Running.

A Story by suuyuwriteyunu

I may not be the best when it comes to writing, but my pirmary goal is to have the audience feel something, and I hope you do.

I’m fragile and I know it. I’m prone to the darkness and I know it.

Every time the topic comes up I feel caged. I feel like a caged, rabid animal having nothing on its mind except for: RUN, RUN, RUN. BREAK AWAY. BREAK FREE. RUN. RUN. The metal bars slide down in front of me and when I try to flee it pierces my foot instead and I scream. I scream as my blood bleeds through my shoe and all I can do is sit there and cry, have the bright sunny sky that is so poisonous to my soul appear above me and mock me of this situation and all its irony. It looms over me like an unknowing force though nothing yet has happened. Just the topic’s very name makes me nauseous and makes my heartbeat quicken in fear. In panic. My mind quickly overflows and floods with dark, inky liquid and I’m swimming swimming swimming, flailing my arms, trying to break free from the whirlpool but I sink sink sink and I gag and the water consumes my soul and my life and its stealing away from me the last gulp of air I had left in my lungs, the last gulp, my last gulp, my last breath. The system collapses my internal organs and my limbs begin to fail me yet my heart still beats, quicker and quicker and quicker until I think I’m on the verge of hyperventilation and on the bridge of insanity and I don’t know don’t know don’t know how else to stop it. I fight furiously for it to come to an end, to stop pinning me defenceless, to stop pushing me and sucking me in but in vain. Every cell, every atom, every drop of blood in my body is screaming RUN RUN RUN but all I can do is gasp for my life and little of what’s left of it. I cannot run from it, is all I think. I cannot and I can never will never would never could never and I am caged, forever caged, and I don’t know what I need to do to make it stop and even if I did know I can’t do it. I can’t bring myself to make it happen. I am my own heaven and my own hell, my own villain that I can never be rid of because if the devil dies, so does the angel, and the angel can’t leave me can’t leave me can’t leave me. I will not let the angel leave me with the devil. I can’t get out. I can’t I can’t I can’t. I can’t run I can’t breathe and I can’t swim. I can’t fly I can’t scream I can’t contain or control myself. I can’t really live but I can have bars before me, surround me, lock me in, push against me, sear my skin. I can cry and sob all I want but nothing is going to change. I can ruin myself and claw myself until it hurts and aches and bruises and bleeds. I can ruin my future my future my precious future but I will never be able to live with the remorse and the consequences and the regret and the lost dreams left unfulfilled. I can’t break the bars but I can push against it and have my wrist damaged beyond repair. I can never have my old life back and I can’t I can’t I can’t the fumes, the smoke, it enters me, consumes me, melts me, and burns me, sears through me and all I can think of is how fragile how weak and how heavy I feel my heart and mind is, and if only it can all burn away. If only it can all burn away. I can hate myself for all anyone cares and still nothing is going to change.

I still

can’t

run.