The Egg Said Nothing - Caris O'Malley [30]
But I tripped on a lump in the carpet. The shovel left my hands; my face met the floor. With great effort, I got to my feet.
While searching his face for some sort of understanding, I missed the subtle shift his body made. I almost didn’t see it coming, the shovel flying at me. There was time to get away, but the urge was strangely lacking.
I dropped to my knees, my hands moving reflexively to my face. I pulled them away. Blood. Lots of blood. It glistened in the light, trickling over my fingers. My eyes caught my attacker’s face. He was smiling.
A weird tingling sensation overtook my body; my vision started to blur. I was screaming, but couldn’t control my jaw. Teeth chattered as I rolled and thrashed. Blood trailed over my face, down my neck and into my hair. The handle of the shovel now lay alongside me, like Ashley had for the span of a few short hours. I felt numb.
“Where’d you get those?” he shouted. I saw the shovel leave the ground.
“Whaaa mmph,” I said, and felt pressure on my knee. The shovel’s shadow moved across the wall.
“Where’d you get those quarters?” he demanded. I felt more pressure, this time on the side of my body. It was as though a plastic shield covered my ribs, and someone was hitting it with a golf club.
“You’re gonna steal from me, you son of a bitch? Those are my fucking quarters!” A tremendous impact hit my chest. The breath left my lungs. I heard his psychotic screams, muffled by the dampness in my head. The shovel tore the flesh of my arm. Blood flowed onto the carpet, a now familiar sight.
“Get a job, you piece of shit,” he said.
His shadow moved away. Something bumped my leg after bouncing on the carpet. My leg stung. Feeling seemed to be returning. I heard the elevator door open and shut.
I stared at the ceiling. My eyes blinked involuntarily as tears welled up. I had destroyed myself.
I had destroyed myself.
I had destroyed myself.
At some point, I rewired my thoughts, pirated my own intentions. I made myself a loser, a loner, unable to have a relationship with another person. I forced myself into hiding.
When I was seven, I probably killed my own puppy. I probably prevented my parents from having any other children. I made my mother abuse and abandon me.
I quarantined myself from a world I no longer cared about and turned into a blank page. Eraser shavings littered my surface; gritty gray smudges defined my life. Pretty words used to be there. Ugly ones, too.
Now there was nothing.
All of this shit was pointless. The letter. The video. The girl. None of it said anything because none of it would come to be.
My erasure was in process.
~Chapter 15~
In which the narrator sort of dies.
Try waking up in a stairwell after being beaten senseless. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Just try opening your eyes and coming to the realization that you have to get up again. Even though you know that nothing you do will result in anything, and nothing you can do or have done will ever be worth a thing. Your life is a mirage, your thoughts arcade slugs.
Do you decide to get up? To exact revenge on yourself? If your actions mean nothing, at least you can take some personal act of vengeance on the sadistic universe that spawned you only to snuff you out like a child’s first cigarette.
So, you’ve decided to get up; I don’t really understand you, but I’m with you. How do you deal with the pain? I don’t just mean the broken bones, the skin ruptures and the fact blood still pours from your face like an overturned pitcher of Kool-Aid. Have you learned nothing?
I’ve learned nothing.
I’m still trying to ignore the headache, but it isn’t going away. I place a hand out on the floor in front of me and get onto my knees. My chest hurts as I breathe, as if urging me to stop. It seems to have the right idea; it’s my brain that