A Nightmare within a Nightmare (oneshot)
Title: A Nightmare within a Nightmare
Author: Marjohn666valo
Summary: it never ends the way you want; no matter how hard you try, there are things that will always have their own way. This is the story of how Ville’s unrequited love for Bam turns into dust because he’s afraid to say he loves him and what a different end it would have been for him if he had just turned around and noticed Mige in the doorway before he took the path down to despair.
Pairing: Ville/ Bam (unrequited), Mige/ Ville (unrequited)
Rating: R, because it’s damn depressing
Disclaimer: the title comes from the lyrics of ‘The Acoustic Funeral (for Love in Limbo). The poem used is ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T.S. Eliot. And of course none of these characters belong to me. And I’m not claiming any of these have happened or wish for them to happen. I’m just a silly girl with a great passion to write angst. Don’t take any of this seriously ;)
Warning: my first fic here; not beta’ed and English is not my native language. But I did my best on this [proofread it for enough times to start hating the fic altogether], so you’d better appreciate it ;)
A/N: I just feel the need to warn you that what you’re going to read may sound confusing. The parts ‘The Nightmare’s are indeed nightmares and that’s why nothing seems to make any sense; they’re Ville’s nightmares. The other parts follow one by one through a long course of time. For example, the first part happens some time around 2000, before Ville and Bam have met, and the last part is around 2010. The lines of the poem are not in order.
A Nightmare within a Nightmare
Part 1: The Longing
***
“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question.…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.”
***
Long hallways, one after another, bleeding into each other, never ending…the light at the far end of this marble hallway seemed to get further away from him with his every bare-footed step…it was so quiet he could hear his ragged breathing ringing into his ears like a continuous drum beat. He had to pick up speed…but the hallways were long, and he could barely breathe, and someone…someone was following him. He didn’t know who they were, and he had no time, or the courage, to look back, but he knew they were there, right behind him, and if he slipped, like he knew he would, just an inch away from salvation, he’d be dead…
“Ville, Ville wake up.”
Green eyes slowly fluttered open and a low groan escaped from parted lips. The room was still dark and he knew, even with his momentary forgetfulness, that he had just been woken up from a nightmare and not just because it was time to wake up.
“Ugh, you did it again.”
His coarse voice, even deeper than usual, was slightly muffled as he was speaking with his head deep buried in his pillow.
There was a humorless laugh at the right side of him.
“Oh, well, couldn’t help it what with you moaning into my ears and shoving your little, excited pecker into my stomach.”
Ville fought the urge to roll over and smack the not-so-funny bassist on the head, and instead pushed open his legs and let the bassist have a nice view of his morning wood, standing proudly against the paleness of his thighs.
“My pecker’s not little, you wanker.”
A warm, large hand suddenly got a hold of his hard-on, and involuntarily, Ville bucked up his hips and let out an approving moan.
“So I noticed. It’s just as big as your ego.”
With that, Mige gave the hard member five fast strokes, smirked at how wantonly his pretty friend looked bathed in the moonlight, with his long legs wide open and cheeks flushed, but released it as soon as he felt Ville was enjoying his little show a little too much than he expected.
“Argh, fuck you, Mizee. First you wake me up before the end of the nightmare, as always, and then tease me like you have a right to do so.” Ville rolled on his stomach and sent the laughing bassist an evil glare. “Go sleep with your whores if you want a fucking tease-show.”
Mige leaned forward to run his fingers through Ville’s tangled hair, and gave him a comic face.
“Oh, no…there are no whores, and never will be. You’re the only whore I want, sweetheart.”
And he leaned even closer to place a mock kiss on Ville’s soft lips. Ville’s hand quickly shot up and grabbed the back of Mige’s head and forced his tongue into Mige’s surprised mouth. After some seconds, the bassist finally managed to break free from the brutal kiss and fiercely wiped at his mouth.
“Eww, morning breath!” he whined and Ville’s smirk grew wider.
“Served you right, asshole.”
Part 2: The Pain
***
“And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair-
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin-
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”
***
Mige didn’t know how Ville really felt about Bam; he rarely talked about him. But he just knew that anything it was Ville felt for the American skater was strong enough to bring a smile on those perfect lips every time someone mentioned his name. People would call it affection, love even, but somehow Mige knew it wasn’t just that. He knew Ville too much; enough to make it painful to watch and read into every expression that crossed those effeminate features. He remembered the time Ville was in love with Jonna. He never tried to hide his happiness for being with her. He would laugh his hiccupping laugh and pat Mige on the back so hard that the impact almost sent him flying to the ground; he had this glint in his eyes that lit the entire room, his shinning smile had never been more infectious, and the way that he talked about her, all the time, it was as if he had found his true love at long last. The fact that the relationship had a disastrous end didn’t make Ville’s feelings appear any less dramatic than they had been. Even if Jonna didn’t turn out to be the right girl for him, Mige knew the love Ville felt for her was right enough for both of them.
But with Bam, it wasn’t the same thing. Ville rarely smiled these days, but when he did, his smile held even more happiness in it than it had ever done. He rarely talked about Bam, but when he did, his voice sounded deeper and his accent more profound. And he rarely saw Bam, but when he did, he looked more alive than he had ever done. Whatever Ville felt for Bam, if it wasn’t love, Mige knew it was something much deeper than that. Perhaps, what Ville felt for Bam was the exact thing Mige felt for Ville, and the exact thing Mige wanted Ville to feel for him. And it saddened him more than anything, to suddenly feel so excluded from Ville's life that all their private smiles, all their inside jokes, all their tiny, dirty secrets paled next to what Ville now shared with Bam.
And he knew he should feel envious of everything Ville felt for Bam and didn’t feel for him; for every smile he bestowed on Bam, and every single one he faked for him; for every time he took Bam in his arms and with that pushed Mige further away. But he didn’t envy Bam. He didn’t want to. He loved Ville too much for that. Envying Bam somehow seemed like betraying Ville, and betraying Ville would be the end of him. Ville's heart seemed big enough to make room for every stray, poor soul in need of a shelter. He looked at you with those large, doe eyes of his (the color of innocence, were the green of his eyes) and smiled the sweetest smile at you and you were in love; as simple as that. It had no rules, no boundaries, no logical explanations. You couldn't help but love him; perhaps, not for the green of his eyes or the wine red of his lips, but the magic those eyes did to your heart, and the words that poured from his mouth like Lethe, making you forget all you knew about yourself, all your plans, all your dreams, all your knowledge, 'cause what else could possibly be more important than what this man had to say? You knew your name when he called you (and wasn't your name the best music in the world when it rolled over those lips?) you gained your senses when he touched you (and the things the simplest touch of his hand would do to you) and wouldn’t it be great just to rip your heart out and lay it all there for him to squash it beneath his perfect hands, because what was love if not pain? And what was the pain he caused you with every flutter of his butterfly lashes if not love?
Mige thought Bam lacked what all the previous, anonymous lovers of Ville had, and that was why Ville was so attracted to him; he lacked the common sense. He was ignorant of the pain loving Ville would- sooner or later- cause his heart. He was so blissfully ignorant that every smile on his face was real; every time he laughed, it was sincere, with no touch of anxiety that perhaps, this moment could never last. And Ville would die for this kind of happiness; he so miserably lacked it that his infectious melancholy would make everyone around him lack it as well; but not Bam. He never fell in Ville's melancholy trap. He never let those somber eyes take his carefree spirit away. Ville was feeding upon that spirit; like a vampire that sucked the blood right out of the only person he truly loved. It was kind of sad to watch those two together, Mige had to admit, as he knew too well what would happen to that lover when the vampire was finished with him. But at the same time, Ville and his wellbeing mattered more to Mige. He needed Bam in his life, and even if it ended with those two running away hand in hand, so be it. Mige wouldn’t stand in the way, if that was what Ville really wanted or needed or both.
Part 3: The Nightmare I
…I’m flying, I’m flying as I’m dying…do I hear crying? This is my funeral…
Darkness pooled in the canopy of his lips, along with moist, glistening, crimson drops as he bit down hard on them, feeling the sharpness of the pain as it spread on the surface of his full lips like a thin coat of marmalade on a toast, but not having the time or the care to stop and wince. The room was cold; through one of the two wide windows carelessly left open, a stubborn, November wind kept blowing in, swaying the thick, velvet curtains in an eerie way, whispering darkly into his ears, enveloping his naked, sweat-covered body into her freezing embrace, and lazily daubing the razor sharp curves of his torso with touches of tenderness as it brought the pale, silvery moonlight into the room with it. He leaned forward, as his upper body made a magnificent arch in the moonlit darkness of the room, and pushed himself in, slick and fluid, like a snake that crawls smoothly beneath the scorching sands in a desert. And scorching it was; the body underneath him, writhing rhythmically to the withering sound of their mixed, resonating breaths. Scorching it was, inside the comfortable familiarity of a man he was in love with. And the sounds they made, the sound of their hitched breaths, the soft, yet firm, possessive contact of their naked bodies, the demanding growls that pierced through the stillness of the night, deafening in their overwhelming quietness, they were the sound of sin; hidden in a layer of tender beauty as they danced around their thirsty minds, burning them slowly to a satisfying death as the two bodies became one on the wine red, silk sheet of their bed.
But as the wind suddenly stopped her teasing game and died down, and the curtains were sucked back into a quivering stillness, the marble-pale man went placid in the moment of a frozen time.
“Bam, are you crying?”
The gentleness of his tone clashed with the coarseness of his voice, and he brought a pale, artistic hand forward to touch the glistening cheek of his lover that was cast in the shadows. Bam let his hand linger on his wet skin, its cold softness soothing on his feverish flesh, but he growled under his breath, as his body ached all over for the green-eyed man to continue his beautiful, graceful dance in and out of him.
“No, but if you keep me waiting for much longer, I will.”
Bam’s blue eyes suddenly flashed ‘no kidding’ as powdery moonlight engulfed his face in a silvery glow, and Ville couldn’t help the tender smile that smeared the blood over his aching lips.
He kissed Bam with his bloodied smile, and let that velvety tongue brush the dull throbbing in his lips away. But the kiss didn’t go any deeper than Bam’s tongue brushing against his lips as Ville suddenly pulled away, panting alarmingly as his green eyes dilated in an unregistered fear.
“Bam,…” his lips quivered as he called his lover’s name, “Bammie…”
Bam touched Ville’s high cheekbone with the back of his hand, and ran his fingers slowly down the clammy skin.
“What’s wrong, Vil?”
His voice, though soft and a mere whisper, rang through Ville’s ears and made his head hurt with a hangover kind of pain.
“Bam, I hear crying. Someone’s crying in here.”
His panic wrapped around his chest and tightened his airways as he struggled to breathe through the thick lump that was pressing against the walls of his throat.
“No one’s crying, sweetheart; I don’t hear anything.”
Worry seeped through Bam’s senses as he took in Ville’s panicked profile; his labored breathing sounded harsh in the silence of their bedroom, and Bam was desperate to prevent Ville from having an asthma attack.
Ville shook his head, to disagree with Bam, or perhaps to clear his head from the heart-wrenching sobs only he could hear, but as the seconds ticked by, Ville could still hear the crying; and it sounded near; so near that Ville turned his head around, letting his eyes roam all over the room they were in, trying to find the person that was making all those pitiful noises.
But it wasn’t enough. He sprang to his feet and jumped out of the bed as his hand blindly grabbed for a shirt and pulled it down to cover his nudity, leaving a very frustrated Bam on the bed as he began his search around the room.
“Stop it!” he shouted to the room, but the sobbing only grew louder. “You hear me? Stop crying like that! Please, please, please…”
Ville took his head in his hands and pressed his palms over his ears, in a vain attempt at blocking the crying out, and it did fade a little, but it wasn’t reassuring in the slightest; it just went to prove that the sounds were not in his head and that indeed, there was someone else with them in the room that wouldn’t stop crying.
“Who are you?” he almost sobbed, heart clenching painfully inside at the agony that had caused such intense crying. “Why are you crying?”
His voice had grown gentle, and he wasn’t shouting anymore. He was no longer scared; just pained, and exhausted. And as he brought his head up, wind chased the rainy clouds away, and moon shone through the gaping space between the velvet curtains. There, in the corner of the room, just some feet away from the windows, under the moonlight, someone was sitting on the floor, with legs bent at the knees as the head was resting on them. The body was shaking uncontrollably, like a delicate petal that danced to the song of wind, and even if he wanted to, he couldn’t stop his feet from taking him to the crying person that looked so wrongly familiar he thought he had only seen that face in his nightmares...or every morning in the bathroom, upon the silvery surface of the mirror.
In the other end of the room, Bam watched in utter confusion as his lover, wrapped only in a shirt that barely came to his hips, gracefully sank to the floor and embraced the air.
Part 4: The reminiscence
***
“Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”-
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
***
So here he was, yet again, lying on his back on the hard surface that should have been soft, breathing slowly in a cold room that should have been warm, and thinking of torturing things that should have been nice…in another place, in another time, perhaps-if he allowed himself to feel more pitiful about himself than he already was-even in another body. And if he kept going down that path, that path of self-destruction and insomnious nights, the path of all his restless struggling and twists and turns into obnoxious imageries he should have known better than trust, he knew he would never be back. Of course, with his one-way ticket to failure, he really wasn’t expecting a return. But if he slowed down, he might be able to delude himself into believing that perhaps there was still hope; that someone, somewhere, some day would come and take him home with them; that if he faltered in his steps and perhaps, even let himself fall down- hard on his heart- someone would take pity on him and stretch out a hand, and be his ticket out of this mess he liked to call ‘life’.
His tired eyes shimmered a dull green as the flame of his lighter came to life and engulfed his face in its momentary warmth, and with the first puff of the familiar grey smoke gliding through his dry lips, he saw him. He, with lightening in his eyes and thunder in his voice, came raining down on him, flooding his desires and drowning his common sense. He, with laughter on his hands and the promise of a perfect world on his back, came and stole him from his idle solitude and took him away to a world that its colorful glamour blinded him. He was standing at the window, with hands folded behind his back, and a pensive aura about him that looked so out of place Ville had to take a pause before continuing his futile ritual of the day. Perhaps, he wasn’t remembering the scene right. Perhaps, lost in the dancing smoke of his burning cigarette and the thick fog he bathed in every morning, his memories were misplaced. But try as he might, he couldn’t see him in any other way. He liked him more this way; as if he really had the ability, or the patience to think; that he knew how much this thing meant to him and would see it as something worth his while. And if he concentrated hard enough- and why not, seeing as he didn’t have anything better to do to pass the time- he could almost hear his voice. And not just the voice; he could recall the words. All of them. Perhaps a little twisted into something a little more sensitive to his bleeding ears, but that didn’t concern him much. He was used to this self-deceiving after all. And not really wanting to admit it to himself, he actually thrived on it.
“Missy’s just as excited about this as I am. Remember that time she was talking her mouth off about babies and shit like that? That evil woman was planning this for months. But…you know, I kinda like the idea…do you think I make a good daddy?”
He couldn’t remember his own words. Perhaps he really hadn’t said anything at all. Bam always was like that; stealing his moments and talking in his turn. If Ville had ever learnt how to raise his voice to make himself heard, perhaps Bam would see that all this long, he had something important to say.
“But I’m gonna divorce her anyway. She can take care of the baby herself. I’m gonna run away with you.”
Now that was too much for a harmless wishful thinking. That wasn’t what he had said at all. It wasn’t even what he wanted Bam to say. Then why had he thought of those unsaid words? It was all a game, wasn’t it? A cruel game, yes, but still a game nonetheless. If he wouldn’t be cruel to his heart, no one else could.
Part 5: The Nightmare II
…I was a hole…dark and deep. And he…he filled me. He filled me with his love and care. I hate him. I fucking hate him…
A child could either bring us together or tear us apart. It was a big risk, but one I had no other choice but to take. I had to put on a brave face and even smile a bit; I had to wear my red shirt he loved the most and put on ‘Love Me Tender’ and sing along. And what was worse, I had to look romantic while we listened to the morose song. He shouldn’t see my tears; the ones I no longer had the strength to shed.
“We should do this Ville, that’s a great gift you have, we gotta use it while we can.”
A gift? I’d rather the term a ‘curse’. That’s what my father would call it. And he was always right. I guess some people, like Bam, will never grow up enough to tell good and evil apart. Just my rotten luck.
“I’m not sure Bam. A baby…she’ll change everything.”
He grins like the loony he is and I exactly know why he’s grinning. Either it’s him or me I know too much. He’s caught on the word ‘she’, I bet on my life.
“Ew, look at this! You already know it’s gonna be a girl!”
I huff at his childishness, at his inability to sense what’s more important to talk about and why my eyes are so sad when I’m in the process of pretending that everything’s fine and I’m the happiest man alive.
“I don’t know Bam. I don’t know shit.”
I just always wanted a girl, that’s why. But telling Bam that, and he’s going to think I have been thinking about this for a long while. Which I had, but I have been thinking more about the risks rather than the privileges. He’s going to misunderstand again. So I keep my mouth shut.
“Oh c’mon, Valo! It’s gonna be great! What can go wrong, ha? It’s not like we didn’t have sex before.”
Only this time, you’re going to top and without a condom may I add, and I’m sure I have never told you I never bottomed in my whole life and that I’m scared shitless at the idea and of course there are loads of things that could go wrong. There’s only 15% chance that I can conceive a healthy baby and there’s no guarantee at all that I would live after giving birth. But I don’t know why I don’t tell these to Bam. I guess I just hate to see him sad. That expression had never become him.
“Whatever, Bam. It’s too late for this conversation anyway, and I have an interview in 3 hours.”
Again; I’m doing it again. I’m avoiding the subject and he doesn’t even realize it. Instead, he pulls me into his big embrace and covers my bare legs with his own. He notices that I’m too cold for this mild temperature of the room and frowns. But he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask anything. And I’m not even sure if I wanted him to. He reaches for the comforter at the end of the bed and pulls it all over my shivering body. Sometimes, Bam’s so ignorant of all the signs I want to bang my head against the wall, or throw a vase at his head, or just…fall off the wagon for once and drink myself to death. That’s how desperate he makes me feel. And he doesn’t even know it. Oh damn, I have to stop thinking. Where are my cigarettes when I need one?
“Bam? Can I smoke in bed?”
I can’t be arsed enough to leave this warmth and comfort in search of somewhere nice and quiet to have a smoke. Bam thankfully only nods and buries his head under the comforter, probably trying to hide away from the terrible-smelling smoke.
“Thank you.”
I whisper so low I’m sure he hasn’t heard it. When I light up my cigarette, I try not to think of anything at all. Instead, I lose myself in the delirious patterns the smoke makes before my eyes and smile sadly at the shape it makes.
I swear it looked like a baby.
Part 6: The Realization
***
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-
Almost, at times, the Fool.
***
The room was cold, and his king-sized bed with its silk, black sheets and numerous feather pillows was even colder. The chill ran down his spine, enveloped his naked body in its shivering embrace and traced over every line and curve, with the care of a lover who knew all the sensitive spots on his body by heart. He could have climbed out of bed and closed the windows- the kind, pliant host to this merciless, Autumn wind- he could have leaned over the bed and snatched his discarded sweater and pulled it over his chilled skin, or at the very least, he could have reached for the comforter lying uselessly at his feet and covered himself up. But he didn’t. He was simply too cold to care; too removed from this place to even remember where he was, what he was doing there all alone by himself, and why was he naked in a bed that lacked the presence of someone- anyone- who would care. He remembered enough to know that there should have been a reason for the state he was in; the open windows, the empty space next to him, his nudity when it was not appreciated and worshiped, and the overwhelming power that bore down on his chest; the power of despair, of removal, of a kind that kept asking him why he should still care; he shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. yet the room remained cold, and the wind kept blowing in, and he didn’t even need to stretch his hand on the soft mattress to realize the space next to his body- his naked, mournful body- was still empty. He didn’t even have the imagination to pretend otherwise; or the energy, or any of those shiny excuses that urged him to breathe, even in the air that was depleted of oxygen.
The alarm clock on the nightstand went off; the beeping sound used to be annoying; so annoying that he would rise from his peaceful slumber to bang his hand on the clock to successfully shut it up. But this time, neither was the sound annoying and nor was he in a peaceful slumber. The routines had changed, he noticed with a weary kind of horror. And for all he knew it wasn’t even 6:30, when the alarm clock used to go off. From where he was lying motionless on bed, he could see a sultry patch of the morning sky. To him, it was too bright outside to be 6:30. Or perhaps, it wasn’t that the sky was brighter, but his room, and his mind and everything else that separated him from the world outside were suddenly hundred shades darker than what they used to be.
Than what I used to be, he indolently wondered and closed his eyes before the harsh slap of reality hit his face; what did he use to be?
At least he remembered enough to know that this state of forgetfulness, this Lethe that flew through his veins, had nothing to do with alcohol. He was way passed that stage in his life, when he woke up to a splitting headache, with memories misplaced and forever gone. He thought he should take joy in that fact alone, that his sobriety held him aloof from ordinary life, ordinary people and their infinite weaknesses, from the repetition of meaningless occurrences that could not be defined or even justified with the bitterness that still resided at the back of their mouths. But he didn’t know what ‘joy’ was anymore.
This scared him; he was not simply losing control over his life, but allowing it to just happen. With the last drop of his energy, he raised his cold body from the mattress and reached for the clock that was still beeping. His eyes lingered on the digital numbers. 6:31; either the clock had been set before 6:30, which was unlikely, or it had really been just one minute of a frozen moment, which was terrifying to think of. When the room relapsed into silence, he didn’t know what to do anymore. He couldn’t find the urge, or the reason, to lie down. And he didn’t have the energy, or the courage to leave the room. Briefly, he thought about giving Mige a call; to beg him, if it came to that, to come and take him home. He should have done that. He should have called him up and begged him to come and save him from himself, before he turned into something even more indefinable than he already was. But the phone was outside this room. Now he could only wish that Mige would come here on his own accord.
If only he believed in magic; if only he still lived in fairytales with happy endings. His dry lips arched upward in an imitation of a fond smile. It was a blessing he could not see his smile; never had a smile looked that devastatingly heartbreaking. Not that his heart wasn’t broken enough already, it was the realization that his heart was so broken that it could not break anymore that would have terrified him to death.
…
“Why don’t you just jump?”
“I need more reasons to.”
“How many more?”
“Just one; just one more reason and I’m gone. I promise.”
Part 7: The Death
***
I grow old ... I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
***
He was barely past 30 and he already felt like an old man. Perhaps the shadows on his tired face and the bags under his glassy eyes were playing tricks on him, but who was he kidding? He knew this oldness, this unconquerable exhaustion was not painted on outside but inside. His friends would look at him and comment on his drawn face. They would advice him to take some time off work, and in Mige’s case, even force him to. But they never reached deep enough to touch the real pain inside. Ville had hidden it well enough; buried so deep that sometimes even he himself would forget where it was, but never deep enough for him to stop hurting.
He averted his eyes from his reflection in the mirror, and noticed the water was still running. His shaking hand went to turn the faucet off- and when had his hand started shaking?- as his eyes traveled upwards to rest on various bottles of medication in the small cabinet above the sink. Even looking at them made him sick, or rather, realize how sick he really was. He hated this. He hated how low he had sunk; how pathetic he looked with his unwashed hair and dark, thin stubbles on his chins; how pitiful with that worn, ill-fitting, black shirt hanging loosely over his skinny frame and that stray drop of tear that escaped effortlessly from his tightly-shut eyes and landed on his bottom lip.
Slowly, as if afraid to confront his weakness staring back at him through the mirror, he opened his eyes. There was no time for this. He had a show in less than two hours and if he did not hurry, he would miss it and become even more than a failure he already knew he was. There would be time for self-pity after the show; there always was. When everyone rushed into the bars and celebrated yet another successful show with draining their poison, he would pour his exhausted body into a lone chair in a dark corner and try to smoke his loneliness away. There, he would lose himself in the delusional patterns of smoke and wallow in self-pity. There, he would let himself fall as deep into self-destruction as he dared. And it was not the healthiest thing to do, but…it was all he was capable of these days.
Before exiting the bathroom, he sent one last, lingering glance behind. His medications, not having been touched for months, resting peacefully in their place, seemed to be mocking him. He was more than a pity case now; he was a complete mess.
But he knew he could pull this off; to the world outside, he did look lovely, after all. His hair, curled around his face, was shiny. His eyes, with no make-up, looked innocent. His lips were plump and wet. Why would it matter if he was dying inside? Why would it matter at all?
Perhaps, tomorrow, he wouldn’t even be here to dwell on anything at all. Perhaps, tomorrow, he’d be dead and gone.
Part 8: The End
***
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
***
The door slammed shut behind him, and he began a slow walk towards the couch. He unbuttoned his jeans as he walked, and pushed the tight material down his hips to his legs. He didn’t bother to take off his sneakers. He just flopped onto the couch and slid his boxers down. His hand grabbed his limp cock and after five pumps, it grew hard in his hand.
It wasn’t that he needed to jerk off. He wasn’t horny by any means. He wasn’t even in the mood for it. When he moved his hand up and down his hardened cock, hating what he was doing already, he wasn’t thinking of arousing things. Instead, he was thinking of heartbreak. Of all the times Bam had screamed into his face and pushed him away because this isn’t right, man. I love you but we can’t do this. I’m with Missy now, she’s having my baby. Why can’t we just be friends? Like we used to be?; of all the times he had been left alone and abandoned in the middle of the street, with nothing in his hand but a cigarette butt and his broken inhaler because I can’t believe you kissed me! How dared you betray my trust like that? I’m a married man, Ville, get that through your thick, Finnish head!; of all the times Bam had pushed his head under the water and kept it there, uncaring to Ville’s flying arms that screamed help because Ville, I don’t even think you love me. If you did, you would have been happy for my happiness; and my happiness lies with her, not you; of all the dreams scourged and all the confessions smothered; of dying, behind the mask crying and his futile trying to believe in his own lies and dreams. He jerked off to angst and grief; he jerked off to sleepless nights, empty bottles of pills, disconnected lines, and November forgetfulness. There, on his lonely couch in his lonely house and for his lonely self, Ville Valo jerked off to tragedies.
And he came with a sob.