Salt - a short story

She is going to die here. Don’t you see? DON’T YOU SEE? You are blind. I can’t breathe. Can you feel it? Can you taste it? I can. Salt. I can’t breathe. No air. Just salt and water. Metal and blood. My eyes burn. It’s so cold. Feeling's gone. So numb. I can see it all. Can you see it? Blind. That’s what at you are! That’s what you are.

It wasn’t my fault. I was just leaving and he wanted more. No. Not more--all of it. It wasn’t my fault. Its not my fault I’m stuck here like this, hiding inside myself. She hides in me. Its not my fault. Do you believe me? Maybe it would have been different. Can we kill him? Lets pick him apart limb from limb, feed them to him. I think we can. No, I don’t think we can, I know we can. Will you help me? Please help me. This will help. Closure. Please help me. Nobody can get me. Nobody can see me or hear me. No body knows where I am. I’m alone with the fishes. Alone with the monsters. These monsters aren’t nearly as scary as the ones I’m away from.

Damaged goods. It’s this fucking disease! He gave me this disease. He graced me with this disease that will never leave. I could get help, but I’m stuck under water. Maybe I should introduce you to him. You can see for yourself in his swagger. You can witness how one person could disease another and simply go on living. No guilt. No regret. No punishment. Nothing. For me? What do I have the pleaseure of living with? There is no land of dreams for me to run away to, no deep slumber. There is no medicine to rid it of my body, no weapon to extinguish it. There will never come a time when i can chop off its head and watch it squirm around, thrashing aimlessly screeching in pain. It's a disease. A disease he gave me and got away with. A disease that will only die when i do. I’m underwater and I am diseased. Maybe the fish can help me. Maybe the monsters can help me.

I’m suffocating. The poison's ever continuous journey slows to the rate of my barely beating heart. Painful. It’s no big deal. It’s un-just is all. It’s hard to live knowing that I could be responsible for so many diseased. Guilty. I was scared! It’s not my fault. I was ignorant and innocent and scared. When the poison starts it's course there is no stopping it. It’s never stopped. Stealing my breath, inhabiting my body, pumping out my heart, coursing through my veins. It enters and exits every cell, every fiber of my being, whispers a soft reminder. My brain was like a sponge, thirstily sucking up every drip-drop, oblivious. My brain absorbed every word. Every sight. If it wasn’t so spongy then maybe there could have been some hope for this waste of a life. Maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't have been tricked so easily. If I wasn’t so scared. If I wasn’t so young. If my brain just wasn’t so damn spongy! Now it’s a rock. Set in stone. Guilt. That distinct taste of poison. I've tried everything to get that awful taste off my tongue. Gum, peppermint, peanut butter.. not even the alcohol could burn it off. A mouthful of blood helped get me to sleep, kill the demons inside for a short while. The tear of flesh, remnants clinging to the jagged edge, the immediate rush of boiling liquid oozing out from inside of me. The birth of addiction.

Do you think someone will find me before it’s too late? The truth is, i feel much cooler now that i've isolated myself from you fucking people. I like it down here, floating. It’s nice, just too much time to think. Time to remember. Isolated. Out of reach of the world and it's infinite triggers. Suffocating. It was hard to breathe then too. No one can touch me. I’m simply isolated from anything and everything. I have time to think about what it was like before my innocence was torn from me, an untouched photo album in my mind.