Rising Shards

I didn’t see Oka when I rushed the stage, trying to grab myself to stop me from going into Jeans’ place again. But when I reached stage me, then I was the sole performer on stage, standing anxiously in front of Jeans’ door. Like a dream, I had been jumping between audience member and performer, but for the end it was only me.

I walked into Jeans’ apartment. She opened the door. She looked so angry. I went to her room.

“Is this it?” Jeans asked. “You’re leaving?”

Her voice sounded so devastated, so soft that it hurt. I didn’t say anything for a second too long.

“I want to fix this,” I said. “I feel like there’s a wall between us that we can’t climb.”

“I don’t want to hear about your stupid wall,” Jeans said. “I want you to stop hurting me.”

It was too late for me. But I still thought I could save it.

“What can I do?” I asked. “What do you need?”

“I need you to be like you used to be,” Jeans said. “I can’t finish my project without you.”

“I’ll do it! I’ll do whatever I can to be like that again.”

“You spend so much time with Stella.”

“I’ll stay here with you.” I said.

“I need you to never leave me,” Jeans said. “But I can’t have that. I know you’re going to go.”

“I’m not, I won’t leave you.” I said. “Please, I love you, I don’t want to leave you.”

Jeans didn’t smile. “You would say that,” she said. “You just want to say whatever it takes to make me happy. But you won’t do anything that makes me happy. Everything you do hurts me. You can’t go into the void with me, you can’t remember anything I tell you. What do you even want?”

“I want you to stop talking to me the way you do,” I said. “I’m scared when I talk to you.”

“Sometimes you need to hear difficult things, Zeta,” Jeans said. “Even if it’s from someone you care about.”

“That’s not what I mean,” I said, eyes welling up. “None of this makes any sense. I’ve been hoping this was all a nightmare, that one day I’d wake up with my fangs and you’d be going to Wildfire Hearts with me, just like we talked about. Back to normal, back to being my girlfriend.”

“Then tell me,” Jeans said. “Prove to me that you mean it.”

“By doing what?” I asked.

“Prove you really know me. Prove you truly love me. Finish this. Summer ended…”

I froze.

“Zeta, this is all I want from you. If you stay quiet, if you don’t know it, then you don’t know me. And you never knew me. And you just want to run away from me and abandon me like all the others. Now, one more time. Summer ended…”

I knew the answer. It was from the movie.

Jeans’ right arm suddenly shot out, and she drew a sword. While bloodsaber veins were supposed to be pure and glow brilliantly, her sword looked infected. A liquid looking like a set of watercolor paints all mixed together sloshed back and forth inside. I was frozen as she made a jabbing motion to their side, causing sparks to cross the edge of the blade. Like powering up an engine, a few tries lit up the sword with a sickly glow as sparks sprayed out from the edge of the blade, fading out as they hit the carpet.

“Sit down, Zeta.” Jeans said. Her blade leaked the black tarlike ooze as she walked towards me. I closed my eyes. I still felt terrified, but my heartbreak was stronger.

“You are going to shut up and listen to me now,” Jeans said, fire in her eyes. “I’m giving you one more chance to prove to me this wasn’t all a complete waste of my time. That you could still be the one to help with this.”

Jeans reached to a mess on her table and pulled out the mask.

“I can’t lose you,” Jeans said. “I need you for this. For everything.”

I could almost hear a hollow wind pass through the mask, as if it somehow spoke its agreement. The eyes may have been blank, but the mask looked like it hungered for me.

“Just say it, please.” Jeans said.

I looked into Jeans’ eyes. The eyes of my dear friend that I had spent what started as the best summer of my life with, that turned into two happy years. The friend I’d shared everything I had with. The eyes of the one I loved. I searched for answers to why someone I cared so much about could hurt me so greatly. I searched her eyes for a way I could bring her back. I would forgive it all if she came home. If I could just hold her one last time without being afraid. I begged her with my eyes to come home. I wondered if she was drowning as she seemed to falter, drowning in what she had become, what she had sacrificed in her mission that I couldn’t begin to understand. I wanted to hold my hand out and pull her to shore. To pull her home.

“There was a storm,” I said.

I got my right hand up just as Jeans suddenly slashed at me. I felt like a wounded animal as I stared blankly at the cut on my hand. The second it took to bleed was one of the longest of my life. Jeans was already sobbing apologies at me, saying she didn’t mean to. The denim wristband she gave me had been split, and it was on the floor now. Jeans broke the blade of her bloodsaber over her knee, letting the insides spill out as she stomped it into the ground.

“I’m sorry. I’m an idiot,” Jeans said. “It’s destroyed now. But it wouldn’t have happened if you just remembered—”

“But summer ended. It rained the day it ended. And I was alone again.” I said as my blood fell on Jeans’ floor like the sparks from her sword had. “I got it wrong. That’s the right version.”

Sometimes in a nightmare, you realize it’s a dream and you scream at it to end, but in the dream your eyes won’t open, and you just sit there frozen. Standing on the void stage felt like that as I screamed at myself to make it stop. I pulled myself away from the bloody memory of the last time Jeans’ screamed at me to stay as I clasped my hands together to hide the bleeding. The memory of her telling me she loved me as I started running back to the station.

“Please just don’t show any more!” I begged from my spot in the audience.

I ran to the stage. As I tried to shut the curtains, I slipped and landed on my side. The spot I landed shattered.

I turned to see the audience, desperately hoping to not see Oka in the front row seeing me crawl, a part of me broken apart. Instead, the audience was filled with all me’s, all cheering for me as I tried to put the pieces back. The parts of me that had fallen were on the stage like glass. The spot that had broken had moved; it wasn’t my side anymore. Putting the broken pieces of my heart back into my stage self wasn’t working, they just slipped out of my hands.

The curtain fell.

I listened to the crowd cheer amid my quiet devastation.

There was movement in the curtain, I assumed it was Ticket Taker Zeta here to do her crappy accent. But it wasn’t her. Oka stood above me now. My shattered parts were all back. And we were in an empty theater now.

“Zeta,” Oka said. I clamped my eyes shut.

She’d say it, I knew it. It was my fault. All of it. I was the monster that just hurt Jeans. “What she did to you was terrifying.”

“What?” I asked.

“I’m so glad you got away from her.”

“No, but,” I said. “It was my…my fault…”

“It wasn’t,” Oka said. "It really, truly wasn't."

The stage started to fall away. The ceiling was gone now, and it was just Oka and I, alone.

“…I’m sorry…” I said. It was heave filled sobbing. There was thunder above us and drops of rain began to fall.

Oka opened her arms, and I sighed into her embrace. She held me, letting me cry into her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, I can’t stop.” I said.

Oka wrapped her arms around me. I held her as tightly as I could.

“It’s OK…see?” Oka said, holding her right hand out to the rainfall, her wrist cloth’s teal shade turning darker in the water. We sniffed simultaneously, and I realized tears filled her eyes as well. “This place is crying with us.”

We sat and cried for a bit, the kind of tears that don’t stop once they get rolling but bring a strange peace with them when they finish. The kind of tears that once they end feel like the cool, fresh air after a thunderstorm.

The door we came in suddenly appeared and opened again. Oka helped me to my feet, and we walked out together.