Blood-Stained Wishes (Short Story)
He glanced at his scars and they looked back and laughed. His memory sat beside him, presenting flashbacks of What Used To Be as an offering, and he would cry. Only to be comforted by an overshadowing gloom and a worn teddy bear. Happiness was no longer in his vocabulary; a smile muscle contraction forgotten. He sat in his room. The whites now gray and weathered, courtesy of Depression. Resting at his feet were the porcelain remains of a little shattered world, and staining the dismal carpet fibers was the blood of a broken bottle: deadened gavel. Hunched over: a Quasimodo figure, he mimicked rock animation and stared beyond the confines of his room. His mindset rested within every creek of the floorboard, next to his life source that lay on a sword’s edge. He was the perfect telltale disguise for a beating heart. To his right, a tombstone encased with a name carved in his likeness, and to his left, a tranquil demeanor hung by a rusty nail head.
Second Nature depression, left with a teddy bear and a crucifix
Lost lover, little razor solution is thrown into this loser mix
Unwanted remembrance, emblems forgotten in every swig of temporary emotion
Unemployment pestilence, scales tipped for a man who sits bearing a rope’s end.
His head rested against the night stand, arm-encased pillow legs supporter, holding the purpose for a hung head. He had three wishes for a genie that would never come, three prayers for a God who never cared, and three nails to dangle his Hope for symbolism. He remained calm, little distressed sniper, counting the scars on his wrists: a token of Futile’s appreciation, and the blisters on his fingers. His hair ragged, a habitat for bedlam, and his whole being was helter-skelter personified. Yet, within every beat of the eardrum, his dissipating mind frame was where the razor blade’s whispers had lingered. That blade was the only thing that had spoken to him, and it seemed to be the only thing that listened. Though it held a taunting and uneasy cackle to its voice, the blade was mostly tolerable. Displaying a range from low tone whispers where it cloaked itself from recognition to high pitched rock screams that shattered the ear’s delicacy; it took a toll on the man as he sat there crying with dry tear ducts.
His head poked up, slowly his eyes moved from a fore-arm horizon to the crease where the wall and ceiling exchange gestures. Disillusionment finally had the best of him, and so he stood up, the veins in his hands seemed to scream in anticipation of what was to come. He turned towards the night stand and pick up a piece of paper: a sore thumb in the crowd. It was his only white in a world of grays. Sick of rubbing empty bottles drained of evil in search of that genie, and tired of waiting for God to answer his prayers, he grabbed a pen and wrote his three wishes onto the piece of paper. Reading what he had just written, he saw how they had diluted the whiteness of the paper and he laughed. He laughed at his three ridiculous little wishes. He threw the paper onto the ground and it landed in the form of a suicide note. He opened up the drawer to the night stand and stepped back from the initial screams. After the initial flinch, he was in, and held in his hand a solution to his problems.
He stared at the steel creature; it stared back and licked its lip in a craving for blood. The man’s veins screamed in torment, wanting anxiously for their lips to touch in a blood lust. Impatience took a tone in their voice. Holding the beast heads up and fangs bearing, he quickly jammed it in and pressed for a downward slit. The man gasped at the initial incision. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, as the blood ran down his hand and showered off his fingertips. The blade grinned in delight and marveled at what he had done. He held the beast in the weakening hand, and outstretched his other wrist, for it, too, was beckoning for a kiss. Motions mimicked, and the man bit his lip as his wrist had an orgasmic experience. Blood shot out. The pressure was unbelievably immense. Feeling his fluids draining and growing weak in the knees, he dropped the cackling beast and sat back down to where he was before. His body became an earthquake: Richter scale measurements.
He looked at his wishes, now stained with his blood. The purity of the paper was now officially gone. He looked at his demeanor, still hanging by that nail head, and he looked to his right to see that haunting tombstone in the back of his mind. A single tear rolled down his cheek as his eyes cried for help but his mouth said “I love you,” and his mind was somewhere else thinking how he never thought life would run like this. He grabbed the dingy teddy bear and laid it in his lap. He looked at it, wincing in pain, and noticed that the bear, too, was crying rivers of blood. Someone had seated him on a block of ice. The dust room was painted red, and the man’s eyes rolled back for a final time, glassy as marbles. He was completely drained of color, and could pass for an albino: skin pigmentation lost. His body twitched, a convulsion finale sending his head tumbling towards the floor, and it slammed on top of his broken porcelain world pieces. His veins’ screams and blade’s shrieks had finally subsided, silence broken by telephone interruption. And he laid there, returning to rock animation. Blood flow ceased. Breathing had packed up and left. His heart took vacation and never returned. His room was now painted with Death.
A few days passed before the body was discovered.
Upon entering the door, the policeman was greeted with a punch in the face. The stench fought him throughout his entire visit, as it gave itself the responsibility of keeping out all intruders. He looked down at the body: a perfect display of the early decay stages. It looked like a stone figure or something straight out of the Egyptian’s arts and crafts class. The teddy bear still wrapped tightly in his hand, and by his feet were the wishes that he had vainly hoped for. The policeman picked up the letter, and tried to read the three sayings, encased in a crust of blood. It seemed as though the paper bled itself. He saw the man’s desires and read the list:
1. My life back
2. My life back
3. MY LIFE BACK!!!!!!
Peering out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the answering machine on the night stand the corpse rested under. A blinking light of one enthralled the man’s pupils, and its hands grasped his curiosity. Play button pushed. He listened…
Hey, it’s Tracey. I just wanted you to know that I…was thinking about you and me, and…well I just wanted to say that I do love you and…I think that we should get back together and try to work this problem out. If not for us, at least for the baby. Yes, I found out yesterday…and before I go, the factory called me up by mistake. They want you back….
