Liar

Glasses clink. Laughter rises and falls, following the ebb and flow of conversation as the tides do the rising and setting of the moon. Overheard, light slowly fades, the blazing glow of the sun pulling darkness behind it like a blanket draped across a world soon to sleep.

Barely heard, present without being noticed, music drifts through the hanging fairy lights. Across the table, friends shift in their seats, the music whispering in their ears, pulling their limbs with the subtle skill of a master puppeteer. Drawing them along without their knowing.

Fog muffles your mind, drowning out the sounds and light and joy of the evening. Lifting a glass to your lips, you can barely taste the cocktail therein. Looking down, you remind yourself of what you’re drinking. Stupid, foolish little mind you have. Lost in that fog, barely aware of all that goes forth around where you sit.

There is a song playing, of course there is. There always is. And it goes unnoticed, it’s popular, that much is clear from its beat. One often heard and rarely remembered, yet the friends before your eyes seem to know the lyrics by heart. One looks at you, gyrating in place, and smiles.

Haha!

At last!

You can be included!

And yet you and I know both know you can’t. Offer that confused half smile back, go on. There you go. Stretching and twisting your face out of its most natural shape, it doesn’t reach your eyes. A sorry smile on a sorry face, disgrace to the concept of a smile. A platonic ideal of false-enjoyment.

Her smile does not dip, though you see a something in her eye. A shift from joy to else, but you can’t tell what that else might be. There are hints there, just look! A twinkle that is, or perhaps is no longer, there.

Do you feel that pain, just behind your heart? You should feel it, you know, embrace it, become one with it. That pain is all you deserve, all you will ever get. Learn to live in it, that’s it.

Ahh… you’ve squashed it. Perfectly good thing to do, my friend. Better to let it hide, push it under the rug, out of sight and mind. Where it can grow like a colony of rats beneath the streets of Paris. You’ve made the right choice, of course, never letting those emotions have their turn in the spotlight.

Fertile ground for revolution from below.

A second face turns to you, a question asked and answered. But isn’t there something in that face, evidence of his displeasure? Perhaps the words you spoke were harsher than before, perhaps a little less deserving of conversational continuation. Of course it was, that and so much more. Plain in every line of every face; plain in the simple tenor of their voices; plain in every smallish motion as they adjust how they; you are not wanted here.

Cease pretending that you could ever belong. You know you can’t.

Feel it there.

In the beating of your heart.

It matches the drums they'll strike as they run you out on your own. Better now to leave, to walk away while you still have the memories of their warmth around your shoulders. A paltry cloak against the bitter winds of isolation, but the best you have. And far better than a wretch like you deserves.

Eyes close, an attempt to drown out the noise, the light, the smells. Food is on the table before you, but the stench of it sticks in your throat. Torn half-way between desire and disgust you sit, trying to breathe around it, trying to control the rise and fall of your chest. To still the manic beating of your heart, the sound that thunders in your ears; the one that will grow only worse and louder the longer you wait.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in and hold.

Breathe out and hold.

You thought you could escape me that easily?

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in and hold.

Breathe out and – gasp in a second lungful, near to dancing along with the staccato rhythm of your heart.

In an instant you’re the centre of attention. Oh my, but don’t you just hate that. And the confusion writ large across every line of every face around the table. You can see it there, can’t you? The confused tension, the desire to help and the perfect lack of knowledge as to how. It’s your fault, you know. You push and push and push, that’s why you don’t deserve them. You won’t let them get too close.

Oh, but you whine, it’s not on purpose. I just…

Fail.

That’s what you do.

You fail.

That’s what you are.

A failure.

Give up.

Go home.

You’re done.

Let them enjoy their time away from you. What did they do to deserve having a friend like you inflicted on them? Ugly, uncouth, unintelligent, monolingual, broken, damaged, different, annoying…. Worthless.

Fin.

-0-

Dear Reader,

Thank you for taking the time to read – and hopefully enjoy – this piece of genuinely short fiction from yours truly. If it helps, please consider this message a form of after-care, if you’ll forgive my impertinence at assuming my stories have the ability to emotionally impact you.

Please understand, anyone who can relate, that you’re not alone. There are hundreds of millions of us who feel the same way as you, and even those persons you might know who think themselves gods, have at times felt something similar. No one has a perfect opinion of themselves, even if they manage to convince everyone in the world that they do.

We all have regrets. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. And we all have value.

This story is not designed to make one think of their own failures. But rather to, by showing a powerfully fictionalized snapshot of a moment in my life, expose the unreliable narrator for what they are.

After all, as a friend of mine recently told me, “If I really thought you didn’t have any good qualities, why would we be friends?”

Yours in fellowship,

Alex