A/N: This is a quick bit. Part one of three in my FGB piece for the wonderful Melissa228. Muffin, you're the ST to my FU and if I wrote how much I love you... well, it would be longer than this chap-let. Thank you for being exactly who you are.

And thank you to masenvixen and nerac for your extra eyes... and your epic racks.

Word surgery brought to you by annanabanana and ilsuocantante. Your bones are my bones, ladies.

Disclaimer: S. Meyer owns all things Twilight.

_________

October

2:46.

The dots on the clock display constantly flash. I count them until I reach 138.

2:59.

The glow from the numbers is diluted. The red seems duller. I don't think the beams reach as far as they did last night.

3:24

There are seven patches of paint on my walls that don't match the rest.

3:52

My eyes are dry. I blink until they water.

4:46

I shoot straight up in bed. My knuckles are white as they grip the sheets. I'm sweaty and cold. My chest burns. There are four scratches across my skin; puckered, swollen, scarlet. I can't decide if I've forgotten my nightmare or am pretending not to remember it.

5:04

I stare at the pillow next to mine. I haven't smelled it. Yet.

5:42

The sky is getting lighter. I can officially wake up in eighteen minutes. For Charlie's benefit.

5:59

One minute. I inhale the pillow. It's getting stale, so I breathe deeper. A millisecond of memory meets me. His scent is almost gone.

And he… he is gone.

Tomorrow, I'm unplugging my clock.

______

I think Charlie made breakfast; something's burning. It was nice of him to try, I guess. I grab a granola bar and leave the house without saying goodbye.

The air has that morning thickness. Everything is wet, but it isn't raining. It's cold enough for a jacket, but I don't wear one.

My truck engine takes a while to warm up. I'm probably late. I toss the granola in my passenger seat. It lands in a pile of twelve others, still in their wrappers.

Driving is mindless, like when I count things. I force a minimal division between feeling and functioning. I focus on the growling of my truck and colors flying by in symmetrical patterns. Green. Asphalt. Yellow. Asphalt. Green. And grey… always grey.

I wonder if it's grey where he is, too. My stomach churns. I might throw up. My window makes a screeching sound as I open it. The wind is bitter and nips at my skin. There's a difference between this numb and the constant.

I see a sign for Port Angeles. Five Miles. I make a u-turn. I'm definitely going to be late. Again.

______

Angela talks to me in the office. I watch her chapped lips while they move. It doesn't register until she's halfway down the hallway.

The floor in my classroom is covered with muddy footprints. There are brown blades of dead grass creating a path from the door to Mike's desk. I know it's him because he's pigeon-toed and drags one of his feet while he walks. He's also worn the same shoes every day since...

I don't hear my English lesson, but I'm still writing down almost everything. My body is composed of millions of dead-end synapses. Only the absolutely fundamental have survived. I'm a biological marionette.

My hand starts to cramp, so I stop and look over my notes. I understand the general premise. Apparently the class is discussing common themes from our recent readings. I don't remember much of it, but it's not hard to guess. Love. Betrayal. Death. Love. Betrayal. Heartbreak. Death.

I start to believe maybe they're one in the same. I don't like reading anymore, anyway. I think writers are criminal in their blanket oblivion to truth.

They're minions of misery, those suffocated by the constant attempt to put on paper their pain, its analogies, a literary crafting of the intangible. I know I'm not those empty caverns, those caged ribs holding nothingness, the stagnant hearts only pumping to maintain life. To stay alive.

The clichés of heartbreak are rooted in pathetic forays into shallow suffering. Their faux pain gives way to my own rage, the burning sensation unlike the one I formerly fell victim to, the one searing memory that exists to remind me-- at one point everything was real.

I trace the raised skin of my wrist with my pointer finger. It's noticeably frigid next to surrounding flesh.

If those who spat their sorrows knew, by any means, the magnitude of the emptiness I feel, their volumes would be written with nothing but the subtle grooves of empty pages, the vanilla paper blinding readers with its voids.

I'm tired of thinking today. I wish the analog clock was digital, so I could count flashing dots until class ends. Instead, I put my head down and settle on tuning in to the tick-tock of the second hand.

________

The volume of the crowd in the cafeteria makes it difficult to hear my own thoughts. But not impossible.

It sounds like summer cicadas. An overwhelming, persistent buzz. I'm unable to concentrate on a single voice; it's too exhausting. I twist the cap off my lemonade and spend the rest of the hour wondering if this is how it always sounded inside hishead.

I don't move quickly to leave when the bell rings. I throw my full drink in the garbage and shove the bottle cap in my pocket. When I get home, I'll put it with the rest of them.

______

I dig through my locker, feeling blindly between books and binders for the smooth edge of a CD. I look every day. I still haven't found it.

I check my glovebox on the way home. It's not in there, either.

______

My house reeks of air freshener, factory rain. It's giving me a headache.

Before I reach the stairs, Charlie rounds the corner and says… something. I'm not listening; I'm staring at the bundle of purple in his arms. I inhale that awful stench again. I gag.

My sheets. Clean. No stains. No wrinkles. No scent. No him. Nothing but smooth seams and factory rain.

I hear the blood rushing through my veins and feel my heartbeat vibrating in my skull. I imagine this is what it sounded like to him. Wooshing. Pulsing. Tempting.

I have no idea what I'm saying. I'm shaking, screaming, collapsing. My throat is dry, my face is wet, my vision is blurred. But I can see Charlie, and he looks… terrified.

I sleep on the couch and don't say a word to my dad for a week.

______

I can't sleep. There's a metal rod digging into my back. The clock on the DVD player is too small to read from here.

I pick fuzzy pieces off the blanket and roll them together until I pass out from sheer exhaustion.

For three hours.

There are a cloudy thirty seconds when I wake up and everything is fine. The enormity of reality hasn't set in. I'm blissfully oblivious, and the oblivion is more than I've felt in forever. I grab a pen off the coffee table. I groggily scribble something on the arc of skin between my thumb and forefinger. I turn over to see if he's there, watching me. The moment ends and the conscious and subconscious collide.

________

I'm early to school. I stay in my truck and notice smudged blue ink stretched across my hand.

Eat.

Right. I take three bites of granola before I feel sick. I stare hopelessly at a space across the lot.

No one parks there.

_______

I'm writing so fast. A sound breaks the barrier between my brain and body, and I need to hear it again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

"Miss Swan?"

My name is foreign falling from present lips. I don't know the last time I actually heard it. Not in nightmares. Not when it came from… him. Or my manifestation of him. The him who never left. Who never broke me.

I peek through the inconsistent curtain of my hair to the front of the class. Greasy strands began clumping together in recent hours…days…weeks. I tug the string of my sweatshirt between my lips. Gnawing. Gripping. Teeth pulling. Taking Breaths. Measured reminders.

"Could you repeat that?" I manage. My throat hurts. Twenty pairs of uniformly shocked eyes seep into me, see through me. Has it been that long since I spoke? They all stare. They know I'm as insane as I feel.

"Of course, Miss Swan. The Energy Mass Equivalence. E equals M C squared." I can feel her eyes on me but I don't look up. I don't respond. My pen flies across paper, neglecting lines or reason. Repeat. Again. Again.

This is textbook torture. Mental masochism. But I can't control it. And as demented as it is, I don't know if I want to. Is it better to remain miserable and know he existed? Or remain miserable and pretend he didn't?

The bell rings, momentarily dragging me from my mind.

I glance at the scrawl in front of me. Messy. Tear-stained. Lines of E=MC2. And dug deep black in random spaces...

Edward Masen Cullen.

________

I check my locker after lunch. Still no CD.

_______

The doorbell keeps ringing. It's unbearably hot in my room. I get up to crack a window. It smells like winter, and I hear small voices. They're chanting.

Trick or Treat.

I guess it's Halloween.

I go back to my bed. One of my floorboards shifts under my feet and I hear it softly tap into another. I guess it's loose. It seems to be missing a nail.

Three more rounds of trick-or-treaters come, but I don't move. I assume Charlie is not home. I do homework and then count dots. Again.

Crack. Crack. Crack. I go back to the window and look down. Unrecognizable small figures are hurling white spheres toward my house. One is dressed in all green. Another is wearing a helmet. I think they look funny.

They scamper off in different directions after the cardboard carton of eggs is empty. One stays and stands under a tree in the front yard.

He looks up. I haven't seen eyes in a while. He's white. Unnaturally white. The moon reflects in his slicked back hair. There is a dip of black dye in the middle of his forehead. And I see red. Trails of liquid crimson down both sides of his mouth, punctuated by two pointed white teeth. Fangs.

Fangs? A farce, a fairytale fictitious form of what I know to be real.

I'm pulling mouthfuls of air, desperate to breathe. I stumble until the backs of my knees hit the end of my bed. I'm choking, gulping still, heaving. I close my eyes painfully tight. I don't have anything to count in the blackness, so I just use numbers.

I turn around and glimpse at my clock.

9:39.

He once told me,in his world, time was skewed. Decades passed like seconds. Since he's been gone, my seconds pass like decades. I begged him for immortality. He cherished my humanity. But the moment he left, I became undead on my own.

I reach behind the nightstand and rip the plug from the wall. No more time. No more flashing dots. No more time.

_______

::ducks:: Still with me?

Up next is November.

For those who think I've abandoned Hand in Glove--- not in the slightest. I'm still in with those two. It's coming. Faith? I'm not a flouncer, I just stall a lot.