, about his future wife.

It wasn’t as though he didn’t know he loved Catherine before this moment. He’d only pursued her for a good three of the last four months. He’d only watched, painfully, as she’d slipped away from her first romantic collegiate mistake and recklessly onto her second. She’d called him after that second guy walked out of her life. She was physically sick…with the flu…and couldn’t figure out if her tears came from her bodily or her emotional pain. She was sickly and pale the first time he saw her on Skype after her latest debacle. Her skin was void of makeup, her hair utterly untended – she was disheveled, puffy-eyed, and red-nosed.

She was beautiful to him. He really loved her. He’d really be there. Yet somehow, even Jake wasn’t right for Miss Catherine Olsen.

Why? Jake doesn’t know. Catherine doesn’t know. The jury’s still out on whether or not even God knows.

Real love shouldn’t make sense, thought Catherine.

And it certainly didn’t, sweetheart – it still doesn’t.