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It took me a moment to process that I could feel the cold muzzle of a gun against the roof of my mouth. My finger was on the trigger, waiting for a slightly more intense pressure that would blow my brains out. As I carefully pulled the gun from my mouth and went to place it on the couch I vaguely sensed below me, my eyes landed on the body in my lap.
Bear.
My breaths became jagged as my head was restored with my own thoughts, no longer taken over by the result of the wish. I attempted to take in the scene around me, not used to being able to observe it with my own eyes. Inches from the door, Ian’s body laid still, a mess of his own blood surrounding his former frame. I could only imagine where Sarah was.
It was then that I looked down and realized that my trembling hands were stained red.
The car.
The brick.
The blood.
There was so much blood.
I let out a wounded cry that I didn’t know I was capable of. I knew where Sarah was. I had put her there– I hadn’t, but I’d watched myself do it. I’d watched myself turn her face to mush the night before. I’d watched myself fire the pistol at Ian before he had both feet in the door. I’d watched Bear collapse and suffocate in my arms.
Another spine-chilling scream followed each memory. I pushed Bear’s lifeless form to the ground, and pulled my knees up to my chin. Somehow, after everything, I wished I could put the veil back over my eyes. I wished I could return to the purgatory where my consciousness had been held for the past month. The wails ripped out of me so violently, I was sure that my lungs, as well, were going to erupt from my throat. Each hand clung to a separate cushion as if squeezing tight enough would fix everything.
“What did you do?!” I sobbed, unsure of who the ‘you’ referred to– Bear, the wish, or myself.
Baron Bailey had been a close friend since high school. When I’d gotten bullied, he was the only one who could reassure me– though he never let the nickname go. He was the one I felt comfortable going to about my writing. It was the fact that he listened, and he cared. After the events of the wish, I felt like I’d been lied to. None of that was real. He didn’t listen to my pleas for death to end the suffering that he’d started. He didn’t care that I wasn’t in control of my body or its choices; he still used it for himself. He still touched it, and cuddled it, and fucked it.
I felt myself convulse at the recollection– the way my internal battle weakened each time, to the point where, while she imitated sounds of enjoyment, I fixed my gaze on the ceiling. Over the course of this nightmare, those nights were the only times I felt real, genuine tears on my face.
How could he do that to me?
How could he do any of this?
I had tried my best to get through to him in any way that I could. Had he seriously thought I cooked his cat out of the goodness of my heart? Had he thought I wrote ‘not me’ as a joke? Had my sudden snaps– the bottle; the brick; the screams– meant nothing to him?
No.
No, he knew.
I needed to stop giving him so much credit. He had used that thing– that One Wish Willow– to control my fucking head.
“Do you like me?”
“What?”
“Cause if you do, now is the time to tell me.”
“I think we’re good friends.”
Why couldn’t he have just told me?
I kept replaying my memories to refrain from the reality I was facing. I couldn’t think about how Sarah, the girl who was supposed to give me my first tattoo, and who came to me before her dad for help on college applications, and who listened to every new album with me, was gone. I couldn’t think about Ian, who I’d gotten especially close to in the past year, and who always matched my energy during trivia, and who beat me at every arcade game. I couldn’t think about how it was my fault. I couldn’t think about what my life would look like after this. I couldn’t think about the pieces of Bear’s puzzle that he’d left for me to pick up.
I let my vision wander back to the gun.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
You can be free.
What’s the point? You’ll never truly live again.
No.
I don’t know why, but I refused to take myself out. I couldn’t do it, even though I knew I would most likely spend the rest of my days in a cell; in fact, they’d probably throw me in a psychiatric hospital. If I was lucky, I would be allowed a composition notebook and a felt-tipped pen, and every passionate tale would be stained with actuality.
I’d told Bear that there is a difference between a romance and a love story. Romance implies a happy ending where two characters share mutual, consensual feelings, and get to share that with the world. A love story is more complicated. Romance is a factor, but the interest is not always reciprocated, and these stories do not require a fairytale ending.
While I’ve never been openly sentimental, I always hoped for romance as a little girl. I dreamed that my feet would someday be lifted off the ground by my shining knight.
I didn’t get that.
I didn’t get to play the part of the princess saved by an enchanting affair. I got a love story– a tragic fable about a girl who was used, ignored, and abandoned. I got a twisted narrative where the girl is caged by a man’s insecurities, only for her to be found guilty of her own imprisonment.
I was going to live. For my friends, I was going to keep myself alive. I wasn’t going to leave this earth in the same way that my abus– he had. I wasn’t a coward.
Maybe I could use that shitty prison paper to hone my drawing skills like Sarah always said I could. I don’t know why she had so much faith in me; I could barely draw stick figures. Eventually, I could teach myself how to play those stupid video games that Ian constantly recommended, even though he knew my answer hadn’t changed.
They would be alive inside of me for as long as I was. The wish would not. My body was mine once again, and in that moment, I decided that it’d been given back to me for a reason.