yield

If asked, you could almost say it was a necessity. You never spoke of such things, the deep thrum of shouldn't this already be here that scours your skin and drills beneath the bone. You've never called it a need before, because to define meant to know and to know meant to think and god if you could only keep yourself from going down this road so often.

"I was told once that if I hated everyone around me it was probably because deep down I hated myself.

"So if I no longer have any regard for myself, does everyone else become worthless too?"

The night burns in a rush of orange and violet, a warm sky that does nothing to settle the tremors in your arms. They are wrapped around your body so tightly your fingers have gone numb. You can feel your nails digging through cotton layers, though - broad divots with shadows of blueyellow layers that could be bruises if you could ever differentiate them from the rest of your skin.

"It's not that I see the world in black and white," he said, even though you were too afraid to ask, "it's that I rarely see the world at all."

The phone next to you stopped buzzing twenty-seven minutes ago. You've timed it to the flash of streetlights, blinking yellows that the cars who pass by ignore completely. One that stopped was a bright green van, the body of a dusty old man leering out of the driver-side window. You could smell whiskey from the bench and hoped your look of disgust overrode your bloody, salt-ridden face, but the van has cycled by four more times and you've since stopped waiting for something to happen.

"Maybe it started out as hatred, but I was far too tired to bother with it anymore."

Calling him wasn't meant to change anything. It wasn't a call for help, for advice, or even for relief. There are others more suited to this, others more accustomed to your lumbering frame in the dead of night, silent and void and so so so tired. You used to hit one key, one point and hit send and he'd be there and you'd be fine, but you can't talk to Kaedyn anymore because he wants answers and he wants you to think and you can't even close your eyes without wanting to burn the world in white-hot fire anymore.

Dropping your hands to your knees you can almost see the rush of blood racing to your fingertips, tiny pinpricks of red and gold overtaking moth-eaten purple and gray. There's no reason for any of this, you try to tell yourself, no reason that this distant man drenched in stained torn lace should act as a replacement for something you could never explain anyway. You've taken some sort of unmarked path on your dog-earred map, traded a stone fortress for a tower made of glass, but god if you're not just sitting here out in the open and any wall is better than what lays scattered at your feet.

Twenty-eight minutes ago Jeremy said he'd be there in half an hour.

You don't really want to know how long he's been standing behind you, but the blank stare focused on you wouldn't have told you anyway.