“The truth is- everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for”. He smiled as the tune played over in his head as he lay peacefully, counting each breath as it flowed by. Two pills for a high, three for sleeping, four to get knocked out. He was trying to remember how many he took, to calculate if he could die in peace. After all, wasn’t that what he had always wanted from life?

For the past months, his life had been a dream. A hazy mashed set of overlapped ecstasies. He didn’t want the dream to end, but could see himself drifting slowly towards reality, and that frightened him. He never liked living in the real world, it was decaying, continually dying. Day by day, minute by minute. He could feel his life being sucked out if he ventured out, he had to wear a mask. For years, he had trained himself to ignore the noises, he had created a separate world for himself in which he could peacefully try to live. He opened it for her when she came into his life, let his defenses down, let his heart melt. But you can’t be the same after it happens as you were before. You have to start from the scratch. That frightened him beyond measure. The pills were just to help him sleep. But what if he never wanted to get up from it?

They say that your life flashes by in front of your eyes just before you die. He couldn’t be sure why it wasn’t happening for him – for all he could remember in these moments was her. Her smile, their kiss. The way she looked at him when he said something stupid. The way she laughed when he tickled her tummy, going red at the same time. Her body, the perfectly rounded breasts, and how their hearts could beat as one when they were together. And it broke his heart to leave her behind, to make her face this- but she had fallen in love before, and she will again. He may not have been her first, her last, or her only – but if he was hers for now, what else mattered? A child in the body of a man, with the maturity of a five year old – he felt the world was a better place without his eccentricities. He had been good to her, but it frightened him beyond measure what could be when he starts to go crazy? He was afraid to hurt, for she saw just the good in him, and it killed him. He felt she would see his reasoning in this too. He was confident she would understand.

Of silent glances and suppressed smiles. Of expressed desires and wuthering heights. His book would be published in the next couple of months, his publisher had ensured him that. He had achieved almost everything he had set out for, he couldn’t take the pain of going the downward spiral again.

Of empty spaces and distant cries. Of paperback dreams and funeral pyre. He could see her rushing in with hands across her face, he could hear her scream. He smiled the widest he could conjure but she wouldn’t stop. She kept slapping to get him to wake up and he wanted to tell her it’s alright, and implore her to not cry tonight.
He just needed a kiss before he could say goodbye.