#tattoo this whole episode on the inside of my eyelids thanks | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

heyheydidjaknow · 4 years ago

Text

It’s 200 words under my quota, but, in my defense, I don’t think it makes a ton of sense to make it longer for a variety of reasons. Also, y’all get it a day before the deadline. Please, god, let me write something to lighten up the gloom at some point.

Chapter 7

You were wondering before; yes, apparently it cracks, not splatters like you thought it would.

You are not sure how that is the only detail you remember about today. Some things happened before, you are sure. You do not remember those things, but you know there was more that happened.

As soon as the deed is done, you start climbing down the fire escape. You jump down the last story down onto your hands, wiping the blood off on your jeans as you sprint out into the street, running and busting through the front door. You scramble up the steps towards the front of the building, taking your bag and smashing it through a window to climb through. You hear the cries of combat above you as you grab Murakami by the ankle, crimson staining his skin as you swing him back onto solid ground. Electricity flows through your veins as you grab a shard of glass off the metal balcony, sawing at the rope and cutting him loose. You pull the gag out of his mouth, pulling him, staggering, to his feet as you both start back down the stairs.

He is saying something. You do not hear him, the sound of muffled screams and shattering bones ringing in your ears like a gong, his face tattooed onto your eyelids. A part of you notes how strange it is that you are not being followed; then again, it is not you they are after.

The walk is surprisingly short, you think. You push the door open for him as you both walk inside.

“Murakami?” You hear your voice call out to him.

“Yes, Y/N?”

“Do you have a bathroom?” Why are you so quiet?

“Yes.” He walks behind the counter. “Right in the back.”

“Thank you, sir.” You walk to the back of the shop, pushing the appropriately labeled door open and walking to the sink. You start scrubbing the blood off your hands, scraping what had dried from under your fingernails as you look up at yourself in the mirror. You blink, perplexed by your expression. You look corpselike, the dim lights of the tiny bathroom casting long shadows across your features. You reach up, feeling the structure of your face. Your fingers gently pull your skin out of place to confirm that, yes, that is you.

Your digits are ice against your skin.

You remember more details than you wish you did about what transpired the minutes before. You remember how much he strained not to shake underneath you. You have muted memories of talking of some sort, but when you try to focus on the memory, your ears fill with static.

‘I must have dissociated or something,’ you reason to yourself, trying to cling to your own body as you relive that scene in your head.

You remember the sounds he made before you let go. You remember how his shirt was drenched with sweat as Leonardo tried reasoning with your enemy. You remember how he had squirmed underneath you, how odd you found that; he must have known that he would not be able to make it out of this unscathed, you are sure.

You feel your fingernails graze your now pale complexion. Paler than usual, anyways; you were never the observant type.

You remember securing your position with one foot against the edge of the building, your heartbeat irregular as you held him there, knuckles going white around his clothing and skin. You remember hearing what you thought was a laugh as you leaned forward. Oh, how he had tremored, eye to eye with his executioner.

“If you knew what was coming next,” you murmured into his ear, “you would thank me.”

You had promised yourself not to look over the edge when you dropped him. There was nothing you could do about the sound.

Your middle and ring fingers feel at the ledge of your eye sockets. They gently tug your eyelids apart, holding your eyes open as you stare yourself blankly in the eyes. A lump rises in your throat as your limbs tingle from the excess adrenaline.

‘I killed a man.’

You wipe your face off with your sleeve as you shut off the faucet. You flick your hands dry, wiping the excess on your pants as you walk back onto the main floor, collapsing in one of the stools and resting your head on the counter. Time is swirling together now. Is that normal? You do not know.

‘You solved a lot of problems.’ You close your eyes, replaying his last few moments on repeat. ‘If he survived, he’ll never be able to do ninjutsu again. Taking only Xever down will be a cakewalk by comparison, and Karai… there’s no way Shredder can get allies to the states that fast.’ You hug your sides. ‘The episodes after next, besides the Stockman ones, cannot happen, meaning I have more time to come up with a game plan regarding Karai’s arrival. I doubt he considers us much of a threat, even now, so as long as I can figure out how to get the guys to survive next—’

Your thoughts are interrupted by the ceramic thump of a bowl being placed in front of you.

“You must eat, my friend. Food heals the mind.” He smiles gently. “Your murmuring speaks to your distress.”

You look up at him, sitting up properly despite yourself. “Thank you, Murakami.” Your fingers wrap around the handle of the spoon. It shakes violently in your hand; you place your hands on the table, for now, not trusting yourself to not spill the broth over yourself.

“Would you like me to lend you my ears?”

You hum in discontent. “I’m alright.” You chuckle dryly. “You should probably sit down more than I should; you must be in quite a bit of shock after what happened.”

“That is true.” You watch him pour himself his bowl. “Yet I feel as if we’ve experienced equivalent amounts of pain over both of our lifetimes.”

That made you smile, if only weakly. “Hardly.” You fold your hands together, scratching at a piece of dried gore that you had apparently not gotten off the back of your hand. “You have quite a few years on me, sir. The stories you could probably tell would make my head spin.”

“My life has, thankfully, been rather peaceful.” He sets the bowl down next to you, sitting and starting to eat. “I came to New York when I was a young man, and I’ve run this shop since then.”

You hold your hand up to see if the shaking has lessened; it has, slightly. “And your family?”

“Thankful for my health and wellbeing.” He smiles. “I see them, still. They live farther downtown.”

“For your sake, I’m grateful.”

He chuckles. “I’m sure they will be quite excited by my story.”

You slow your breathing, taking a sip from the bowl and humming softly. “Did your mother teach you to cook?”

“She did, although,” he nods, “I must admit that her food will always be better than mine.”

“I feel that.” You smile shakily, taking another bite. The dryness of your throat does not lessen. “I’ve been trying to get some family recipes down for at least two months on my own, and every time it’s just not the same.”

He nods slowly. “As always is the case with these sorts of things, I’m sad to say. It doesn’t get better with age, I’m afraid.”

You rest your head in your hands, closing your eyes. You can still hear him. “That totally sucks.”

He laughs. “Yes, well,” he sighs, “that is the nature of getting older.”

He reminds you too much of people you knew for you not to smile at that. If nothing else, this conversation serves as a slight distraction, some sort of relief from the ringing in your head; you do not even know how you would talk to the Hamatos about this sort of thing. They may be the only friends you have right now, but they are hardly known for their tact or reassurance. You do not want their advice to let it go or to hear that this whole thing will pass. They cannot understand this, you do not think. “You know what?” You take another bite. “Getting old, from where I stand, seems completely and totally overrated.”

He smiles. “You remind me so much of my son; he used to say the same thing before he left for college.”

“And after?”

He clears his throat. “’It’s not totally overrated.’” He chuckles. “He has a wonderful little girl. She has the sweetest voice you’ll ever hear.”

“I guess that’s true.” You pause. “It just feels like, sometimes, I’m never going to be that old, you know? Never have kids or a life after high school.”

He nods. “I’ll tell you this right now: every adult you’ll ever meet has had that same thought. There’s no way around it; everyone has that sort of doubt.” He sighs. “But there are a lot of adults out there with kids and lives, so we must be doing something right.”

Maybe Murakami does not fully understand what you mean, but you feel better, talking to him. You might have talked to Yoshi about this, but you doubt you would want to; he seems too high up, almost, too important to bother with this sort of thing. “I guess that’s true.” You sigh. “It doesn’t make it seem any more possible, though.”

“Well, there isn’t anything I could say that could make that change.” He takes another bite. “But never forget that things, no matter how bad they are, have to get better eventually. Life comes in waves, and if you stand your ground against them, the calm will come.”

You pause, sigh. You reach into your bag, pulling a wallet out and placing a twenty onto the table. “Thank you, sir.” You finish your food, getting to your feet. “I’m sorry about roping you into all of this. Hopefully, at least, the others will be able to help you more and keep break-ins to a minimum.”

“You don’t have to pay.” He smiles. “You saved my life, after all.”

“I insist.” You rub the back of your neck. “Besides, the guys are probably going to come to see if you’re alright in a bit, and I don’t want them to raid your kitchen.”

He laughs. “For the young men that saved me? I owe them my life itself. Gyoza is the least I can provide.”

“Still.” You start towards the door, pulling it open. You look back at the man.

‘This is worth it.’

You wave back at him. “I’ll see you later, Murakami.”

“I look forward to when we meet again.”

You close the door behind you, starting up the street towards your apartment.

You feel sick.

Table of Contents

Chapter 6 part 1

Chapter 8

24 notes · View notes

ebburke · 5 years ago

Text

Valentina’s

There was this burrito place called Valentina's. It was a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, nestled in what was essentially an alleyway between an office building and an apartment building on a street a few blocks from the main street in town. It was exactly half the distance between my apartment and my ex’s house, and she’d made me meet her there once, after a fight. I had walked past it in the freezing January night probably four times before I saw it and made it inside. She said we were being stupid, and, to see that, we would have to meet each other in the middle, and her gray eyes said she meant what she said and then she slid me a soggy burrito wrapped up in tin foil and we ate and sweat out jalapeño juice and stayed there at the wobbling plastic table until the guy behind the counter with the neck tattoos kicked us out.

So that was my destination. I always used to get restless around June, presumably because I was still used to being free of responsibility around that time of year, but now that I was a real-life adult, nothing changed in the summer. There was nothing to look forward to and no conceivable goal I was working toward, and that made any free time unbearable, so I began to walk. It was usually around eleven when I toweled off my hair after a too-long shower and put on running shorts and a tank top and went out to feel the pavement on my bare feet. The sidewalk would still be warm from the day but the grass around it would already be cool and I would walk with one foot treading on each. When it got uncomfortable I would switch sides.

I played games with myself, the old ones, the ones I’d promised not to play but they came to the front of my mind that night and I knew they couldn’t be as destructive as I’d been told, and I liked them. Aligning my breath with the turn signals of passing cars, matching colors. The brake light matches the red light matches his hat matches the spots that explode behind my eyelids when I rub my palms into them to keep my eyes in my head for a bit longer. They used to make me wear glasses to stop me from playing that one, told me I was hurting my eyes, but I broke the glasses.

I could see the glow of the Valentina's sign shining on the sidewalk a half block ahead. Between Valentina's and me was one other person, a woman around my age, a few meters ahead of me. She was silhouetted by the oncoming traffic, her skin glowing around the edges, as if emitting visible life. I stopped walking for a moment to watch her, the way her hair strayed off her shoulders, the way her long fingers were curled around her phone in one hand, and for a few moments, I really wished I had put on shoes tonight, or at least a bra.

I was right behind her in the line. It was just the two of us, or us and Neck Tattoos behind the counter. Valentina's menu had a lot of options, but in the way that Chicago has a lot of options: you were just going to ignore them and get deep dish every time. The woman sat at a table on this elevated part that was up two stairs in the corner. I sat below her, not close enough to be weird about it, but close enough that she would notice me if she wanted to. I heard her unlock her phone and tuned the sound of her keyboard clicking into my internal rhythm as my eyes wandered around the place. I looked over my shoulder at the painting of a beach on the wall and smelled my ex’s perfume. I looked across to the table we had sat at after every fight from the first one on and could feel the jalapeños burning a hole in my tongue. I always ordered my burrito without them now. There was a stain on the wall that we had decided was left there from some sort of emergency, projectile childbirth that must have taken place here at some point. I thought to take a picture of it, break the silence with a funny text about it, but I’d left my phone in the apartment.

“Hand me a napkin, ya?”

I reached over to the table next to me, grabbed four napkins, and leaned back the other way to her.

“Thanks.” The woman dabbed the stream of grease that was running down the side of her tortilla. “Join me?”

This was the first invitation she’d extended to me since we’d broken up. I was probably too eager to accept it. I slid out of my chair in a way that looked as though I weighed about a thousand pounds more than I did, like standing up straight was a miracle of nature. I took both stairs at once, which felt like showing off, and slid my chair in too far, which felt eager. The woman, my ex, watched me with those deep, gray eyes that made you a little afraid to talk to her but more afraid to miss the chance.

“Come here often?” Stupid.

“Leave the house often?” She glanced down at my bare feet under the table. “Why are you here?”

“It’s boring.” I waved her off and took a bite. I felt jalapeños burning that hole in my tongue. “I like your dress.” I could feel my eyes watering.

We sat on the floor with our backs against her couch. She poured us each a glass of gin and we sat cross-legged, necks twisted to face one another. From the other room, I heard a deep laugh.

“My roommate,” she said, nodding to the closed door.

Another giggle, this time from a woman. She rolled her eyes. “And my ex.”

I choked on my gin. “Is there a story there?” “Not one I feel like telling again.”

And we just talked. She told me about her job and her parents and this idiot she used to date, not the one in the other room, but the one who could never sit still, could never focus on anything that wasn’t something destructive. She talked about the way she’d come to see the world, the way she had become obsessed with balance in the last year or so. And when I listened to her, I didn’t look for matching colors: nothing matched the gray in her eyes. When I listened to her, my breaths aligned with hers and she breathed at a normal human pace and I didn’t get dizzy.

There’s a sort of familiarity that you find in your childhood bedroom, or the smell of the laundry detergent you used to use and coincidentally bought again, or in looking through old photos and noticing you’re wearing the same outfit today as you were a day long ago. It sneaks up on you, I think. Not in the way a depressive episode or fit of anxiety do. It’s better than that, the opposite. A balance. The familiarity of looking into her eyes, of feeling the residual burn of the jalapeños and the new burn of the gin, it felt like we were back, like how it always felt after a fight. It was just that this one had lasted a long time.

As the ball of ice in my glass slowly melted, and the condensation around the outside pooled around my fingertips and soaked into my skin, and the humid haze of the evening saturated us, I remembered that time we’d booked a trip to Vienna just because we were bored and I had some extra money and there was a flight the next day. We landed at midnight and ran around Vienna in the dark to the only bar we could find and got drunk off one glass of wine each, and I told her that Vienna looked good on her and she said that didn’t make sense before writing it on the wall in Sharpie. I thought to bring this up to her but feared she may recall it differently, and some things are left better in memory anyway.

It hurt, being with her, seeing her. I wanted to preserve her the way she was when I had her and she had me but we’d melted like the ice in our drinks and our lives didn’t fit together anymore. And what was heartbreaking about that was the fact that I didn’t care. There was a time when the thought of my indifference would have nearly killed me. Balance.

“Do you think, maybe, we did it wrong?” She asked me.

“I think there were better ways to do it than how we did it,” I said carefully. “But I don’t know that doing it differently would have given us a different result, you know?”

“You never did want to fight too hard for things.”

I resented that. “I fought for us. You made me understand why people fight at all. I told you that.”

“We’re such different people. We didn’t know that in the beginning. We didn’t know each other. I just feel like if we had built any sort of foundation that, maybe, I don’t know, we could have been happy.”

“We were happy.”

“Okay, happier. Don’t you wish we had lasted?”

“Do you think I don’t?” I was getting emotional, most against my own will. “Do you know how much it kills me just to be here right now?” She knew she’d get me. I get confession-y when I have gin. “I want to be with you every second. I want to follow your every move. I want to be the one you tell everything to and the one you can’t wait to see. I want to be so close to you that we become one person. I want you to absorb me. Yes, I wish we had lasted. I wish we had started at the beginning of time and then outlived time just to spite it. Right now, my whole body is aching with frustration that it’s not touching yours, that it could be closer to you but it’s not. It is taking everything I have not to be wrapping you up in me right now. To see you, right now, after all this time, to watch your eyes light up and your lips move when you talk - this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. And I was stupid enough to think that if we ever did end up craving burritos on the same night, that it would be a pleasant run-in. That we could talk and get drinks and hang out like old friends. But that’s not what’s happening for me right now. Is that how you feel?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have.”

“It’s not easy for me.”

“Don’t. Don’t give me that kind of hope.” I wanted to rip out my eyes to keep them from watering. Stupid.

“Why not? Why shouldn’t we have high hopes? Is that not all we have? Look. I loved you. Of course I did. And I wanted a lot more time with you than we got. But we did it wrong, we set ourselves up to fail and all things considered, I think it ended pretty well. We’re here, aren’t we? Of course it hurts. Why shouldn’t a broken heart remember why it’s sore once in a while?”

She reached out a hand to my shoulder. I tensed in anticipation but my body gave me up, relaxing at her touch as it always did, tendrils of her warmth spreading under my skin, outward from where it was in contact with hers, then dripping down my spine like a hot syrup until I, myself, thought I would melt into the floorboards with the remainder of my dignity.

She read my face and I watched as hers took on a look of pity. “Oh, no. You really mean it.”

I nodded, tears on my cheeks. She wiped one thumb across my cheeks.

“Hey. It’s okay. What do you need from me?”

“To forget this. To forgive me for never letting go.”

“You have nothing to be embarrassed about. And I have nothing to forgive you for.”

“You’re right, though. Could’ve fought harder.”

“You’re right. It would’ve ended the same.”

“God, I wish we could have worked. Right?”

“Right. This sucks.”

“Why didn’t we do this months ago?”

“We’re too proud.”

“Which is probably at the heart of why it didn’t work.”

“Cheers.”

We clinked glasses. There was laughter from the bedroom next to us. A dog barked outside. The sounds of a night that had no idea how complex it was.

I wore her slippers on the way home. We didn’t talk about it but I assumed at some point I was supposed to return them. Maybe things would be different this time. Maybe jalapeños have healing powers. It was too late for cars with turn signals and my eyes were secure and there weren’t really any colors that night anyway. My mind strayed. I wondered where Neck Tattoos went after he’d cleared out Valentina's every night. I wondered if the bar in Vienna still had her handwriting on the wall. I wondered how eyes could be gray when the only options were brown, green, and blue. And as I got to my building’s front door, for a moment, like at the end of every night, my restlessness was temporarily eased.

#short fiction

0 notes