140408 ; break and bend me as you ride me
Sometimes he can feel it. Late in the night, when the lights are down, dim and low, and the shadows scatter merrily along the corners of the hallways and the little nooks of his room. Sometimes he can feel it, late in the evenings when the sun dips and kisses the line of the horizon, giving way to the dark sky, giving way to crackling streetlights that spark on one by one along the roads.
He can feel it, the crick in his neck, the way his spine aches and threatens to break and fakes the pain that isn’t truly there, but it is. It is there. It is present and never-ending and it burns through the knobs that stand out awkwardly against skin and the taut, twisting muscles in his shoulders and the tendons that string tight in his throat, burning, burning, burning.
He can feel it, the tightening sensation around his throat, the way his body aches with the extra weight of something extra, pressing down, leaning down, forcing him down, that whisper in his ear at night, that whisper in the careless light, that whisper every morning day when he awakes and it’s done with its play.
He never allows himself to be photographed, not anymore. He knows what he will see. He does not know what others will see, but he does not want to know. Fear lingers on the edges of his conscious always, and he dreads the night, he used to dread the night, but now, it stays with him always, she stays with him always.
Her ankles lie against his chest, her feet hanging flat. Her arms fall around his head, fingers cracking and making the most terrifying silence. Her face presses against the top of his head, unmoving, still. A hoarse rattle echoes through his entire body, through her, through them.
He cannot escape. After all, it was his fault. He knew the consequences. He disregarded the taboos. He played with fire, and caught on fire instead, burning, burning, burning.
Now his back bends, now his spine breaks, now he aches and it aches and she aches her way into his every fear and dream and helpless sigh, and he cannot undo, he cannot remove, he cannot cannot cannot cannot.
The doctors say it is a strange, incurable back injury. They witness his bones curve in on himself. They are bewildered. But he knows.
He knows.
His grandmother had told him, child, never kick the ashes of the incense. Always say sorry when you pass the trees. Never turn when someone calls your name from behind in the night. Never think that these things do not exist, my child, because they do, and they will find you, and you will find them, and find that you will not be able to get out, get away, away away away away help me get away from me kill me destroy me break me-
He sits on the bed, and his gaze slips up to the mirror hanging on the wall.
The girl sits on his shoulders, not moving, not moving.
He puts his face into his hands, and screams, clawing at skin, as she comes for him.
If only he had not bent down that day, pressed his shoe into the incense, if only, if only, if only.
based off old chinese superstition.