I was listening to this really sad song, and I got some major Jossam feels, so I had to write this.
The song is called "Sad Beautiful Tragic" by Taylor Swift; and say what you will about Taylor, but this song she wrote is just too beautiful, and I really could relate it to my favorite ship that never sailed, so. I highly recommend listening to the song while reading this. (I would've included all of the lyrics if it were allowed...)
Thank you for reading!
She could see him from across the room.
He wore one of his typical flannel shirts. This one was blue and green, the sleeves messily rolled up to his elbows. The top two buttons were undone, revealing the sprigs of dark hair on his chest.
She gazed down at her hand, at the violet nail polish and smooth, glowing knuckles that smelled of honeysuckle lotion.
Her fingers held a note. It was a short note, but hell, it was something. She'd tried to be sincere, but she wasn't sure it was good enough.
She walked up to him. "Josh."
"Sammy?" His eyes landed gracefully on her, and they sunk deep into every feature on her face. His smile filled her up, his smile defined her entire existence. Her knees trembled, as if she'd just climbed a rock wall.
But she couldn't bring herself to do it. She looked at the note, at the paper beginning to crumble and soften in her sweaty hands. Much longer and it would be reduced to an illegible pulpy smear of blue ink.
So, instead, she just smiled back at him.
0o0
Hannah had her picture in a locket.
He found it one day, while rummaging through a box of her things. He'd already ravaged Beth's room the previous day, and now it was Hannah's turn.
His sisters were dead. Well, missing, they said. It was what the posters said, what the sheriff and police said, what his naïve, idiotic parents said.
He knew better. He wasn't fucking stupid. "Missing" means they had a chance of coming back, no matter how tiny the chance, it was there.
Hannah and Beth weren't coming home. He knew that better than any of his friends.
She was different, though. She wasn't an idiot either. He stared down at the open locket cradled in his clammy palm. A miniscule photo of Samantha Giddings and Hannah Washington grinned up at him. The two best friends were posed with their cheeks pressed up against each other and wore overly large smiles that took up half their faces. They were positioned in such a way that made it seem like they knew that picture would be squeezed into a little locket.
He threw it. Hard. It skittered and bounced over the oak floorboards, chain rattling and charm trembling as the necklace came to rest under a dusty bed frame.
0o0
The towel hugged her lean frame, tight and scratchy and uncomfortable. It was pure creamy white, save for the tiny "W" insignia on one corner. She ran her fingers over the sleek black stitching, then bolted.
Someone was after her. A maniac, a psychopath, whoever the fuck it was— they were after her. Dirty denim overalls, unkempt black hair attached to a demented clown mask that stank of neglected, dusty rubber.
She gazed down at her hand, at the chipped nail polish and cracked knuckles. She ran from him.
0o0
He pressed his hand to the wound in his shoulder. The fabric of his shirt was already dark and drenched with scarlet. He pulled his hand back, tacky and slick with pure sweat and blood.
She escaped him. He almost had her, once, but she'd always had wit and agility that far dominated his own. She was short, she was small, but she wasn't stupid.
Now he was alone in a damp mine, musty air hanging thick around him like suffocating curtains that stank of stale water and decay.
He clutched his wound and shuddered, and curled against a stone wall and willed the monsters away.
0o0
She was in a hospital bed— that much was clear. Clean sheets, too clean and pure and white, clung to her body like a second protective skin. Bandages covered the unsightly gashes and cuts. In the distance, a heart monitor beeped steadily, but she wasn't there. She wasn't in that room at Blackwood Memorial Hospital on February 2nd, 2015.
She was in a warm bedroom on August 21st, 2013. Her eighteenth birthday. It was a sweltering day, and his window was open to allow a heavy breeze to swirl through. The breeze brought with it stray dandelion seeds and flecks of sunlight.
They held each other in a tight embrace. His sisters weren't home. Her brother was at a friend's house. His parents were always out of town. Her parents were out of town, for once.
And then he kissed her. First gentle and tender, then more rough, more desperate. They fell back onto his bed while the hot mattress squeaked and the old box springs whined.
He took off her bra, and she took off his pants. He was beautiful. She was beautiful. They were beautiful together.
But no one knew about them.
0o0
He screamed. He didn't know why. Maybe it was because he was alone. Or maybe it was the thoughts raging and battling in his head. He could feel the stab of spears and swords, and every bang of a rifle and puff of gunpowder pounded at his skull.
He was starting to forget what she looked like. He was starting to forget what he looked like. There were puddles, sure, but they were clouded with murk and his limbs were skeletal and useless.
And, besides, the face he would rather see staring back at him was not his own.
He had found a meal. It was rotten and full of maggots, but it was a meal, and it filled his stomach. He grasped the food, tearing into it greedily and ignoring the feeling of his fingers digging into hollowed out eye cavities.
Maybe this was the closest he would ever get to feeling human touch again.
0o0
She was discharged, but the scars remained long after the last of the blood was wiped away.
She stared into the mirror and peeled off a square of old gauze. Purplish circles dragged at her eyes, and willed them to close. A soft sigh whistled through her teeth.
His eyes were green. They'd always reflected her own, though perhaps with just a bit more spark and a little less spunk. She'd always marveled at his eyes. Hers had too many dots of brown. His were crystal clear.
0o0
Flashlight beams glared across the cavern, like the harsh headlights of a tractor trailer on a dark and desolate highway.
He preferred the quiet. Even the ounce of humanity left in his damaged brain shied away from the light and noise.
His food was gone, but so was his weakness. Something was tearing and poking at the side of his face, but he let it be. Whatever it was, it was making him stronger.
Seeing other people was not on his to-do list. Something resembling a roar rumbled up his throat from his lungs and echoed through the moisture-flecked walls. He emerged from the collection of stalactites and stalagmites, and felt like he was emerging from the mouth of a sharp toothed monster.
She was not there. It wasn't like he expected her to be. She was the only person he knew anymore. She was the last ounce of his humanity.
And, as he lunged toward the flashlights, that final fragment of humanity dripped away.
0o0
Weeks turned into months, and months whittled away into long, interminable years.
She wasn't the only one to emerge from the burning lodge.
Mike did too.
She became Samantha Munroe, not really out of love but rather out of companionship. They understood what the other had went through to a T— every last detail, every tidbit of trauma that might've otherwise been forgotten.
It was a simple ceremony at the city hall. Their honeymoon was one night in a motel plagued with nightmares.
Mike held her until she drifted off again, and when he woke up a few hours later she was the one to hold him.
She looked at those eyes— Mike's eyes— and noticed how deeply brown they were. She wondered if he saw her face when he looked at her, or if he saw Jessica's.
0o0
He is strong now. He was famished, but he had many more meals once he got rid of those damned lights. Now five flashlights lay broken on the slippery floor of the mines, surrounded by shattered glass. He picked those shards clean of any bits of flesh or droplets of blood. He craved the crimson. It was such a nice contrast to the bluish gray and black of the mines.
He grew. He's tall now, eight feet at least. His knees are knobby, his eyes bulbous and white, his teeth a full set of talons, his fingernails now pointed claws.
All this time, and he forgot about the tiny picture in his front pocket. He outgrew those overalls, but the picture fluttered out of the pocket and came to rest on his thigh.
She has a big smile. There are two other girls on either side of her, brunettes with smooth olive skin. One has glasses and a butterfly tattoo on her upper arm, while the other dons a white beanie and gray sweater that hangs lazily off one shoulder.
The girl in the middle is beautiful. He recalls seeing her once, maybe twice. She's a stranger to him, nothing more significant than a face he might've walked past at the mall or at the train station. It's difficult to forget a face like Sam's, but he does.
He leaves behind the picture and leaves behind his sanctuary.
Josh is strong now.
0o0
She gives Mike a son. Giving birth is a long and painful process, but she does it for him.
Once again, she's wrapped in those clean white sheets like a sanitized yet sweaty burrito. The nurse hands her the baby, her baby, Mike's baby. A blue cap covering a head of velvety brown hair, and eyelids hiding a pair of wide green eyes.
His eyes don't have much brown, if any, in them. They're like his. But she knows the child isn't his.
"Joshua?" Mike asks her, at her bedside, loyal as ever. He wears a glove over his disfigured hand.
No. She shakes her head. It's much too difficult, not when their son— her son— has the same eyes as him.
Christopher Matthew Munroe.
Maybe the next one, she thinks, could be Josh. Maybe then she will be ready.
There is no next time.
We had a beautiful magic love there,
What a sad beautiful tragic love affair.