WCOST Chapter 7

Follow the author @hitowski on twitter.

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6


CHAPTER 7

She dragged me to bed, her hands small and wiry but pulling me forcefully. She wants it as much as I do. We are chemical reactions burning: an enormous burst of endorphins bubbling over our libido thresholds.

She began holding me down there, and I gasped.

"Fuck, you always put me on the edge." I looked down at her, trying to take me in.

"You're nearing so fast?" She said, slowly drawing me.

"You do realize that we haven't seen each other in about a week right?" I said, as she stopped. I laid down on the bed, her straddling my waist as she leaned down to whisper.

"Precisely."

**********************************************************************

6:37 PM. She was sitting down, looking forlorn. Blankly looking across the table, to his chair. The soup in the kitchen boiled over. The pasta's burning. Everything's out of time. Like her hopes, they ran out and were totally out of her control. Utter hopelessness isn't the exact term to describe the enormity of pain she was experiencing. Maybe she shouldn't have accepted this. Maybe she was foolish to try to change things. He was not hers anymore.

When they said they would treat him, she thought he would become better. That he would recall everything. He was so lost in this dream world he created, losing focus of what was real.

She was distraught at this, and sought any and every kind of traumatic psychological cure. Even a false panacea. Nothing. Nothing would work, even after all these years. She had almost quit. Like now, like how she felt when they said it's not working. There was this brooding sense of loss, all over again.

**********************************************************************

Her tattoo is etched in his memory. This memory of her cuddling him, taking his heat, under the covers, wrapping her body in his. Him, thoughtlessly sketching with his fingers the complexity of her tattoo. Line by line, curve, color and hue. Everything was his. And hers. And ours.

She giggled.

"Stop tracing me."

"So, you're ticklish here?" I said, repeating what I did earlier. She giggled.

"F-fuck stop." And then she laughed, hard.

"What's so funny?" I asked, deliberately tickling her until she gave up. She then stopped giggling and laughing like crazy. She turned, looking at me with deadpan eyes.

"The fact that I let myself see all of my faults in a short amount of time. That's what's funny."

"What's hilarious is that I fell for you."

**********************************************************************

He grinned. He would not take that statement  lightly. In fact I think he would revel in that. He would hang it on his walls, proudly like a diploma.

"And you finally admitted it."

"That I've let my walls down? Yes. I did, you are my most blatant mistake."

He yawned. He pulled me closer to him, his chest pressing towards my face. Damn his adonis body. He then proceeded to caress my hair and face with his fingers, which scored as many commercials as his grin.

"At least I topped one of your lists." He chuckled. I looked at him confused.

"You like that?"

"As long as I'm here. By your side, I don't care if you see me as the worst mistake."

How does he find the perfect words? I don't know.

"Fuck your words." I sighed, crawling deeper into his embrace.

**********************************************************************

Project is now complete. Altered memories now implanted.

**********************************************************************

"Dr. Jung, the tests are now cleared. There are no spikes. Test subject now neutral." She said, writing ineligible words on her notepad.

Dr. Jung sighed in relief. He sat himself down to the nearest chair, where he pondered the gravemen of his unethical treatment. Poison and electrical short-circuiting the brain to his liking, and implanting memories to replace traumatic ones: this is an exercise of science that the world has considered dangerous and unethical.

But who could stop him, really? The scientist who refused his treatment methods? Those who branded him a murderer for trying to experiment on humans, whereas those people foolishly hid themselves from doing the same thing?

He stared at his office, with those random thingamajibs running across him: a Rube Goldberg machine. He stares at it, balls falling and climbing and sliding. Thinking that in some way, everything is now done and complete.

He has successfully did and proven his experiments are now possible. That we could alter human memory and thinking and inhibit and exhibit the powers of the human brain. But somehow, Dr. Jung feels empty.

**********************************************************************

6:47 PM. She walks across the street to look at the skies. As though all thought has left her, she walks mindlessly, bumping a large number of people towards moving towards that park across the street.

She waits for rain, beseeching the skies. The forecasts told her the rain would come today, a large downpour at around nighttime.

**********************************************************************

She walks towards Room 637. She hasn't still got quite used to seeing him. To him, he was just a lab rat. To her, he was human. A broken man, faced with trauma. A human who'd been injected and opened and re-broken numeral times to figure out how his pseudo-Alzheimer's worked. A human who has been tested too far by any and all pharmaceutical companies.

Who loved too much. Who broke out of his own mind. He was her brother. And she was a willing participant to his brokenness.

She gazed at him, somehow she hoped this cure saved him. That the mild disconnect between his reality and this reality, where he lies drugged and mentally mapped, could be merged into one. She gave up enough of her pride and stomach for this.

He laughed hard. She heard him across the glass observation pane, somehow breaking the monotony of thoughtful silence she had while observing him. They didn't know, Dr. Jung and the other psychs. They didn't know how deep she was in this subject.

When Dr. Jung started treating him of his false memories, of his breaking his mind with drugs and surgeries, she was kind of elated. This was a medical breakthrough: a patient in his 20s severely traumatized enough to shut his senses to a reality, enough to break his memories to the point of not acknowledging his present stimuli and be stuck at the past like some pseudo-Alzheimer's while alternatingly changing his memories at a quick emotionless pace - they had a number of these patient cases but what he had was something else. He had this predilection to change his memories to fit his reality: changing he to she to he, talking about his love dying in a car crash while that wasn't really the case, him stating a differing number of odd details about his life that didn't come true. It was as if he was implanted memories of a life that was not his. A  life of a fiction.

**********************************************************************

6:57 PM. All she saw was light. White, blinding light surrounding her whole being. She gasped, her breath losing quickly.

**********************************************************************

"So great, huh?"

"What is great? This feeling of complete oblivion?"

"Yes and no. The feeling of forgetting all your woes away."

"With sex?"

"No, with fucking love out of our systems."

WCOST Chapter 6

Follow the author @hitowski on twitter.

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

CHAPTER 6

Crazily all I could see was white. White walls. White sheets. White ceilings. White tiled floors. White desks and lamps and tables and syringes and iv drips and cables and buttons.

Everything is white.

It was all I can remember, after that nothing else. On how I recovered? i do not know. I just know after what happened, all I could remember is you dying in my arms.

Of you going away, far away from me.  All I could see is you creeping your fingers towards me and waking me up.

"Don't sleep. Stay awake."

"-Awake."

Awake.

Awake.

Awake? A term I didn't know matters much. But to you, me being awake is what mattered most, even before struggling to survive. All we talked about, all we said during your last few minutes: they weren't a dream aren't they?

**********************************************************************

I feel you pulsing in me. I feel every bit of you in me. Like liquid, you begin to flood my every inch, there is nothing but the feeling of you, making me whole.

But that's all I am now, right? Something a fraction of a whole, something lesser than me. Because you are gone. Part of me has gone where you took it as you breathed your last breath. And I have to depend on these to become whole again. That somehow, you in liquid form, could mend me in moments.

That is a wish. And an ineffective medicine.

**********************************************************************

"He should be taking this in stride." He said. He clasped his hands together, resting them on the olden oak table.

"Yes he should have been 'cured' now. But he has a weird side effect to his trauma that we did not expect." She sighed. This was getting nowhere. At the very start, she was against this. Against using him, as he was going to be unstable.

"He must've been easy to bend. There are no tricks to him. He's very clear cut about what is black and white."  He said. He knew he was the one who pushed them to infiltrate his mind. And he guessed it would work well. But it didn't, and they're getting pretty impatient.

"Then we should try to upgrade. I think it's time for Phase Circe to start on him." She said, without any emotion on her voice.

**********************************************************************

He held my hand. It was invigorating,  his fingers lay between mine. Interlaced. As though we were shoelaces on the sneakers of that shitty punk rock hipster across the street.

He smiled. Goddamn toothy, commercial worthy smile of his.

"So you reckon it's better for me to accept this, do you?" He said. He let that sentence dwell on me, looking and searching my eyes for a hint of aversion. Of course not. I wanted him to stay.

"What else am I going to do, when you must've ended your lease and brought out all your fucking clothes and things here?" I said. He knows he will win this time around. I opened the door wider, not minding that I was only in my boxer briefs that time.

He then dropped his bags and held my face in between his palms, inching closer at a speed faster than airplane should be. I closed my eyes, waiting for his lips in mine.

And then I waited. And waited. Until I opened my eyes in irritation. Fuck him.

"I'm fucking happy, babe."

"I know, so fucking kiss me already."

"And what, do that here, in front of your house? Announcing to your neighbors that that popular commercial ad hunk from the tv is your boyfriend?" He smirked. Fuck him, twice.

"I don't care."

"You really don't." He said, laughing as he pushed me aside and dragged all his bags inside. I could only roll my eyes at this. I began to help him put his assorted random things inside my flat. Clothes, a few choice small furniture, and a big box filled with whatever crazy stuff he has.

"Why the hell have you so many fucking things?" I said as he put inside that last box filled with books. Homer's Illiad, Milton's Paradise Lost, Alighieri, Rowling, Martin, Tolkien, Kiirkegaard, Foucault. Hmm, never knew he was a reader.

I lean on the kitchen counter, pushing the button of my coffee machine on. He sits in front of me, sitting on my dining chair as though he was in a commercial, crossing his legs and leaning towards me.

"Cause I usually travel a lot when working, I had to live of essentials that you could simply haul away. But I'm finding it hard to leave Manila right now."

"Why? There are more opportunities for your cheesy ass work, not to mention you're the type that could go anywhere."

"You're here."

"And what's that got to do with your work?" I sneered. I wouldn't admit it to myself at that time, but I was inexplicably happy at that statement.

"My life now revolves around you and this shitty relationship we have. Deal with it." He hunches forward, grinning. Damn, he's hungry.

I pour the dark brewed Ceylon coffee on two equal porcelain mugs. He looks at me interestingly, like I was something to eat. Uh-oh.

"What shitty relationship?" I said as I approach him, giving him one cup. He pats the seat near him for me to sit on, and turns towards me. He took a short sip and smiles.

"This shitty relationship." He leans in and kisses me. I can feel his moist damp lips on mine, and feel his perfect white teeth on my tongue. I can feel him probing mine with vigor I returned.

I groaned. He laughed. His hands were on my waist, stroking every inch of skin. "You're too cute."

"You're too hot." He smirked. He hugged me tighter at this.

"Stop complimenting me."

"I'm not. You're literally, hot." His hands were now on the crevices of my back, touching every bit of skin.

"Then let's take this to the bath so you could cool down?" He smiled.

Fuck him. Literally.

"You just want to see me naked."

"Touche, my dear, touche."

WCOST Chapter 5

Follow the author @hitowski on twitter.

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

CHAPTER 5

"Dr. Jung, what's the condition of the patient in Room 637?"

"Maybe severe trauma of the accident had its ill effects on the body, but we clearly did not see this happening to his brain. There seems to be a form of paranoia forming unrealistic hallucinations from the post traumatic stress disorder that somehow he shut his mind off." Dr. Jung put down his hands, drumming at his table. His office was as akin to a library than a mental institution ward.

"So does that entail any brain hemorrhage or similar brain trauma? That causes his delusions?" I asked. Dr. Jung seems pleased. He should, i researched hard on his case that I almost gave up on looking for a saner option for psychiatric help. He was the best, the medical professors would attest to that.

"And any treatment would, therefore, be  inimical to his mental health?"

"Maybe, or maybe not. We're just experimenting with him if he still won't accept anti-hallucinatory drugs or if he would remember the faculties related to memory can work for the present. It's like he sees his reality as true, but the only thing he sees as reality now are his memories lived in his past. And that is very peculiar, that his mind shut him off in a place where only the past exists. That is similar to Alzheimer's but not quite since Alzheimer's does not manifest in his young age."

I only sigh in exasperation. Everything is shitty now.  I cannot figure out if this was something I could not change, that this is permanent.

I could only hope it is not. That we could heal his mind as I healed his heart.

**********************************************************************

We shared our mutual disgust with each other, with each moment we looked across the table. We could only look towards something other than what is right before our eyes and look beyond - to every space imaginable to our senses. We tried to make sense of what is now only a fleeting memory to us and think that what we did was something beyond our normal thresholds. We can never go back to the past nor we could never let go of what exists now between us.

You begrudgingly lift your fork, waving it across the air nonchalantly, like a pseudo-war surrender sign. This is over. We both know it between our thoughts and between bites. That after this, there will be no us or there will be only the memory of what was us - this is our reality.

"Fuck, what are we doing?" I exhale, sighing at the situation.

"Something we should have done in the past."

"We could start over again, right? We could forget everything that happened and look towards the future?" I look, feigning a dissatisfaction that is voiced across as desperation.

"Fuck, haven't we already talked about this? There was no us. There wasn't even a 'something' we could talk about." Dropping the fork, I could only gaze towards the remains of half-eaten filet mignon and mashed potatoes.

There are no more words for us. Only the unwavering silence that we shared. The only thing left for us to do was to stand up and walk away, and let things stop happening. It was as if we were conspiring towards something melodramatic like a wild romance novelette grasping towards an anticlimactic ending that readers fake surprise at.

But we weren't finished yet. Every word said was something that pierced through.

"What we had was just this - something convenient for the both of us. I needed someone to fuck, you needed someone who would fake love and present something happy like a retarded lovesick fool."

"I know that but -"

"What? You knew it deep inside and you keep suppressing it like some diminuted fool. You know we were in this for the sex. You knew that there is only this line,"

Pressing the fork down on the filet mignon, the knife slowly carved through the meat, mercilessly.

"This line between fucking and being inanely hopeful." Bite. Gnaw. Swallow. Seeing bits and pieces of meat crawling down your neck, digesting.

"We had a one night stand that spanned several fuck dates after. Don't get things over your head and assume things all on your own."

"I'm not assuming anything."

"I'm not going to play around with somebody who can't even disassociate sex with love. We had this discussion already, right from the very start."

"If that's what you want, then fine. Fuck me all you want. But don't pretend that what we had was nothing more than fucking because it was. You know it and I know it."

Hastingly, I wiped my mouth with table napkins and stood.

"We could argue all night long.  But at the end of the day, it's gonna be me who'll get your shit together after we fuck all night."

Turning back, I could see the disdain behind your eyes and glimpse that somehow my words struck home.

"If that's what you want fine."

"Fine. Fucking get off on your own then." I got up and threw the napkin down, leaving a few thousand bills and gathering my dignity somewhat intact.

I watched as your face tainted with the slightest bit of regret, somehow managing to keep it under wraps for the time being. You knew you couldn't let go of me. Just as I knew I couldn't get over being fucked by you.

**********************************************************************

I left the restaurant only hearing nothing but the sounds of Manila purring with uncalled barker shouts and car honks and people talking. Hearing nothing but the city being a living thing capable of drowning you in. And I am lost in the noise, my mind hearing nothing but static and his words and mine interlaced with sarcasm.

And I did not mean any of it.

All I could remember is him looking at me with those cold eyes and telling me I was nothing in his life. That I am momentary in his timeline and can be erased or rediverted as easily as I came.

I was nothing but fodder to our desires, and we liked it. Too much. Too much that it hurt to be thinking of ourselves as anything other than that.

I was his desire personified.

Where did this shit start anyways? When I took his gleaming smiles for granted and did anything I wanted? When he took his eyes away from mine and let me feel his anger, one fuck at a time, right in front of my eyes?

Maybe. Maybe that was when things went way off.

**********************************************************************

Her lips were so subtle. She kissed me on my ears, my cheeks, my eyes, my nose: she kissed me, like her lips were her fingers and as if she was blind. She was memorizing my every little piece of skin in her memory.

"Should we still be like this?" She asked, just as she passed my ears with her lips.

"Like what? You being so elusive and noncommittal, and me being laissez fare and shit?" I laughed. If only she would say yes to me.

"No, I mean if we should stay like this. Fully clothed. On your bed." So. She was needy.

**********************************************************************

His teeth bared. His smile was strewn across his face like a irritating toothpaste commercial. Which is how he earns a profit, basically.

"So are we gonna take off everything and make ourselves warm?" He already slipped off his tee shirt, leaving me staring at him.

"Speechless? I think you have seen me the most out of everyone I've been with and you're still as clueless as ... " he grinned, as I kissed him mid sentence.

"Only way to shut you up, dear." I smiled.

"Oh you're in for a wonderful treat." He exclaimed.

**********************************************************************

My mouth was in hers. We were dancing in a microcosm of tastes, emotion and libido. There is nothing left but to let her explore areas of her body in my hands.

"Deeper."

"Faster."

"You're liking this, aren't you?" I said, "you like being manipulated at?"

She groaned. She writhed at me. "Yes."

**********************************************************************

He pushed me down. To go deeper. Down, falling in a spiral. Falling down slowly, a bit like Pisa. And his breath, drowning me in him, at him, on him. Letting me suffocate in his exhale. As he groans towards me, he smiles.

"Fuck yes."

Fuck, indeed. Yes, absolutely. Everything is groaning under my eyes. Closing in. Like darkness, i could only feel his pulse. Between me.

He puts hands, that were previously traveling on me, to my neck.

"I feel you beating."

"What's this got to do with now?" I moaned. He was making this harder.

"I wanna feel you alive. And die, suddenly. And come alive, we would be alive."

**********************************************************************

She laughed. This was a game to us both. But who played better? It was a continual struggle to beat each other.

And I lost.

Losing to her. Claiming what I wanted with her. Losing myself into the sight of me in her eyes, her looking at me. Yes, we are happy like this.

I moaned.

All I could see is white.

WCOST Chapter 4

Follow the author @hitowski on twitter.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3


CHAPTER 4

His whispers became louder in my ear, reverberating in my head like sonar bat thingamajibs (or how whatever sonic shit they got going on). All I could hear is him saying that he would love me 'til I would want to and how complete he makes me and how he needs me to be really okay...

All he whispered was "You are mine."

**********************************************************************

Somehow, I awoke again. Not in my dreams nor in my reality, but in that millisecond nightmare where all the blood left your head. Where your eyes suddenly lost its focus and my hands forgot to feel - anything is as gloomy in my life was quickly usurped.

You died.

In my arms, where your blood flowed between the crevices of my fingers and where you begin to fall into the  darkness of afterlife.

I felt it was as necessary to live my life through reliving that thought of you in my arms. To not let you be forgotten. That was my curse and my memory speaking to my conscience that it was already okay. That I will not breakdown again today. But it wasn't. Everything's the same as before.

My hands are red, with your blood, and it's shaking. Incessantly, I grip your chest and pump. And pump. And pump. Trying to keep you alive: trying an clinging on to that small hope that you will smile back again to me and say that you hurt.

Everything is noise to me. The gloved hand stopping me in trying to keep you alive. The smoke bellowing through the air, clouding my visions. The tears streaking through my eyes and flowing down, on your face. Everything is as unfocused in my mind as chaos built on this accident.

I tried. But I couldn't keep you to me.

**********************************************************************

He licked my lips as though he tasted things that only he knew of. It was driving me insane to think of what is running across his mind right now.

As we look around us, there was only the neighborhood cat who meowed into the night. As if sensing our desires, as if it feels the way I do, stuck between his lips and his whispers.

"You taste good."

"I'd better be, if you're this incessant about kissing me this hard." He laughed at that. He neared me and licked my lips, slowly dragging his tongue against me.

"What can I do, when you're looking like that?" He ground his hips to mine, eliciting something akin to a moan in me. He was fucking enjoying this.

"Like what, asshole?" He ground again.

"Like you're the only one for me."

"-and I'm supposed to say what?" He grinned. He knows he has already won.

"I'm yours, babe."

**********************************************************************

6:37 AM.  Where I can only see the white walls. All I could see is your blood in my hands. It wasn't supposed to be this way. We should have been through this shit longer. You shouldn't have died. You with that shit eating grin of yours. You with that ineloquent mouth that would only say dirty things into my ear.

I never believed that what we begun was something more than sex. Because it was. And it wasn't. And I cursed myself for that every single time I think of you.

The way you were in me. The way I was in you. The way you seemed to know what was in my mind even before I spoke it. The way you knew who I was before I could speak about me. The way I could grasp every single thing you do, and make my imagination run wild with your grace and eloquence.

I would never have you again.

**********************************************************************

She drawled her fingers into my back, as if making words out of me. I could never fathom how she could be so amazed at what I am doing or what I am saying. Or how my interest is shifting between her lips. Between her mind.

"You should get up right now."

"Why?"

"You know this is a one off thing right? The part where I pick you out from the crowd, get you to loosen up, baiting you to come home to my place and maybe, just maybe, get into bed?"

"You mean a one night stand kind of thing? Yeah I know." I stretched.

"But?"

"What but?" She exasperated.

"You know, but I want you to be the one yadda yadda shit." She smiled.

"Ah going for seconds are we?" I laughed.

"So you're objectifying yourself into a dish?"

"No, although technically I'm that delectable."

"So what do you propose? I want to see you, I know you want or need me. In that way. Here's to a partnership?"

"You mix things up, eh? Make things sound like a contract signing?"

"Well, for a model like me, you need to." I could almost smell the sarcasm and sneer to that. She could always make me be interested in what she thought of.

"So you're a model?"

**********************************************************************

6:37 AM. I could hear your name in my head resounding in my thoughts. I love you. I love you. I need you.

WCOST Chapter 3

Follow the author: @hitowski on twitter.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2

CHAPTER 3

"Remove all your clothes."

"Where would I put it?"

"Just leave it in the chair beside the side table."

I could see her quietly acquiescing to my demands, something that she did not readily do before. She let her dress fall down on the floor as she unzipped herself free.

"You sure you want to do this?"

"Would you rather be kicked in the butt or be punched in the face?"

I laughed. Her sarcastic monotonal reply was something that made me love her more, and as usual it bore no emotions of what she felt now. She was hiding her body, letting me see her whole: something a person like her would think irrationally of.

She let her bra slide down her breasts and she faced towards me. All I could see was her mouth turned up as if trying to smirk. This was totally consensual.

"You're hot."

"Don't objectify me." She began to lie down on the bed.

"I'm not. I'm just speaking my thoughts aloud." I then started to remove my shirt, while she looked on with intense curiosity. It was as if she hadn't looked at another person in this way.

"At least you're absolutely biased in saying that."

"Why not? I like you, and you like me liking you."

She just snorted into laughter. This was our only problem, that we agreed to this - whatever this is.

"Who said anything about liking each other?"

"The. What is this, pray tell me?" I looked at her, her haired parted slowly as she fixed herself. She looked somewhat serene.

"A massage."

**********************************************************************

My dreams are nightmares. Where you wake up more alive than what you were dreaming a little while ago. Where you wake up more alert and knowing, and where behind your closed eyes you think "what the fuck" is the least descriptive of derogatory there is.

You, 6:37 at the morning, looking as though you were hit. Looking as glassy as ever, feeling like porcelain in my arms. You, fractured and broken, falling into my arms like how broken dolls do. Your fingers wisp into traces of red lace and ribbons.

My dreams are you and only you. And there's this faint thought that I'm getting sick of it.

**********************************************************************

I turn towards you, my eyes seeing only you. All I hear is the faint beeping sound of the car going off about shit, and the noise of the background city - Manila in the early morning - slowly drowning my eyelids. You smiled at me, and tried to tilt your head towards mine.

"Hey, you're finally awake." I saw your head clearly now, blood dripping from your wet hair to your cheeks towards the concrete pavement where we lie strewn like paper dolls.

"The fuck. Are you okay?" I tried getting up and sitting, but the pain led me to lie back down. I don't get how you could be so freaking calm about this when I could see you struggle with breathing. I tried reaching your face with my hands, slowly.

"Yeah, a little bit painful, but I really don't feel a thing right now. I just waited for you to wake up." My hands reached your cheeks and wiped blood off your lips.

"You still look beautiful."

"Don't make fun of me."

You smiled, I grimaced. I slowly became aware of the fact that we might not make it. That you could die like this. It was my fault.

"Hey, don't think about that. It's not your fault. Don't blame..."

You interrupted with a large hacking cough of blood. My hands felt tear flowing from your eyes, yet you still smiled.

"...yourself. We didn't want this to happen."

My eyes drooped. I felt so very heavy, like I wanted to sleep. But her voice brought me back to focus.

"Don't you dare sleep on me. Fuck, you will stay alive for me, okay?"

"Don't talk about these things. We would go through this alive."

"I really want to babe, but I really want to let go now. I think I'll sleep now."

"Fuck keep awake. Stay awake for me!"

I saw you close your eyes, slowly. As if time stood still for us, all I could see was your face.

"Fuck, wake up! I haven't even said I love you yet before you die."

I saw your grin shining through. Your smile, that wide ass toothpaste commercial worthy grin.

**********************************************************************

She had a certain delicacy on how she whispered things into my ears. How every word became a new reality to my universe and how it sprung new images and scenes and ideas, like a film on LSD trip.

We would begin as normal as fuck, and then progress into what our normal selves would rather be: something other than us. It was always this between us, you and me being lost in what we do and what we feel.

My vision will be heliotropic to you, that everything and anything is just as important as mine. We would put aside what we thought was necessity to our beings and give it all away - making our lone become one.

She made me try and forget the reality that is now and become lost in the dreamworld where everything is as spick and span as an obssessive-compulsive living nest: there is no reality, but dreams saying that it is.

We become lost in ourselves.

WCOST Chapter 2

Follow the author: @hitowski on twitter.
Prologue
Chapter 1


CHAPTER 2

I woke up to the sound of car horns  blaring at the darkness. I hear them honking and honking, then a vast silence. I can't sleep. Not after my relentless thoughts of you and somehow there's this deja vu feeling that I dismiss. I feel like I've been doing this before and I feel like somehow there's this quiet melancholic dirge playing incessantly in my head.

Your tattoos, I remember them clearly now.

**********************************************************************

Your back lingers on my palms. The way I held you close and your careful, searching eyes bore through mine. I blew smoke circles in the air, rising towards the ceilings of your apartment. The way you snuggled up close to me and held my hand, underneath the covers that protected our nakedness - this is what is contentment.

We both knew that this was more than sex. The way that I knew that looking through your eyes that mirrors the same unwavering look in yours : we agree amidst our selves that we could only continue on like this. You scoot closer, and I feel your heart pulsing through our skin.

"Fuck, I don't know how you do it but..." I reached out and held her hand underneath the covers. I look to her straight in the face, her eyes glazed and moist. "...And how you make me turned on, but this is right."

"Thanks."

She looked at me with curiosity. Maybe she thinks this is too funny for us, talking all serious and shit. She twisted sideways, so that the covers fell down towards her breasts, and smirked.

"Can't take another round?"

"Only if you wanted to. Up to the challenge?"

"No. I'm getting tired. Besides, I think you already had your fill of me." She then sat up and looked around. She was looking for the clothes we had strewn across the floor in our haste for each other.

"Babe, I had filled you." I grinned, and tossed her her brassiere, which was lying across the side table. She clutched at it in mid-air and quickly put it on.

"Yeah, hard and rough. Just the way we like it." She stood up, bending down, and got into her panties.

"Just the way you like it."

She put on her pants on and shirt on and faced me. She had that content look on her face as she tried to force down her smile.

"Who said anything about not wanting rough sex?" I could see her cocking me that grin in my mind, although she was trying to be complacent.

"Hey, you're going so soon?"

"No more round twos and fives and eights. Or I'll be fucking late to work again." She picked up her satchel and walked away. I hurriedly stood up to accompany her, not even bothering to put something on. She felt me rushing to her as she walked towards the door and stopped, turning.

"Well, I'm going."

"Call you later. And check your phone once in a while."

"You sound like my boyfriend."

"You sound like my mother."

She laughed. "So you fuck your mother hard?"

"Don't make me laugh. Can't you be late for just a little while?"

"No. You know how we end this as always, right?" She opened my front door and walked out.

"Besides, I even don't know why I go back to your bed every night."

**********************************************************************

His tattoos were still visible even underneath his clothes. Maybe this was a clearer indication of how I had already memorized every inch of his skin. That's maybe cause we fucked up so much that we forget what we were and what we are: outsiders to each other.

I lie down to bed, again. Grasping at the air and seeing nothing but the images of you roaming in my consciousness. This rationalizing is making me feel like I'm perverted and obsessed of her, which I think I am.

I remember him saying "Why are you staring hard at me?" and looking so fuckably sexy. He turned sideways, revealing his nakedness to me and raised his eyebrows. He was totally leading me on.

"I find it difficult to divert my attention to you naked as it is. Don't make it more difficult by looking at me like that."

I replied. And he grinned that gumless toothpaste commercial grin of his, and reached my hands to put it in his.

I stood up, and let his hand go.

"Not now you horndog. I've still got work to do and I know you're gonna be late at that commercial shoot you have."

"Oh yeah! Thanks for reminding me."

"That's why you're always not going to book more than those measly commercials ads you star in." I pull up my pants and snatch the T-shirt that he hands over from under the sheets. His eyes follow my every move. He stands and moves closer, our bodies just inches away: his naked body across my fully clothed one.

"Can't you at least be fashionably late with me. You know you want it babe."

"I really have to go." I said as I turn towards his door to leave. As I clutch the doorknob in my hands, he pins my body against the door.

"Are you sure?"

I turn towards him, and grab him. He looks to me grinning and I smile back. Yeah, it's totally fucked up but I tried to let myself stop actually kissing him.

"Yes."

**********************************************************************

Waking up is hell. There's no similar feeling in the world to waking up and seeing the world for the first time in a day and looking beyond that to see. That you are seeing is divine. That your heart is in pieces is another. That you feel only numbness and emptiness is the best.

I feel nothing, yet I'm continually aware of everything: how the clock ticks, how the silence is harrowing, how this little voice in my head is somehow getting annoying lately. I feel like I'm losing my mind, like there's nothing certain now.

I look up from my desk, and see that I'm alone again. In the office, where I must have slept all night long doing things to forget you. Papers were strewn all across the floor and my editing manuscripts were somehow half wet with either coffee, water or sleep saliva. The office darkens by every minute in my eyes, as though waking up seems to cloud my vision longer and longer.

The ghost of you in my head leaves into the darkness where I stare only at dull white walls and the blaring emptiness ensues. I feel like breaking apart. It's like being in pieces and being tried to be reassembled into something that is whole, but is not.  Feeling like there is something wrong with everything, feeling like there is something lacking : that is how you remind me now. That you are one piece of me left missing.

And is only till now that I realize that I will never be fixed. That there is no reason for me to hope being whole because there is no whole to begin with if you're gone. And that's the saddest realization.

**********************************************************************

I fall back, seeing him very perspired and heaving great huge breaths. He cannot keep up with my speed, as I expected he would be. All pure muscle bod of his would naturally lessen his speed.

I sit down the nearest possible bench and laid back, with an aura of bliss and nonchalance. That ought to deter his spirits, trying to beat me again.

He approaches, and all I could see was how his eyes latched on mine - looking at me like I was something "his". It felt good, but it means nothing if we follow our agreement. That all we had was nothing but pleasure for both of us.

He laughed hard when he reached me in the park bench, sitting down completely exhausted and splayed at the whole breadth of the bench. His arms automatically wrapped around my shoulders, and I looked at him with such disgust.

"Your hands are sweaty." I flicked his hands away, he seemingly offended.

"Don't hear you complaining of my sweat when I hold you under me."

"Shut up, you gym rat."

He looked at me with those eyes, making me feel unsure whether he's exhausted or he's unusually chirpy today. He returned his arm back to my shoulders and moved closer - out mouths only inches away.

"You want me to shut me up? I know one way to shut me up, and that involves..."

I smirked. You could play games but not here, when everyone's watching. I doesn't even make matters better that he's one of the most recognizable commercial hunk in tv now.

"You sure you want to do this in public?"

"What? Fuck you? Gladly."

"I wasn't even talking about that, you horn dog gym rat." I raised my eyebrows, suddenly aware of the people looking towards us.

He inched closer, our lips almost touching.

"I could kiss you right now, make them ladies know that you're mine."

"But you wouldn't."

"I would've done it a long time ago, if you weren't so afraid of commitment."

"I'm not afraid. I just don't believe in the gist of it. There's no veracity in thinking people could bind themselves in something long term when we all know we can't even bind ourselves in promises." I stood up. The people who were so awkwardly staring at us suddenly dispersed.

He held my hand longingly. He gestured for me to sit down.

"You look thinner."

WCOST Prologue

PROLOGUE

We shared our mutual disgust with each other, with each moment we looked across the table. We could only look towards something other than what is right before our eyes and look beyond - to every space imaginable to our senses. We tried to make sense of what is now only a fleeting memory to us and think that what we did was something beyond our normal thresholds. We can never go back to the past nor could we never let go of what exists now between us.

You begrudgingly lift your fork, waving it across the air nonchalantly, like a pseudo-war surrender sign. This is over. We both know it between our thoughts and between bites. That after this, there will be no us or there will be only the memory of what was us - this is our reality.

"Fuck, what are we doing?" I exhale, sighing at the situation.

"Something we should have done in the past."

"We could start over again, right? We could forget everything that happened and look towards the future?" I look, feigning a dissatisfaction that is voiced across as desperation.

"Fuck, haven't we already talked about this? There were no us. There wasn't even a 'something' we could talk about." Dropping the fork, I could only gaze towards the remains of half-eaten filet mignon and mashed potatoes.

There are no more words for us. Only the unwavering silence that we shared. The only thing left for us to do was to stand up and walk away, and let things stop happening. It was as if we were conspiring towards something melodramatic like a wild romance novelette grasping towards an anticlimactic ending that readers fake surprise at.

But we weren't finished yet. Every word said was something that pierced through.

"What we had was just this - something convenient for the both of us. I needed someone to fuck, you needed someone who would fake love and present something happy like a retarded lovesick fool."

"I know that but -"

"What? You knew it deep inside and you keep suppressing it like some diminuted fool. You know we were in this for the sex. You knew that there is only this line,"

Pressing the fork down on the filet mignon, the knife slowly carved through the meat, mercilessly.

"This line between fucking and being inanely hopeful." Bite. Gnaw. Swallow. Seeing bits and pieces of meat crawling down your neck, digesting.

"We had a one night stand that spanned several fuck dates after. Don't get things over your head and assume things all on your own."

"I'm not assuming anything."

"I'm not going to play around with somebody who can't even disassociate sex with love. We had this discussion already, right from the very start."

"If that's what you want, then fine. Fuck me all you want. But don't pretend that what we had was nothing more than fucking because it was. You know it and I know it."

Fastidiously, I wiped my mouth with table napkins and stood.

"We could argue all night long.  But at the end of the day, it's gonna be me who'll get your shit together after we fuck all night."

Turning back, I could see the disdain behind your eyes and glimpse that somehow my words struck home.

"If that's what you want fine."

"Fine. Fucking get off on your own then." I got up and threw the napkin down, leaving a few thousand bills and gathering my dignity somewhat intact.

I watched as your face tainted with the slightest bit of regret, somehow managing to keep it under wraps for the time being. You knew you couldn't let go of me. Just as I knew I couldn't get over being fucked by you.