Chapter One: Ambulance

The rain was pouring, smashing against the windshield so that it was impossible to hear anything else. Just the pounding of the water trying to lash its way into the closed compartment, and the fight of the wipers as they tried to keep the glass clear. The road was useless to see, at this point we had been driving based on memory and the taillights in front of us. In the intersection everything was too bright, the colors of the stoplight lit the standing water on the street with hues of green and red. The streetlights were surrounded by a yellow halo as the rain absorbed their strange glow. Everything was too bright, and too dark at the same time. The gaps in between the shimmers of light were the equivalent of black holes.

I remember Michael telling me to keep my head up. Keep my eyes open. The bandages that he had half-hazardly wrapped around my forearms were soaked, and he was pressing on my left arm with a towel that was already muddled in my own blood. I was exhausted, and feebly angry at the fact that once again things had not gone how they were supposed to. I should be dead, oh I should be dead. But instead, here I was, sitting at this stop light – the longest stoplight of my life - waiting to be taken to the emergency room. Waiting to get stitched up and to see another look of disappointment on my mother’s face. Another expression of choking fear bit back by my father as he would run his fingertips over the bandages. I knew they would ask why. Why did you do it? Why wouldn’t you tell us? How can we make it better? What can we do? In that moment, facing them seemed worse than the death that I had attempted to embrace. The desire was still there, cold and lonely. I was not glad to be in this car, staring at this rain, hot pain licking up my veins as the liquid that kept me alive gurgled out.

Again, I was told to keep my head up. Keep my eyes open. His voice was becoming more desperate now, and I wasn’t surprised when he hit the accelerator with the attempt to run the light. But the squealing of wheels came first, slicing through the pounding rain like a crack of thunder. It all happened too fast. Our car lurched forward, only to stop again as a white SUV came shooting through the intersection, a flashing blur of a bullet, from the perpendicular direction. Recognition settled in too late, and the breaks were smoking, and the SUV was hydroplaning. A semi-truck had pulled out for a right turn. There was no time for either to react.

My eyes were open. My head was up. I watched through the pounding rain as the SUV smashed into the driver side corner panel of the semi. Heard the sickening sound of metal twisting, shrinking, and breaking under the weight of impact. Watched as the momentum flung the SUV off of the semi and back into the street, spinning the vehicle on the slick pavement and causing it to roll. It was then that I noticed the license plate on that white SUV. Suspended in the blurring air, for just one brief moment of clarity. It was then that I realized it wasn’t a white SUV at all, but the Mercedes GLK my father had bought my mother for her birthday.

That was when time unraveled, the world tilted on its axis and cracked in two. I was on the wrong side. I had always been on the wrong side. There was no conscious decision when I shoved my way out of the car’s door. I left it open behind me, standing and staring at the twisted hunk of metal as it hissed and whined, finally coming to a stand-still. The windshield was shattered and impossible to see through. The wheels were bent in, the axis snapped, just like the world’s. The roof was crushed down so that the windows were broken out, flattened out to nothing more than slits. That was when I saw a hand. Her hand. Her fucking hand.

My screams filled the intersection, drowning out the pouring rain. Drowning out the hissing of the radiator. I was running toward the obliterated piece of metal before it had even registered to the rest of the intersection what had happened.

“Mom! Mom!” I screeched, my feeble legs not carrying me fast enough. I fell once, my knees dragging across the slick and water-logged pavement as I hauled myself back up with bleeding fingernails and searing wrists. My throat was already raw with my screaming, my lungs unable to get enough oxygen. No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end!

My screaming continued despite the fire that licked up my throat, my entire frame shaking as I collided with the metal that made up the driver’s side door. I took her hand in mine, grabbing the warm fingers, sobs racking through my chest and down my spine. I didn’t want to see the crimson blood that matted the broken glass and oozed from her palm. I was calling her name. I was screaming for help. Begging for help. Begging for her to hear me, to say something. To tell me she was okay. She had to be okay! Panic was overwhelming, reality unacceptable. My body was rejecting the truth as it was. The truth that I was too weak to help. The truth that I was half dead, and that I had lost too much blood. The truth that all of my energy was being spent in this blubbering nonsense, this limbo between what was right and true and what was wrong and evil and death.

But I was too late.

Waking up is still a shock my body doesn’t understand how to react to. The memory is suddenly gone, all that is around me is utter blackness, my body painfully aware that it is alert and breathing, or at least attempting to. My throat is raw from screaming, my hands shaking and breathing coming in rasping gasps. I sit up, desperately trying to get my eyes to adjust and the reality of this room to be restored. But it is the opposite of comforting. The tears come, and I cannot help the hitching breaths and overwhelming sense of panic as I remember where I am and just why I was put here. I hug my arms around my thin torso, rocking in the paper sheets as the cavern of my mind opens and screams with the truth that I worked so hard to numb.

I didn’t want it to be true, anymore.

The tears rolled pointlessly onward, streaking my face and staining my plain cotton outfit. My skin was covered in sweat as the sobs racked down my spine, the nightmare too real in my mind to shake. It was bad enough that it happened. A horror that it happened, but did I really have to relive it every night? Yes. It was what I deserved. I deserved worse.

That was what was so disgusting about the whole thing. Why I hated the white sheets, white walls, white ceilings, and white faces of this place. Because my hands were stained black and crimson with their deaths, I carried the weight of them on my back and I didn’t deserve to get better. There was no getting better. There was no righting the wrong.

A scream cut through the night, the silence. It was my own and even to my ears it sounded foreign and desperate. I was no longer holding myself, but clawing at the thick pink scars that gnarled my wrists. I wished violently that they were fresh, wished violently that they were still threaded with the thick black stitches so that I could have the satisfaction of unthreading them. It was all very spiteful. Selfish. But this misery inside of me was poison and the guilt even worse.  I wanted escape. I wanted hell to burn me from the other side.

My crying became deranged. Hysterical. My fingernails were clipped down to the bed of the nail, rendered useless to my digging. Rendered pointless just like the rest of me. And here I was, trapped in this white room that looked black at night, letting my nightmares play vividly on repeat even through my waking hours. I wished for the fluorescent lights to blink on and burn my eyes. I wished for a nurse to come in and demand I quit my squealing. I wanted confirmation that the world spun in spite of me. That time stood as it always had and that I was still irrelevant to the course of things. I wanted separation from this haunting that consumed me.

But I knew no such release would come. I knew the policy here was that during the long hours of the night there was no interaction. No interference. But as the mind reaches its darkest corners there is no sense of reason. I found myself out of bed, across the room, my balled fists pounding against the painted metal of the door. Twisting the doorknob with the false hope of thinking maybe just one night it had been left unlocked. But it was always locked. In the darkness, the memory was un-ignorable. It clawed at my brain ruthlessly, the image of the vehicle flipping over and over. My mother’s hand falling from the crushed window, bloody and lifeless.

And there was the whispering that accompanied the darkness. The voices that reminded me it was all my fault. The ones that told me there was a debt to be paid. Mumbling that I was breathing and they were not. They were not.

“I’m sorry,” I choked, letting my head rest against the cool metal and my hands drop to my sides. There was no escape, and again I reminded myself that I deserved this torture. One quick tap against the door with my forehead, just enough to send pain splitting through the front of my skull. The voices cleared for a moment, and the horrific silence restored. I sucked in a breath, my hands still shaking, my throat aching more than ever. I don’t know how long I stood like that, or whether I was really inside my body or not. I was trying to hold back another wave of tears, biting my lower lip and finding comfort in the dull pain that flared from it. The pain that told me I was real, even inside this lightless room. Eventually, I slide down to the cold concrete floor, my back and head resting against the door.

The voices came back, but this time I listened with the measured and accepting nature of despair. 

(c) Shelby Williams 2015

Daisy: Prologue

If you're reading this, then that means I am dead. 

The words seemed to be the only thing that echoed through the hollowed out walls of my head. My eyes were fixed onto the droplets of dirty rain water that slid down the window, the gray landscape blurring past my vision. It was the first time I had allowed myself into a vehicle. Those words hanging in my head to remind me of the horrors that I had invoked in result of trying to escape. The very concept that those words could be scrawled so effortlessly across the piece of parchment that still seemed to burn through my coat pocket even now was maddening to me.

I could feel my hands quivering from beneath where I had them shoved under my legs and folded together. There was no stopping or even recognizing the way my nostrils flared and tears began to leak down my features. It was supposed to be me. It shouldn't have been them.

It shouldn't have been them.

The nurse beside me was staring, though I was oblivious to her concerned looks. I was oblivious to everyone that seemed to still orbit around me. Oblivious to everything besides this clawing notion that plagued the inside of my mind. The voice of misery that still droned on about how much better it would be to be dead. Instead, here I was, in this peppermint and vinyl smelling van. Everything was white and gray, the woman beside me no exception as she placed one of her bony hands gently on my shoulder in some sort of comforting notion. I didn't respond, simply clenched my teeth and kept my staring, refusing to see the look of sympathy she clearly had hanging from her features. I didn't deserve sympathy. I didn't deserve help.

I was busy picturing her with the quill in her hand, reading glasses perched too low on her slightly crooked nose. I pictured her staring at the rain like I was staring, her wrist arched to write. I tried to think of the way she would have said it to me in person. I tried to picture her thinking she would outlive me at all. I tried to remember the last thing she said to me, as her letter called for, but I had been too high to hear her words. I felt like screaming as the memory threatened to flood my mind, my own nails biting into the flesh of my palms. I refused to remember the last few moments with her. Because all I had done was shove her away.

I shoved her away.

Nails biting into flesh more eagerly now, my arms quivering with the force in which I was implementing. The pain was only a dull flicker, hardly noticeable against the throbbing of my self-hatred. It was sheer force of will that was separating me from a mental breakdown. I could practically hear it, my vision of her in the soft golden light splintering under the weight of what was.

I wasn't aware of my entire frame shaking, until the nurse leaned forward, her hand patting lightly. "Just a few more minutes until we're there, sweetie."

Until we're there. To the place where I was being sent to get better, though I knew damn well there was no getting better. There was no getting over this. There was no silencing the misery that crept in through the back of my thoughts. There was no cure to the self-hatred that had already left white scars snarling up the insides of my hidden arms. The place where the unlabeled van was taking me was only a barrier from what I really wanted. What I really craved. The only coherent thought besides my drowning despair and hitched forgotten memories was the will to die. I wanted to fucking die.

It was supposed to be me.

The ripping pain that I had tried to silence over the past month was menacing, mangling my resolve with one quick swipe. I gave in, letting my head topple into my bleeding palms as I yanked them out from under me. A sob racked down my spine, and my lip pulled up with the uncontrollable agony that plagued my every cell. The nurse moved closer, her hand sliding to my back so that she could comfort from a new angle. Something was muttered from her lips, but I was unfamiliar with anything other than the torture that was dragging me to the hell where I belonged.

I ached for another razor, I ached for the mint walls of the memory that I was ignoring. I ached for the embrace of my mother's arms as she told me everything was going to be okay. I ached for my father's support, a light squeeze of the hand, and his knowing eyes telling me that I was stronger than all of this.

I fucking ached for them, and nothing was going to make that better.

First Impressions

There’s darkness crawling through his heart, he keeps it at bay, but lately it’s been climbing up the back of his throat. Sprawling its tendrils into his mind, whispering the things he doesn’t want to hear. He’ll think of it as a warning, holding his cigarette between those thin lips like a flag, asking to bring it on. Asking to show him what the world has to offer just so he can spit back in its face. His thoughts are measured and through those half-lidded mint eyes I can tell he’s got life by the balls, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. 

(c) Shelby Williams 2015

Break

Alright guys, let me start off by apologizing.

I have been trying to force Daisy out of myself. Tearing it apart and trying to squeeze every drip out of it in attempt to get some motivation to write it. But, here's the thing. I'm not ready to write it yet. I'm not done creating and not able to start writing until that's done. I plan to keep a journal for the next few months so that I can actually begin to write journal entries like I need Addie to be able to do through her narrative of the story. So, what I am saying in fancy words, is that I have to take a break from writing it. I'm not sure when posts will start to show back, and I know that I haven't gathered a 'following' as of yet, but I just want to keep everyone who stumbles on here to know what's up.

Also, there will be a few changes to how this thing is going to run:
1. When I do start posting again I want everyone to be wary that these posts (pieces of the eventual book) will most likely not be in order.
2. They will vary in length, and they may have random POV's that do not necessary match the other majority of the posts. I just need you guys to bear with me, this is a place for me to experiment with how I want to tie the writing together and what works and what doesn't.

I had another bullet point but at the moment it's escaping me. Trying to be organized and stuff.. (haha)!

So, I'm taking a break from Daisy, but I do keep the intention to keep writing it. If you guys have any questions about anything, let me know. I might have an ongoing biography post for characters too. Will probably just keep adding to that, so keep an eyes out.

Thanks for reading and sticking around with my crazy jumps.
-Shelby




(c) Copyright Shelby Williams 2015

Going Under 2.1

Her eyes were accompanied by the half bruise colored circles that clung to the bottom of her lashes like a ghost or shadow of once was. I knew she hadn't been sleeping, but the presence of the shadows seemed to confirm this squirming fear in the back of my throat. She wasn't getting any better. It was something I shouldn't have taken personally, I knew that, but some things were built into the secret parts of us and we really had no control at all. Most things that revolved around Addie I had no control over. She was a constant thought but never really distinguishable as coherent or conscious in my mind.

She looked frail, there was always an air about her of being sickly or unsure. But she had this fire to her, when staring into those violet irises it was like looking into the embers of someone that had not burned quickly. And that was just it, I guess. She was still burning. Still burning with the questions, burning with what had happened and this life she had been forced into.

Forced. The word stuck out in my mind like a chord, and I wasn't exactly sure as to why. I kept looking at her, and finally she noticed, pushing her pale hair out of her eyes to give me that almost-angry look of defiance.

"What are you looking at?" She asked, but her voice wasn't challenging. It was tired, a little worn out, and I laid one of my hands on the nape of her neck and squeezed a little. She continued to stare back at me, eyes searching and thin lips pressed together in observation.

"You." I answered, and I knew she hated that answer. What she really meant when she asked the question was 'why?'. Why are you looking at me like that? But who was I to tell her my observations? Who was I to outline the fact that she was slipping again and that I wanted to be strong for her but I could barely hold myself out of the slipping waves. That was just it. It wasn't my place at all, and it never would be. Her thin lips creased into one of her signature unsatisfied frowns, but today she was too exhausted to press the subject any further. Underneath my hand the tip of her spine seemed to be cutting into me, the skin felt so stretched thin over the bone. Was she starting to lose weight again?

The thoughts were getting sharper, and I exhaled, trying to keep the white hot emotion from licking at me. There was still so much I didn't know about her. So much I felt as though she was holding back, something always biting on the edge of our tongues but always withheld.

"You look tired," I finally said, brushing more of her hair out of her face. She simply shrugged her thin shoulders and offered a half-assed smile.

"I'm always tired. You should know that by now." And I did, but it still wasn't satisfying. The fear in the back of my throat seemed to melt into something else, something more on edge. A cliffhanging feeling, as if a cavern of dark water was waiting for me below.

Crazy 1.1

It was one of those days where everything seemed bleak and brittle, teetering on the edge between what was withstand-able and what was ear-splitting incomprehensibility. The office was silent, and Dr. White was still looking over the paperwork, the crease between his gray eyebrows the only sign of emotion on his pitted and scarred face. I was trying not to pay attention, trying not to count the seconds that were the only noise in the room. The air seemed thin, another undertone of the frailty that seemed to keep me so desperately on edge. The chair I was sitting in was stiff, uncomfortable, a horrid color with an even worse smell. Worn leather and peppermint. It had become the scent that I associated with these appointments, and if it happened to reach me outside of therapy hours it always brought me within centimeters of vomiting with anxiety.

This particular stack of papers was practically burning through my conscious. I was already being treated like an animal, an incapable one at that, and I was unsure of how my most recent outburst would affect the conditions further. I must have been spacing out, because when Dr. White said sternly, "Addie." I jumped.

Looking up, I found his dull gray eyes staring at my hands. Fingertips, specifically, that were now bloody with my insistent picking. I clenched my teeth, and hid my hands between my knees to avoid his glare. His eyes had already scolded me, along with his voice on multiple different occasions on the same subject. I tried to ignore the hot flash beneath my cheeks as he leaned back in his chair and sighed in exasperation. I was aware that I was quickly becoming his least favorite case, which only made me want to chew and pick at my nails further. It wasn't like I was asking to sit in that chair. In fact, I had fought tooth and nail to avoid the facility all together.

"Addie." Again, the stern almost scolding voice. It took me a moment to realize I was biting fiercely down on my lip. At least he couldn't see the way my nails were clawing into my wrists. I exhaled, a sharp quick breath, and tried to focus. Attempted to display myself as normal. Whatever that was, anymore.

"So?" I croaked after another horribly uncomfortable moment of silence. "Do I get another ten years put onto my sentence, or what?" I tried to laugh at my own joke, but it came out strangled and sounding more like a coughing exclamation of pain. I clenched my teeth again as Dr. White sniffed, looking more bored and dissatisfied than ever. He was a tall man, and looked rather awkward slumped in his own armchair. I remember thinking when I had first seen him that he should have designed his office at least in a more comfortable fashion for himself, seeing as he spent almost all his time in it. But, there he was, hunchback forming from the way he slouched and pants too short so that his veiny milk-colored ankles were exposed.

"Do you think this is a joke?" His voice was gravel, his impatience and uncaring attitude seeping through like poison. I was on edge, always on edge, but his words were nothing new and I was far from hoping that I would ever get any kind of real help. In fact, things had been getting worse, not that I would ever imagine bringing such a thing up. No, instead his words pricked a nerve somewhere deep inside and I could feel my cheeks flush again, this time in anger.

"No." I said flatly, my own voice still seeming foreign and dull in my ears.

He leaned forward, balancing the papers on the arm of the chair and resting his elbows on his knees. His gray eyes were raking over me, and I knew he was picking out the 'indicators' he had discussed with me all those weeks before. Facial indicators, that is. Ways to interpret someone's feelings and inner thoughts when they refused to talk about it or express them in other ways. Things like fidgeting or quivering lips. I stared back at him, wishing violently for a moment that my gaze would cause him to keel over. This time, when he spoke, his voice was more level. Almost serene. "Addie, your behavior last night, it was unacceptable." Now, a famous pause for silence while those gray eyes searched for any flicker or moment of weakness. "I want to understand what caused the outburst, when you had seemed to be doing so well in the past few weeks."

A wave of hopelessness seemed to wash over me, and for a moment I felt like sobbing. Instead, I shrugged my shoulders feebly, aware that my lips were mashed together as if to prevent the words that were building up in the back of my throat from spurting out. What causes an outburst? What causes an outburst in a little piece of sunshine like this? Well, there was a whole list. Just thinking about it made my hands clammy and the numbness I so efficiently wrapped myself in was thin and moments away from dissolving. It was impossible, to get better. To strive when all there was around you was sickness, mental decay, and your own barking, strangling thoughts.

Not to mention the new carer.

How was I supposed to explain what had happened, when I was still baffled by it? How was I supposed to articulate the debilitating fear that had suddenly, and ravenously, consumed me into a state of panic? Was there a way to describe how when he had introduced himself I had never been so afraid of anything in my life, and that innate terrible sense had swallowed me whole?

"This is unlike anything you have ever exhibited before, Addie." His words interrupted my thoughts, snapping me back to the quiet and stuffy office. I must have looked rather daft, staring back at him without a word. He must have took this as a sign that I didn't comprehend, and maybe in a sense I didn't. Not from an outside point of view.

Dr. White took another long look at me, then sat up, thumbing back through the papers. "It says here that you began to scream, and become delirious. It says that you didn't respond to any of the carers, and for this reason they had to medically sedate you." He glanced at me over the crest of his glasses.

He was expecting an answer, but what could I say?






(c) Shelby Williams 2015