(no subject)

[notamelonfucker]

Barry is tidying up a home in section one when a hamster ball comes rolling across the floor, but he can’t see a hamster in it. Curious, he picks it up and cracks it open, only to see a crystal inside. He has only heard of crystals so far, and hasn’t had the chance to use one yet. He hesitates at first, knowing that he should wait until he gets home. He’s not even sure what he wants to know from home; the anonymous writer over the journals certainly gave him a lot to talk about.

But eventually, curiosity wins over, and he hesitantly reaches his hand out and touches the crystal.



There is nothing but noise and touch, here. The noise in the background is hushed but prominent, the sound of many voices raised in merry chatter, the clink of plates and glasses, the sound of chewing. He is in a bar, he realizes.

But he is not standing alone, as he had initially assumed. There is a woman’s voice, soft but confident. She has a pretty voice. “Maybe I should get you drunk,” she says.

She can’t be talking to him, he thinks, but she is. There is the clink of his drink on the table and he moves to sit down as his voice asks, “Why?”

“Because,” she continues, “I reckon you’re quite cute when you’re drunk.” A pause. “Who’s that?”

“I went to school with him.” He takes a sip of his drink. He cannot taste it, but assumes it’s beer. It’s cold and fizzy and feels good going down.

“Is it a friend?”

“He…lives next door to me. He stopped speaking to me when we started secondary school.”

“Did he give you a hard time?”

He doesn’t respond, but he can feel himself nodding, and he can feel the muscles in his face tighten. “Every morning when I woke up, I felt sick just thinking about it. I told my parents and the teachers. They knew it was happening. No one did anything.”

“Was it his house you tried to burn down?”

Another nod. “A few months ago, he sent me a text inviting me to this club. I-I thought he wanted to apologize. I get to the club, I walk up to him and his mates. He texted me by mistake. It was so humiliating.”

A murmured word from the word, obscured but sympathetic.

He can tell that he’s struggling to speak now. There is tension in his entire body, and his face is screwing up, trying not to get too emotional. “I was so angry, I… I got drunk. I started thinking about everything he did to me at school. I lost it. I went round his house. I made sure his family were out. I soaked some tissues in lighter fluid, I lit them and dropped them through the letterbox. There was a cat.”

“A cat.”

“Inside the house. I thought, the cat didn’t bully me in school, he hasn’t done anything. It was just starting to catch light. It was freaking out.”

“What did you do?”

“Put the fire out.”

“How?”

He leans forward, now. He can feel the woman’s breath on his face. He wonders if this is the closest he’s ever been to someone. Been to a woman. “I pissed through the letterbox. This is when his Mum comes home. She starts screaming. You know when it’s started, it’s hard to stop.”

She’s snickering, he can tell.

“It’s not funny,” he says, dead serious at first.

“Sorry,” she says chuckling. “I’m sorry.” And then she laughs, and laughs, and laughs even more. After a moment, he relaxes and begins to laugh with her. It feels good, to laugh like that. It doesn’t take him long after that to finish off his drink.

“So, you gonna walk me home?” She asks. “Let’s go.”

He gathers his jacket, and she says, “Let’s give them something to talk about.”

Her fingers wrap around his. They are unlike his own hands, bulky and awkward and unsure. They are delicate and slender and she has been so kind to him that he has to wonder if he can fall in love with a pair of hands. He can feel himself smiling as he walks along with her. It’s the widest he’s ever smiled, he thinks. He’s never smiled like that here. He didn’t know he knew how.

He’s on the verge of trying to will her face to appear when abruptly, the memory ends.

Barry stumbles backwards, breathless, unsure of what he thinks of the memory. Of what he thinks of anything, really. He should pay more attention to the fact that he had tried to burn down someone's house - that explains it in his dream - but he finds himself enraptured with the source of the kind woman's voice instead.

Whether he had a good life or not, he doesn't know. But now he knows that he would like to know more.