#anxiety level raised so high its exceeded his height

[shitpost-it-tristan]

Felix is me 24/7, he fr just smiling through it- he's both so silent but SO LOUD,,, looking back and forth at Gene and Ralph like "Please yall I'm begging you, I have crippling anxiety-" hes seconds away from losing it, someone save him😭

[josephmxa]

Welcome to Wonderland: Faults of an Armstrong Part II

The Truth She Paid

“Ari…”

“Yes, Daddy?”

“Do you miss your mother?”

Every time he asked me, there was a small buzz in my stomach. Started small, then rumbled, then pinched my edges. And I felt… I felt like what I last ate was coming right back up. I remembered squeezing his hand tight. I remembered my eyes going over her name on the tombstone again and again. How my skin shivered under the slight winter breeze. Every time he asked me this, the train station stood bare. My vocabulary dwindled to the understanding of when I used to be an infant. My breaths gone shallow, my heart stirred slow. It irked the hairs on my body so much so my ears popped and every noise registered at a higher frequency.

Did I miss the woman who never shared the love my dad had? Did I miss her disdain? Her arrogance? Her naivete? How about her maddened wrinkled features every time I stepped an inch in her room? Because I certainly did not miss the lifeless soul my father tended to as if he loved her the same. So, I ask again, did I miss the mother who never was?

No.

In my eyes, she hadn’t earned the title. In hers, I hadn’t lived up to a single standard to that of her little baby boy Ari. Nothing but his deformed shadow.

But every time he asked me… his cold metal hand tightened. The clinks in his arms sounded off in the winter breeze. His sunken eyes grew red on her engraved name. By just standing here with me, a story of regret and guilt could be told by a simple picture take from her grave. So, how could I disappoint the man—my father—who missed the wife he used to love?

As always, my voice soft and tuned with a touch of sadness, I simply said, “yes,” and then peered up at his face and watched a small stream stride down his cheek. His face struck me odd because of how much it changed. Because back then I hadn’t the ability to empathize with him. Never had the opportunity of having nearly enough history with her he’s had. The mad love he shared with Annaliese was lost in me and believe, I tried fitting his shoes on me. I’ve tried listening. He still refused to retell a broken part of their history. Believe me, I’ve been nothing short of curious and have been denied countless times over.

Made me wonder why, no, how I ever thought I could understand.

Knowing him, his next words came with ease; I could recite them one day when his time came. “Her brilliance exceeded my expectations. Her beauty far surpassed mine. What I first thought of her laid in a pile of ash days after knowing her. She raised my standards high and became the woman to beat. No one else reached the heights of her level. She, my wife, my life… I lost her long before she died. There wasn’t an ounce of strength in me to deny her ignorance. Not an ounce of courage to restrain her arrogance. I loved her so dearly, I followed her inside the abyss she rests in.”

On cue, the air went quiet. The soft whistling of winter came and gone, and we felt the quick bite of its cold. We stood here, in silent pray, for a woman I do wish I could’ve respected.

“Burton,” Andrew called. He stood on the other side of him, no doubt latched around his arm. “What happened to Annaliese?”

He said nothing at first. When he was about to, he looked at me, his features smothered in regret. Part of me wished to say, I know.

Twenty years.

Twenty guilt ridden years and this was what he came to be.

He turned his head back. Slowly, he held it up. Most likely hoped the clear blue sky calmed him. “What is the first, and most important law, of alchemy?”

“Equivalent exchange,” Andrew answered. “In order to obtain, something of equal value must be given. Isn’t that the first and only law of alchemy? The world’s one truth?”

For the first time, I saw this man crack a mad smile; a soft chuckle following thereafter. “There’s a whole truth to alchemy and this world you will not have the fortune of knowing.” His mad smile faded. “Why?”

Like him, I lost myself in the serenity of the morning winter sky. “Because alchemy is a crime against natural order.”

He breathed in heavy and when I shot a look at his face, his eyes were closed. “In a span of five years, Annaliese and I tried conceiving a child together. We picked a name. Built a room. Bought clothes for a boy because we were so sure. We prepared ourselves three times over. And we weren’t going for a fourth try after that. But we were desperate. She was desperate. So, we tried. And nine months came and gone and what do you know, Annaliese is on the hospital bed and I’m right there as her anchor, like I’ve always been. And in one day’s work, a healthy, baby boy was born.”

His metal rattled. His breathing grew louder but sounded shaken. Yet his posture remained the same. “Twenty years ago, Ari, your mother and I studied with the theory of human transmutation; the practice of bringing who we lost back to life. We ran through every catalog stored in my personal library. We housed up in the local archives of alchemy in the heart of Winheim. We laid out the ground rules and drew the circle. What someone tried before, we were to do better. We had the body for a soul and they had nothing but ash. She was so sure of success without concerning herself over the possible repercussions. And I bought into her madness.”

He centered his head then, laid his eyes open and on her name. “Tell me, what are the components of the human body?”

“Water, Fat, Minerals, Carbohydrates, and Protein,” Andrew answered.

If Andrew weren’t so easily distracted, he’d have answered right. I mean, he did, but he missed the nitty gritty of the human body. “Those are the compounds,” I said. “What about the elements that make up the chemical composition? Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Calcium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Sulfur, Sodium and Magnesium. You know the compounds but not the elements, where do you start from that?”

For the first time since these annual visits, I had wondered if my dad lost it—all because he snickered. “You’re right, Ari. Those are the components of the human body. But we had his body. So, I asked myself, what are the components of a soul? The blood of ours?” He drew in a slow breath. “What made the soul of a human body so the corpse breaths life? A soul is pure energy, what alchemy feeds on, but you can’t generate energy a human body creates. Alchemy had its history of theories and studies and experiments, but not one sure way it was possible. And I purposefully relegated that truth to the back of my mind. And for what? I paid enough and yet it took more.”

His breaths went shallow and his metal skin rattled again. Watching him made me anxious. I remembered how his honesty warmed me, even when his anxiety let my skin out in the cold.

“We heard him cry,” he continued. “We saw him move. But… but after a second, I felt my ears bleed. Every other noise cancelled out in his deafening shrill. The next I knew, I woke in the hospital, my wounds cauterized and my wife… I didn’t know. When someone finally answered me, they said she had lost a few of her internal organs and for that… for that, she couldn’t give birth again. For her sin, she was rendered terminally ill and physically weak. Took me about a year until I caved and fixed myself with automotive prosthetics at a shop downtown and after I got a hang of it, I cared for her and I out of the hospital.

I waited for a moment when she smiled, when I could catch her off guard and see her love fill back up. But I wasted the time of day on her. And I knew I lost her when she refused to raise an adoptive child. She dispelled the idea so much she believed if she couldn’t birth a child, why parent one given up by another?

They wouldn’t ever measure up to her Ari.”

“And instead… you gave Isla the time of day. Everyday,” I said. Being his automotive mechanic, how could they be close? His weekly check-ups. His physical therapies. The bi-monthly tweaks and changes. Imagine your wife in a state of depression, so far off her life meant nothing without a child of her own. You watched as her condition worsened and drained every bit of energy you used on her. And while you remained a little bit sexually active, she couldn’t reciprocate your pleasures like before. But this other woman comes into your life and she’s positive. She’s loving and strong. She’s added on to your life, saved your life, and you remember you’re only human.

Unlike alchemy, we can’t give up feelings for something of equal value.

By Isla’s gingered hair, he couldn’t hide the truth from me anymore.

Isn’t it funny, though? He led me to believe such a rotten woman was my mother. He led me to believe Isla was only his mechanic. The best part? He’s told me countless times my birthday was of no meaning when every time each year, we’d come here and my curiosity questioned his honesty. We never came here for the day she died, we came here for the day their experiment failed.

I heard him draw in shallow breaths. “Yes,” he said. His eyes turned to me. What a goggled reflection of my own gingered hair. “I was frustrated in ways you’re too young to understand. I was mad at her throwing her life away and the only woman I talked to besides my sister about my dealings with her was Isla. I grew to know her. And I confessed my infidelity to Annaliese; she grew a fit and even more so when the truth of you became known to her. Her condition worsened by the month.” And she died shortly before my fourth birthday. “Threw every vulgar slur my way for naming you such.”

Ariel Armstrong.

Ari for short.

In another life, another reality, I could see myself loving that woman. I could feel her love. I could hear myself calling her mommy every chance I got. Deep down wished she could be the woman my dad used to know. The woman he shared a little over a decade with. But all good things never last, he taught me.

A shame for him, really. Lost his wife, and then his sister sometime after. Two women incomparable. Though I wasn’t glad Jaqueline Armstrong died, it was nice having someone my age growing up with me. Someone who felt more like a brother than he was as my cousin.

“Do you miss Annaliese?” Andrew asked him.

He stared back on her name and drew out a soft breath. Sometimes made me wonder if he lost a lung. And made me understand how much she put his heart through. “I miss the woman I used to love.”

And so, the truth Annaliese (and Burton) paid. And I gotta say, this chapter turned out much better than when I first wrote it several months ago. I’m loving that I have this project going where I can take a break from KJ (Killing Justice).

Tagging: @merigreenleaf, @firewritten, @isveltetip. If anyone would like to be removed, please let me know, and if anyone would like to be tagged, also please let me know. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!