I am driving home from work. It is Thursday the sixteenth of November—9:34 am. The job is not finished. I was wiring a spa. I was in the corner of a tin-pitched roof when Camilla messaged. On hands and knees between trusses. Thirty-three degrees and covered in fibreglass insulation. So fine it pierces through your skin and itches for a week. I take my phone out of my sweat-filled pocket.
‘Just popping into the house to grab some stuff.’
‘I am heading home too,’ I replied, I lied.
Our four-year relationship was going through its biggest hardship. It had plenty of truths but was not true. It only takes one lie to make you go mad. To question everything. This one was my fault. Camilla was innocent, and by innocent I mean very attractive. I am going through some things, I don’t want to talk about it. I tried to hurt myself by hurting the only thing I care about. I had learnt love from my parents and she never left him. But Camilla wasn’t my mother and she had her own telling her what to do. The parents of hers who used to tell me they loved me on birthday cards quickly revoked that claim. I am now taboo. We had both tried therapy. Mine told me to stop drinking and hers told her to leave me. One of them was going to get their way. Psychologists; professional gossipers. Aren’t there enough university students telling us what to do?
Excitement reaches me and the steering wheel feels nice. My boss tried to call me. I don’t answer. Soon I will be with Camilla and our presence will heal everything. Our connection. Love always wins. It is all we have. The only thing keeping all of this together.
Stuck at the lights a child looks at me. I give him a thumbs up. It's not his fault. Even in hard times you can smile to a child, knowing what he is in for. He smiled back with his eyes. Everything was going to be okay.
Turning into the street we shared a house on, her car was not there. The hope blinding my terror found its vision and my heart sank. I tried to call her but she did not answer. I walk into the front door. This place has no soul. I notice her plants are gone. I look at the fridge and every magnetic photo of her is gone. I walk into the bedroom, all of her clothes, even her pillow. Everything. Gone. I fell to the ground.
Camilla had moved home three weeks ago. It was always temporary. And now I am finding it is most likely not. Tears were seven emotions away. I spat on the carpet and screamed. Then I laughed. There is one remaining remnant of the girl who is driving home with my will to live. A five-piece photo frame. Photos of us, smiling. I ply it off the wall with my nail-bitten fingers. Paint comes with it. I smash it on the bedhead. The glass mimics my heart and shatters. I pick up a piece and walk to the shower. Without taking my clothes off I sit beneath cold water. I cut my thigh. The blood looks like melted rose petals. The colour gave me hope, there is beauty within me. I stood up and walked to the kitchen. Red water fell to the floor. I pick up my phone and try to call her. There must be some sick misunderstanding. Reality would never be this cruel. She did not answer.
I had to get out of the house. The museum of misery. The womb with no placenta. A song with no music. I changed my wet clothes. I didn’t bother with shoes and I left. Tree fallings hurt my bare feet and I like it. I wanted something to hurt on the outside. Something that made sense. I found myself at the train station, subconsciously lured. The sound of a train coming was like a slow encouraging clap. Time is relative. Time heals all wounds. Then why does time stop when you are hurt?
I decide to die. Anything but this. I cannot mourn whilst dead. No eyes to cry from. No heart to break. It felt right. The noise arrives, the train arrives, I step forward as the end is here. Goodbye.
I open my eyes. The ugliest person I have ever seen looks down on me.
Hell, just as I thought.
“Did that hit ya?” asks the man with no teeth.
Blood falls down the side of my face with precious warmth. I am so useless at life I can't even end it. I stood up and walked onto the train. I plead insanity with silence. The crazy don’t have to explain, the wounded do nothing but.
I sat at the very front of the train. Only a few meters away from the driver. My incompetence cost him ten weeks paid leave. I couldn’t see him. No one could see me. I got hit by the mirror on the side of the train. The cut above my eye continued to bleed. It felt nice to touch. My stomach aches. It starts beneath my sternum and moves through my ribs. I hum on the out-breath to aid it. I close my eyes, it's worse behind them. With one eye closed and an aching stomach I type a message for Camilla, like Van Gogh doing one last painting after being shot.
‘I don’t know how, after everything, after speaking every day for three years, after all the times you said you loved me, all the tears, the vulnerability, the touch, you can just be gone? I just don’t know how it went from waking up in the middle of the night to kiss you on the cheek, telling you how much I love you to you not answering my calls. From being everything to not existing. I know you will dismiss it but I don’t get how it happened so quickly and I feel crazy for thinking you ever cared. I feel used. Like you threw me out as soon as you realised I was damaged. I feel stupid for thinking you wouldn’t do that, not you’
But I didn’t send it. I couldn’t handle the anxiety of waiting for a reply. Plus I knew I was wrong. I pictured her. Talking to others. Going back to her ex-boyfriend. Fucking the guy she was speaking with when we first met. I pictured all those who were waiting on the bench. Waiting for my inevitable downfall. Then I heard the worst sound possible, my name.
“William?”
I turned around to see Bruce O’Neil, an old football friend.
“Bruce,” I said, pretending I was normal.
“What happened to your eye?” he asked.
“Magpie.”
His closer inspection made both of us worried. Blood ran down my neck and gathered within the cotton of my white t-shirt. He opened his backpack as he sat down over the aisle.
“Take this,” he said, throwing a black jumper.
I took my shirt off and put his offering on, scrunched the shirt up and put it on my head.
“No work today?” he asked.
“Nah, not today, you?”
“Tonight,” he replied.
I sat facing the front. Within the same thoughts; walking the same dog down the same track. Bruce was a bit taller than me. There was nowhere for his kindness to hide behind his round facial features. He had a big brown beard and green eyes.
“Nightshift?” I ask, being polite but still facing the front.
“Nah, I'm not plumbing anymore, I'm pursuing comedy,” he replied.
“How is that going?”
The train swayed from side to side whilst moving forward, overlooking the houses that all look the same in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Bruce shrugged to convey disheartenment. I was imagining Camilla with another man. Then I thought of our front room, the spare room that I pictured our first child sleeping in. Now that child is dead without ever being born. All because of me. I killed a future. Bruce confided within me for some reason. We weren’t that close. As if he would have had this conversation with whoever was sitting here. The white t-shirt on my eye collected colour as he spoke.
“It's just tough. There is only one open mic in Melbourne a week. How can I write a joke if no one is going to even hear it?”
I didn’t reply, I was wondering to myself if the devil rubs his hands together whenever I care about something. A demon manifested through abandonment issues. Suppressed memories of being molested. A god complex. A soul that takes holidays elsewhere.
“It amazes me how little the world cares,” spoke Bruce in the background of my reckoning, “It is lonely. I leapt into the unknown to pursue a dream, I am trying to get the world's attention and I can't even get my mothers.”
“At least you are trying,” I said, what else could I say?
“Yeah, that’s the thing people don’t tell you. You only hear of the ones who made it. That’s because they made it. You don’t see the billions who don’t, who never got the eyes.”
I just kept agreeing within his silences, hoping they never required more. I was judging myself.
Even though I had no idea who I was. Am I the one who is too sentimental, who is hurt, who loves, or am I the one who was willing to throw it all away? It is amazing how physically exhausting it is to be naturally wrong. To have a civil war in your head. Hearing the echoes of gunfire. Creating stories to make sense of the pain.
“I have no one else to talk to,” continued Bruce, “I don’t know why, you know, you wonder what everyone else is doing instead. The family, the friends, you wonder what you would do in their shoes. If they were pursuing something. If you're just a narcissist blinded by your own tunnel vision.”
“Who knows mate,” I replied.
What right do I have to be upset with Camilla? Paying the cost of the immortal man who fell prey to cheap desires. How can I be upset about stories I make up? But they are probably true. And she probably will move on quickly. Of course she will. She is beautiful. She does not care about me like that. I was stupid to think she ever did. What is insanity but your own isolated reality? If I was her I would leave me, but I am me, so I can't. I couldn’t even kill me.
I push the shirt onto my eye to feel pain and I want to scream. But I don’t, I am restricted by judgement. I am a prisoner to the inconvenience of concern.
“I speak to my family and they talk about what job I should do next. People ask me when I will go back to plumbing. They never ask when the next gig is. It's like this weird secret. Weird awkwardness. They’re not ashamed of me but feel shame for me. Do you believe in God?” Bruce asked.
“Not really, why?”
A man who smelt of piss walks on and in between the conversation.
“You need faith to pursue the arts, I tell you that right now,” he said.
“Do you?” I asked.
“He is the only cunt that will listen.”
“Pardon?” I joked.
Bruce laughed.
“Seems a bit arrogant doesn’t it?” I asked.
“What?”
“Relying on god to do the heavy lifting.”
“Probably.”
There was silence that was nothing but a runway for whatever Bruce was going to say next.
“You ever think about Jesus?” Bruce asked.
“Not really, you?”
“Yeah.”
Silence. Rattle of the train. Bad thoughts in my head. Bruce goes again.
“How many others do you reckon died on the cross but died as nobodies? How many others were sons and daughters of God but no one cared? You ever think other people were resurrected three days after death but no one was there to notice, so they just went back to work?”
This cunt is doing worse than me, I thought.
I wanted to say, ‘Don’t fall into that monster with a velvet mouth Bruce. Look at me, I did everything right. Now I'm riding the noose I tried to hang from. You are doomed in life, the only solace is you get to choose your suffering, that is our only freedom, the choice, and I admire you, Bruce. Just keep going!’ But I didn’t because I could not be bothered.
“This is me,” he said as the train came to a stop.
He stood up and looked at my feet.
“Where are your shoes?”
My mind was too full to think of a lie.
“I don’t know.”
Again, he opened his backpack.
“Here, take these,” handing me a pair of runners.
“It's fine,” I said.
The suicidal shouldn’t take loans.
“Take them mate, you can give them back to me tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“My gig.”
“What time?”
“Around 9.”
“Where?”
“City.”
“Any of your mates going?”
“Nah.”
And then I did something stupid.
And then I said, “Okay.”
