the water or the starlight - SCP Foundation

⚠️ Content warning: Suicide, Loneliness, Depression, Implied Religious Trauma/Homophobia

Did you know someone once died driving off the Pier bridge? Yeah. Freak accident, y’know. People consider it the town's sore spot. It’s not used a lot. I feel bad for her, the girl who died- y'know. Her family, her friends, her future. All dashed.

I wonder how the stars looked under the water. Could she tell them apart from the sparks at the edge of her vision?

Was she swallowed by the water or the starlight first?

Tick. Tick.

Time starts again, clinging to my wrist like a watch with teeth. I am bitten and accepted into it. I am the werewolf of time.

Sometimes it’s too hot to exist comfortably, and those are the days where I exist anyways, because why the fuck do I think I should be comfortable? I'm trapped in short story and polaroid collage form. I’m trapped in Ohio and years I don’t think I ever had the right to live.

I don’t deserve the happiness I’m handing myself, but God help me if I ever feel sad.

“Sid?” Gail waves a hand in front of my eyes. I try to focus on the situation. We’re in the woods by Dev’s house, and there’s his minivan that can’t possibly be his since his Mom used to drive me to tap practise when I was seven, which also can’t be true because she had a stroke a year ago and time shouldn’t be allowed to work like that.

The trees are thin green and threaded through with spiderwebbed light, and the ground is covered in dead leaves, like Fall never quite left the town even after it had slipped on its winter coat. I don’t think I ever really left Fall either. I don’t think I ever left my old twin size bed.

Tick. Tick.

Why is this happening?

“Hey bud!” Dev’s smiling and has his hand up and I’m repeating “That’s Devyn Mallard” in my head because fuck he cut his hair short and that’s not allowed Dev has long hair long and brown and we have a joke about it and I’m losing it I’m losing my goddamn mind over a fucking haircut.

“Hey Dev.” I grin. “Nice hair. It’s short!” Please tell me it’s not real. (Also I need to make your decisions for you because I am a control freak and the change is too much.)

“Thanks!”

God I’m a horrible friend.

Gail and Dev and Madison and Brett(BrittneyBrittneyBrittney you transphobic pieceofshit) - and I became a friend group in Juniour year. Brit and Maddie and Gail were in Dev’s theatre class, and since I was Dev’s best friend and Gail’s writing workshop partner I was there too. Gail Maddie Dev and Brit are best friends since Gail and Dev are heading for the same college and Brit and Gail have some sort of Web Series too important for me and Maddie and Dev do music together so it all makes a lot of sense.

I’m there too.

But I’m peripheral fog (running out of excuses).

I used to believe that this was a story. That my life was a book I was writing. But after too many pages and no real words down, I can't help but feel it would be better to end. I'm not a writer anymore. I haven't written anything in years that felt real. And all the teaching jobs and essays and talk of college won't change that I am trapped between the pages of my childhood home/short story form.

When I'd rather be trapped in my mothers arms Gail's kiss anything anything is better than this ice water tears. That sounds poetic enough, right? Poetic enough so I can pretend I'm still a fucking writer and not a corpse with a pen.

Agnes’ kitchen was the best burgers in Anders until Agnes moved to Florida with her husband, and took her grey curls and crow footed kind eyes with her. So now Agnes’ is run by a guy named Michael or something who is supposed to be her nephew. She said I was like a daughter to her so I don’t see why it isn’t mine.

The new teenage waitress is bored and doesn’t look at me while serving my burger. It tastes like coal. That’s when I find out that-

I don’t come here for the burgers I come here so Agnes can help me with my homework and bring me a froth filled chocolate shake on the house while my Dad drives an hour to see how my Mom is doing in Chemo.

The best nights were those in Sixth grade, when it was dark outside the windows and I knew everything would be okay, because Leukaemia isn’t that bad.

Not until it comes back.

Not until it’s sophomore year and nothing is your chest’s only word

As

She

Dies

.

A kid at the Elementary school I went to shadow at called me Mrs Elmers. (No no no) That’s what my friends called my mother but not me, never me. I’m just Sidney.

Why don’t I have a name anymore?

“Our last summer as kids?” Dev offered the line along with his amber filled glass to toast. I drank and tasted nothing but bitterness and my burnt taste buds from coffee that woke me up to the world too early. That was too much too soon. And I’m burned.

“We should play hide and seek,” I suggested, smiling. They laughed. “Nah, we’re too big for that; Plus Maddie’s red hair is too easy to spot.” Dev nudged her. I took another drink as they squabbled. This isn’t their last summer as kids, it’s their first as adults.

I’m the only one who never realised that.

Fuck.

That’s Rebecca from school, waving at me.

“Hey Sidney! How are you? Didn’t think you’d be around here.” She’s smiling. She used to trip me in the hall when I walked past. She’s smiling. She doesn’t remember. Why do I have to?

I’m smiling.

Why do I see her face-

“Hey! Nice to see you too!”

more clearly in my mind-

“What’s going on?”

Than I see my own Mother

I don’t feel my arms this morning I don’t feel like a person fuck is this normal am I going to die.

Nothing’s wrong Sid it’s all in your head/Something’s wrong with you Sid you’re a bad person.

Fuck I can’t breathe anymore.

No one told me I would die by drowning.

I sit until.

It’s gone.

I just found some old letters at the bottom of a drawer. I think I left them for myself when I was younger because I thought one day I would be able to look back and think something nice about how far I’ve come but really I know that the girl in the letters is no happier or better than I was.

She was just young enough to have an excuse for it.

I know she (me? am I even the same person?) dreamed of changing the world. And sometimes I did, when my anger fell into my chest so hard it split my heart open to scream. But the more important it was - the more I wanted it - the more firm life's hand on my back became. I changed grades smudged onto my report cards, not teachers. I changed the weather once, I think, and took the stormcloud with me. It hangs over my head, reminding me I traded thunder for a blue sky, when I should've traded lightning for my Mom's life. When I should have traded my years for hers.

It’s warm, in the air and hot on the pavement and cool in the water where my toes dip and simmer, and it’s humid and uncomfortable inside my chest where I am holding myself upright on the ledge of the pool. Deja vu sits in my gut, dizzying. Why has this happened before? Why does it always get uncomfortable the closer I am to being free?

Maddie is tanning and Brit is chatting up some blonde that’s laughing at her jokes and Dev and Gail are splashing each other in the pool and laughing. I’m on the edge and I’m sick to my stomach in a way that feels empty.

I’m eating up the summer and eating up my time and eating up this postcard-ready day at the pool and I feel starved. Fuck, there’s Gail on the side of the pool with her short brown curls and shaved sides and a butterfly tattoo and olive skin and I’m trying not to stare at her.

I think she likes Dev or something. I think I want to kiss her like cinnamon and hot fudge.

I wish I had found this out six years ago when my Mom was alive and my Dad didn’t believe in God. Now he believes in a God that doesn’t want me. He thinks that He is the way back to my mother. He forgets that I am half her as well.

Did you know that someone died driving off of Pier bridge? Yeah. It was tragic. But it always was coming, I think.

Coming around, and around. An endless cycle.

The deja vu eats me when I dive.

It doesn’t feel like falling because the car is too heavy to feel like real freefall.

It was seven minutes after midnight last night. I took the long way around town first.

I don’t remember-

Anything I was now-

But

The

Starlight

That’s what swallowed me first.

And I know this will repeat

Until I am dead

The cycle is endless,