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Hell has a name – Chapel Hill.
An arid wasteland of unheard prayers and belt-buckle lashings, it sits in the center of Nockfell surrounded by an ancient and decrepit stone wall, commanding a legacy of fear and reverence. The other side of the wall is unknown to me, but I was always good at pressing my ear against it and listening to the sounds of the adjacent unbound people.
Still, after all these years, I can’t tell if I’m locked inside or out.
I peer through cracks and holes in the carved out rock, just big enough to stick my fingers through. I can’t exactly tell what’s on the other side, but I’m scared of it. It’s full of a terrifying life that I know I can’t live myself, so I sit back from my side of the wall and I watch what pieces I can catch through the holes.
You are the way you waste, and I waste away by watching you.
Out there, you’re warm and content. I don’t see your smile, but I could pick out the sound of your laughter in a crowd of a hundred people. I watch you keep yourself busy by feeding your infinite curiosity, always sticking your plastic nose where it doesn’t belong, and often paying a price for it. But you don’t care, as long as you’re satisfied.
You’re cool.
I’ve almost always thought that.
Your dark clothes, your heavy jacket, your fingerless gloves. Your chipped black nail polish, the wallet chain that matches Larry’s, that stick and poke of a butterfly on your wrist. The way you always walk with purpose, the way the insults roll off of you, the sincerity of your words. The music, the backtalk, the friendship, the graveyard hangouts, the treehouse, the basement bedroom, the rebellion, all of it.
It’s cool.
Maybe the grass is greener on the other side, but I’d rather have your problems than mine. Creaky, leaky pipes bursting with green ooze in an allegedly haunted, run-down apartment complex with stained and matted carpets and a legacy of murder honestly doesn’t sound so bad to me compared to the things I have to come home to.
It would be a reasonable trade-off for friends. Family. People that check in on you. People who aren’t afraid to say hello to me in the halls. I could go check the mail and talk about the weather with someone like it’s normal. I could be a part of something.
I know it’s selfish, but I want it. I want it more than anything, because I'm weak. I immersed myself in those waves of envy, wanting, waiting, yearning. I claw through the ocean desperately, swimming toward a surface I can never reach, holding on so tight to the disintegrating rope of an empty dream.
Because that's all it is: a dream. That's all it'll ever be, because I'm scared to walk out of my father's shadow.
You’re not as afraid of consequences as I think you should be. Maybe it’s because we’re different. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe I’m just a coward, too weak-willed and spineless to fight for myself.
Maybe I’m afraid of coming out because it means I’ll get treated the same way I’ve treated you. Maybe I’m scared of losing the plausible deniability of the late bloomer when people finally see me for what I really am. Maybe I’m scared nobody will fight for me because I deserve it.
Maybe all of that’s true, but the thing I can’t stand the most is the way I know you would look at me with pride. Contentment, joy, peace. Your eyes would crinkle at the edges and that would be the only indication you could give that you were smiling. Put a hand on my shoulder, give me a hug, invite me to lunch, bring me to your friends. You’d reel me in for good, and I could never handle that.
I fear the weight of your forgiveness would crush me.
I’ve seen the depths of your shame and fear. I’ve seen the way you cry and scream and vomit and beg, writhing on the ground as memories of death’s touch strike you down again. I’ve touched the subdued terror in your soul with my bare hands, and they burned under the heat of it. I know the humiliation you hide behind that mask you call your face. I will always know you by your scars.
Despite everything, you still get up.
Your hope isn't weak or naive. It's all bruised knuckles, dirty scrapes and bared teeth. It's the experience of a hard life met with the fight for a better one. It's a grip so tight on that rope, your dream, that through sheer conviction alone, it never weakens, never breaks. You never get swept away by other people, because you're the one sweeping them up with you into your dream. Your future. Your kindness.
You take my cruelty in stride, never taking your heart off of your cheek. You afford me more patience than I deserve. The earnest tone in your voice always shakes me to my core, threatening to break the hollow foundations of my disgraceful being when you say that deep down I’m a good person. Even though I didn’t think there’s anything inside me anymore, you seem to have found something that might shine if you could just polish it.
But I could never let you in for long enough to change me any more than you already have. I must remain content to keep you at a distance, so I hold on tight to that deteriorating rope, and I'll never let it go, even in Hell.
In my dreams, I can see your face. I can run my fingers through your hair. I can hold your sadness for you. I can touch your skin, your clothes, your lips. In my dreams, you walk me through town by the hand, and you look at me with your head cocked to the side like you always do when you’re observing. It’s peaceful, quiet, calm. We’re left alone.
In my dreams, I can trace your scars. The deep trenches of carved out flesh, the webbing that moves up into your hair. In my dreams, I can kiss the purple vein on your temple, the altered shape of your jaw, the tiny, protruding bump of your nasal bone. I could tell you that you don’t have to hide from me, I’m not scared of you. That I wouldn’t have you any other way. That it makes you who you are. That you’re cool.
In my dreams, nobody will ever touch us. But I could never really touch you either. Only in my dreams could I love you the way I want to, but that makes the weight of reality that much heavier when I wake up.
I wish I could never wake up again.
I remember how it started.
There was always this seed of sin inside of me. I didn’t plant it there, but I did bury it inside my heart. I pretended that it couldn’t grow its roots in me if I ignored it, but weeds don’t need you to water them yourself to grow into a parasitic garden.
I covered it in my need for perfection and normalcy. I covered that in prayer, fear, guilt. I layered it all over this seed like pavement, but cracks grew in my facade fast, and through those cracks, the seed had sprouted.
If you trace the stems down underneath the concrete, you can find a cavity full of the tangled nest of the roots of my desire: my own kind.
I hollowed out my soul trying to stop the spread, but all I did was make more room for it. No matter how hard I tried to fight it, I have become completely and wholly infested with sin, so unimaginably that I know I could never be saved for it. God could never forgive this betrayal of mine, the betrayal of His perfect creation, no matter how much I beg.
I know one day, Hell will catch up to me, and the light in your soul can’t save me from my fate. I can tell myself anything I want, but I know that deep down, I will burn for it.
You were exempt from P.E. for several reasons, so I never saw you in the locker rooms, just on the bleachers, your head in your hands. You always looked tired when you sat there. I've dreamed about faking an injury and sitting next to you. I've dreamed about you under those bleachers. But I never made that choice. It wasn't mine to make.
It didn't start there, though, it couldn't have, not with my cowardice. No, it was during one summer break I saw it, and I felt the familiar roots I'd been trying to bury growing within me again. The guilt, the shame, the fear, the emptiness.
You and your friends were at the playground, dicking around on the monkey bars while I sat on the bench, half-reading my book, half-watching you through the cracks in my wall again, desperate to feel the connection that you had, hoping that witnessing it could be enough.
It never was.
You hung upside down, laughing at something Larry said. Your shirt slipped up, all the way to your armpits. It was all skin, hatched with sparse blue hairs on your chest and stomach. The waistband of your boxers, wrapped around your bony hips. Ribs, held just centimeters beneath, moving and bending as the rest of you did. Barely-used abdominal muscles struggled to keep your weight as you bent up, trying to pull yourself back down, and I still remember the way your stomach folded over itself when you finally got up there.
I can never erase it. That piece of you is locked inside of me forever. It keeps me going just as much as it holds me back. I’ll never let it go if it kills me.
I could never have what you have. I could never do what you do. I’m not strong like you are, I’m a coward. I’m weak, worthless, and empty. There’s nothing inside of me worth looking at, let alone anything worth saving, I know that. God knows that. But I can watch you through the cracks. Pretend I’ll one day take you up on your offer and talk to you, let you in. I’ll keep you at arm’s length, saying words that sound like they mean something, then disappear again.
I could never be like you, but I can watch you from afar, and that’s enough for me.
When the last bell of the day rings, I watch as you and your friends are the first ones out of those double doors, laughing and tripping over yourselves on the stairs as you stumble into the rainy streets. I watch as you all join hands, spinning around in barely coherent circles, words unintelligible, youthful energy palpable. The sound of your joy cuts through the ice-cold rain, straight into my stomach, watering the weeds I can’t pull out of my chest. The ambivalence of your mask does nothing to hide the unbridled joy you have for the moment, eyes crinkled and head bobbing to the loose rhythm, until your feet stumble over themselves; you’re the first to fall over and you take everyone down with you, laughing onto the soggy ground.
You all lay, cradled by mud and grass, hands grasping for one another as you keep pulling each other down, cursing and teasing each other while the wet dirt and plant life stain your clothes.
For a moment, you catch me watching. Your head on the ground, tilted back to look at me with an upside-down view. The rain is beginning to stop now, and your blue eyes find mine more clearly as the skies began to empty of their storm clouds. I see that look in your eye. You want to greet me, to run up to me, talk to me, but I don’t let you. Won’t let you. You want to pull me in so badly, but I can’t do it.
Watching you is all I can let myself have. But you’ll never understand that, which is why I saw your deep-blue irises, full of life and contentment, and I walked away from them, even as they called my name.
I feel the flames of Hell licking the backs of my ankles as I run from you again.
One day it will come to claim its pounds of flesh from my body, and when it’s done, there won’t be anything left for you to bury.
Until then, you are the way you waste, and I waste away by watching you.