Crooked

There's no one else in the whole world who can stand to look at my face. Broken, and bruised, and so often bleeding. Scratched and scarred. I'm flawed. Twisted. Bent to the point that I know I'm going to break completely. Past the point of going back. I drag myself home every time. Glass and gravel ground into my hands and my knees and the sick taste of iron over my tongue and down my throat from the blood I've swallowed. Skin trapped up under my already dirty fingernails. Skin scraped off the bones of the nameless people who leave their signatures in bruises across my body. The treads of my boots leave dirty, bloodied tracks leading up to the door. Dark brown stains of handprints ghost the handle, the doorbell. Reminders that this is where I belong, collapsed against the door, bleeding and broken.

Night falls before I can bring myself to raise a crooked fist to smash against the frame. The darkness is gloating around me, sitting heavily on top of my shoulders along with the rest of the world. The pain inside my curled fingers is instant, flames licking at my bones, eating away my flesh. My arm falls down at my side, limp, and useless like the person I am. I let the coldness of the concrete tease and chew my mangled body, let the joints go stiff and muscles ache. My eyes strain to stay open. The pressure in my head is begging to be drained. Every fibre of my being pleading to be severed and released.

And that release comes, the pinch of the needle in the form of a shadow swinging open, the drug entering my bloodstream with the silence of the figure, standing in the frame of that darkness. A sigh drifts out of the black, and I try to lift my head towards the sound. Try to drag myself to my feet. For one brilliant, fleeting second, it seems like I'm going to make it, but I begin the descent back to the ground, time ticking by so slowly in my head. It always seems like a slow descent. In reality I'm just crashing down.

But two hands catch me, two arms pull me up. I don't know how they pull me up; I'm deadweight, but suddenly I'm standing, not entirely on my own. Those angelic arms are pushing, pulling, easing me through the door, and somehow we stagger through the walls, awkwardly lurching down that dark passageway of a hall that seems to stretch out and go on forever. Just when I'm starting to think we're never going to make it to the end of that hall, just like I do every time, the door smashes open and I'm blinded by whiteness. Hospital kind of whiteness. So clean it makes me feel sick. Right on cue, I'm pushed to my knees, my skinned and bloodstained fingers scrabbling against the polished white tiles, clawing my way in front of the toilet, prying the lid open, releasing the mass of bile, blood and sickness from my cramped and churning stomach.

Two arms are folded across a chest. I can't turn around to face them, so I lower my swollen face deeper into the porcelain bowl. Eventually, I'm just coughing up spit and blood, and there's nothing inside me left to get rid of. Once it's all out, I'm consumed with shame, and all I want to do is stay like that, my arms wrapped around the cold whiteness, body curled up in self defeat. But two arms are pulling me away.

I can't look him in the eyes right now. He tries to twist my face up to look into his, but I squeeze my eyes shut, try to turn away. It hurts to resist him, but it hurts more to give in. He never says a word.

Two hands pull at the bloodied rags I'm wearing. Two hands pull away my shredded shirt, fingers coaxing off my shredded jeans. Blackness starts to creep into my vision, and I feel my knees begin to give out. One hand grips my arm in a tight embrace, the other whips across my face. The blackness fades, and I'm grateful. But the clarity doesn't last. I feel my balance grow shaky, and I know if I don't hold onto something, I'll fall, shatter against those cold, white tiles like so many times before. So I hold onto him. I feel the smoothness of his hands run over my scarring back. I feel him pull back, and two hands push me backwards.

I crash into the bathtub so conveniently filled with the hot water that tells me he knew I was coming. He always knows. He's always ready for me. My head knocks against the side, and I let myself go limp. I opened bloodshot and blurry eyes to see him moving closer.

He moves into the water with a grace I could never dream of possessing. The whiteness and pureness of his skin, now slick with wetness, moves against me. Guilt attacks my guts, pulling and chewing in an attempt to rip more out of me, to scavenge any last scrap. I want to pull away, to run away, to die, anything to keep myself from infecting him with my oozing, dirty disease. But he moves against my. Lets my rough and torn skin tug and scratch at his flawlessness. Slides his smooth, perfect body against all my imperfections, wipes the dirt and blood against him, rubs the sickness into his skin.

I collapse in his arms, letting those two arms hold me above the water. He could drown me right here, in this room of purity and white, drown me in my own blood. He could keep the door locked. Those two hands could detach, and leave me here.

But instead they wipe the dirt away. Soft caresses dig into the openness of my flesh, and bleed out the badness. His fingers sting, and his gaze stings more, but I finally raise my head to him. Blood, dirt, chaos, is smeared across that perfect face, which moves closer to mine, and I can feel warm breath flood out against my aching bones. The softness of his lips brush against mine, and come away streaked with blood. He still doesn't say anything, but leans back in the water, leans back in the water that turned a muddy shade of red as I hit the surface.

He scrapes the sweat off me. Rakes his nails against me until the dirt is broken away. Moves against the scars that must be all too familiar.

I want to pull away. But I'm paralyzed. I want to run away, but I'm just so tired. I want to die, but he brings me back. I want to disappear so that he never has to see me again, but I can't. Because there's no one else in the world who can stand to look at my face. And without those two arms to catch me, I can't stand at all.