"It’s the end of the world

My world, my love, my gun

Now I’m all alone, kept the pain inside

Wanna torch the world ‘coz I’m breathing fire."

- Cold, "End of the World"

I had the dream again. Same one I’ve had a hundred times since… since…

It always starts the same. You and me, dancing as usual. We throw each other around, trading punches, going blow for blow, like clockwork; so precise it’s beautiful. Fluid, that’s what it is. You and me, we flow - into each other, out of each other, around, under, above, and through each other. We always did make assault and battery look sexy.

And then I grab you, and stare into your eyes, and I know, and yes, do it, and you bring the stake up to meet my chest and I nod, yes this is the way it’s supposed to be, yes, I deserve this, and I’m not worthy, and oh god the tension is exquisite, and yes, I can feel your arms tense, and yes, you swing back and yes, I feel the point slam into me and the pain, electric, flows out through the tips of my fingers and I smile…

This is the way it’s supposed to be.

Only it’s you who turns to ash.

And it’s me who wakes up screaming.

At first, she’d come running down the stairs, scared half to death that some big, nasty, fire-breathing dragon had her Spike-in-shining-armor in its horrible clutches. "No worries, pet. Just a bad dream." She’d see the tears on my face and notice the cigarette bouncing in my shaking hand and she’d know. And she’d sit next to me on the pullout sofa and we’d cry together, my head on her shoulder or her head on mine, until the sun came up… or went down… or whatever.

Eventually, she cried herself out. She’d still come down, though, every night… give me that generically sympathetic pat on the shoulder that you get when your dog gets hit by a car or your old lady kicks you out and throws all your stuff on the lawn or you find out that they don’t sell Weetabix at the Safeway. She’d fix me a warm cup of blood in my favourite mug, the one with the fang chip near the handle, and then go on living the life of a teenage girl.

I knew she loved you. I knew she hurt. But not like I did. She could let it go. She mourned, she grieved, she moved on. Time heals all wounds, isn’t that what they say? The human life span is finite. To grieve forever would be to waste it. And so, the heart and the head go on to other things.

But time isn’t an issue for me. Time doesn’t touch me. Time heals absolutely bugger all. I have forever, and every day I wake up and the pain is just as fresh as it always was. My failure is laid out for me every time I open my eyes. Why the hell did I let that little sod get the best of me? The Big Bad brought to his knees by some nancy poof of a bookworm.

When he pushed me… when I fell… I had this glimpse of the perfect world. It wasn’t the end to hunger, war, poverty, crime, injustice, and scary villains with big curly mustaches and stovepipe hats that everybody always talks about the perfect world being. It was just the world. Only in this one, I’d wake up and reach over, and I’d touch you. You’d be real and solid and there, sleeping beside me, with the sun warm on your face and shining in your hair. It would shine in my eyes the way it hasn’t for a century, and I’d pull the covers over my head, snuggle close to you, and beg the world for five more minutes. Just one more moment of perfection.

Even now, I’ll wake up in the dark, always in the dark, and reach over and hope to find you there. Only you never were there. And you never will be. And it’s my fault. And the sun that showed me what heaven could be would set me on fire and burn me to nothing in an instant. And me, the Big Bad, Destroyer of Worlds and Scourge of God-Fearing People Everywhere, just lies there, in the dark, crying like a baby.

"I’m drownin’ in you, Summers…I’m drownin’ in you."

End

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