LJ Idol Week 16 - A terrible beauty has been born
Your fist crunches, hard, into the angular sweep of his jaw and you think, Maybe it didn't have to be like this.
And maybe it didn't. Maybe you could have reasoned through this. Maybe you could have sat him down on the threadbare sofa where you'd both spent the majority of your high school years playing video games, and the majority of your college years drinking, and you could have told him, Listen, please, you have to listen to me.
And maybe he would have listened.
He staggers from the force of the blow, his shin smacking hard into the wooden frame of the gaudy coffee table you rescued from a street corner in your mother's neighborhood, and he smiles at you with bloody lips.
"That the best you got?" he asks, his voice muddy.
Maybe he would have listened, sure, but probably not, because words have never been your strong suit. Words are his weapons, the honed blades he takes to the achilles of every argument, the gleaming piano wire he calmly slips around the throat of any who would dare match wits with him. And through your friendship, the rare times that his words failed it was you who charged in with fists and boots and snarling rage, the starved guard dog eager to make good with its master.
More often than not, it was his words that saved you.
You swing high and your split knuckles strike his cheekbone, spray a fine fan of blood across the bridge of his nose before he tumbles back first onto the sofa, then the floor.
That was before now, though. Before the shine wore off his careful wit and black humor, before his senses dulled and his eyes faded to the same bruised, blood-speckled state as the crooks of his elbows.
And the hero in your carefully trained heart wants to save him, but you just don't have the words.
You don't know how to say, Listen, please, so that he will.
The coffee table jerks violently away from the shove of your boot, and your next step ends in a kick that strikes the unprotected embrace of his thin ribs.
I need you. I love you.
He looks up at you with his fogged eyes and his face is warped into a terrible beauty born of addiction, self-destruction, your weeping fists, and he smiles again, that horrible, wretched, damned smile.
I need you to stop this, please.
You kick him again and his breath explodes in a barking cough. His hands grasp at your leg, snag in your jeans. He drools blood onto the carpet.
Listen, please.
You have to listen to me.