The red thread. Oneshot
Title: The red thread
Author: Me (who else?)
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: Usage of the F-word.
Disclaimer: I don't own Skins, bla bla bla
Summary: I can feel myself disappearing.
A/n: Because there simply isn't enough angst in S4 :))
I can feel myself disappearing.
It starts from a tingling sense in the tip of my toes and fingers and somehow even my hair-it’s alive, alive but disappearing. Perhaps disappearing sounds like a painful process: in reality it is no more than a vague touch under the skin, slowly creeping, spreading. There is none of the pin and needles one feels with sleeping feet; if anything, it could’ve been a sedative drugging my body. But instead of the numbness associated with drugs, it’s cold and floaty, as if a mild wind is blowing through the parts where I have disappeared; the rest of me shivers. I wonder what has become of my hands but at the same time I’m too scared to bring them up from under the table, where they had lain placidly on my laps just a few minutes ago; where are they now, I ask myself. What if all I see is the blue cloth through a shimmering layer of air, like heat hazes dancing above summer roads, where my hands should have been? Funny how I think my cold, windy hands look like heat hazes.
Suddenly I want to hold your hand-the one that’s indifferently swirling the spoon around the coffee cup, around and around, the other way, and around again. I would like to play with your pinky and see you laugh and tell me it tickles; feel comforting solidity pressed against my airy presence. Yet I remain as motionless as the pale sun lying limply on clouds above, I can't, not anymore. The reality hits me hard, I don't even remember the last time we touched. The look in your eyes tell me that you can't either. It hurts me more than words can say.
The radio plays a familiar tune. Surprisingly, it takes a full five seconds and twelve piano notes into the song for me to recognize it’s our song. Images flash brightly behind my closed eyelids: my feet stepping on yours and vice versa, awkward laughter; you grab my waist and spin us across the floor, bursting into laughter; I trip over my toes and crash us to the ground and I am all tangled up in you, enraptured in you rather than the music. It has been a long time since I’ve heard the song but that’s not the reason I failed to recognize it. It’s because it’s different now, everything's changed. What once were flying notes that rushed past, like the wind against my ears as I held on tight to you behind the bike, and what once were deep bass notes as warm as your arms around me through the night, now seem one-dimensional and faded. Somewhere between hurt, anger, and the suffocating silence that ensued; between sleepless nights and empty beds; between the time the last star began to fall from heaven and hit earth, all our love songs confused themselves and became sad songs, one by one. The intricate composition of emotions stopped making sense, turning into nothing but an empty orchestra, a muted cacophony echoing at the back of my head. It’s all so fucked up.
How did we go from entangled in each other to entangled in this inescapable chaos? (I can feel my stomach hollow and cold; gone.) The red thread wound around too many times, until it fluttered and spread across the floor in a mysterious pattern; no start no end no way to sort it out. From my mind I can see myself, but it’s someone else, sitting by the mess of scarlet silk, desperately tugging at all ends, searching for hope through doubtful eyes. A single line surrenders easier than the others, unraveling slowly but surely…
It emerges detached.
Reality ripples through. The thread connecting my pinky to yours has broken and now I’m disappearing with it. Do you see it? Have you seen it? I won’t question how, who. I have learned to accept, something you yourself taught me all too well. It's too late anyway. I try to blink away the stinginess invading the corners of my eyes, but it only heightens as the wind of disappearance sweeps across them. What’s left of me? Just enough to tell you one thing, I hope. Perhaps I’d even be able to glimpse your beautiful eyes as you turn towards me one last time. Maybe, maybe.
“Goodbye.”
But by the time you notice, I’m already gone.