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The Half Of It
i intended this to be a monologue piece, i think the message got lost that i was trying to portray..not very happy with it personally. does it deserve to be in file 13? your opinions?
The Half of It
-DAVID
The lights seem to dim on the new day. He stands with a failed attempt at looking calm.
“What has he done?”
Silently repeating in his head. What a mess...broken bottles, papers, sheets strewn everywhere, and the sleeping body of a girl flushed from contents in a flask. Hear the approaching staggering footsteps of the man at fault, beautifully disheveled as if groomed that way.
“Jack what happened here? What are you trying to do? You can’t do this to her. She loves you for petes sake, anyone can see it... your mom leaves us for the week and this is what you pull? What about tomorr-”
“Relax David, I know what i'm doing..just back off, back off ok? You’re leaving for college soon and you wouldn’t even be living here if it weren't for me so just leave it. I know what im doing. I know.”
The significant slur in his voice shows how transparent his statement truly is. What a joke, what a waste of heart. He doesn’t care. The selfish, manic, foolish Jack never could. She loves him, poor girl. She could do better too. Damn shame. A year and a half of him thrashing her around and she never once wanted to leave his side. It all crumbles like a sand castle in high tide.
-JACK
I can’t trust Catherine. She’s been pulling the same shit over and over again since the day we first met. She tries to make me miss her. What she doesn’t realize is that I’m fine on my own. I don’t need anybody. I feel like I’m always alone as it is, I don’t need the reminder of a girl who drinks too much and has enough extra baggage to clutter even the clearest of minds. I guess I stick around cause she loves me. She’s never said it, but everyone knows. She gets all nervous before I come over or we go out. She’s one of those really stressed types...when she gets nervous it isn’t just nervous. She actually gets physically sick from her nerves...I can control every goddam move Cat makes. I wont lie and say I don’t manipulate her. I’ve left her hanging for months on a time without saying a word and she still came back...puppet on my strings. I’m not sayin’ I hate her of course...i love her, sometimes, when she’s ready to breakdown and she looks at me with those big blue eyes. Hanging on my every word. She looks like she might fall into a million pieces if I don’t say something to keep her together. We never dated. Many people think it, but we don’t. I feel like we are from time to time, after we've hooked up and she lies in my arms like they’re the safest things she knows. I guess we’re ok together, in our own self-destructive way. I don’t know what she means...but I do know she’ll always be there.
-CATHERINE (CAT)
“Have you been doing things with other people?”
“What? Jack where did you even get that idea..”
“I see the letters you know.”
“Well maybe you should stop snooping through my shit then. I haven’t done anything with anyone other than the one person I told you about. Why cant you just trust me?”
“Cause you have that shit floating around. Be trustworthy for once and THEN I’ll trust you. Ridiculous. I’m sick of this crap..”
This seems to be a replay of what I deal with every week. Everything is always MY fault. Forget about the time he cheated on me, it’s always me. I screw everything. I hate him. God, do I hate him. I wanna leave so bad but I cant. I can’t make myself stop needing him or wanting him. I love him, really. But I’ve never hated being in love so much in my life. He's a manic-depressive and i’m always there for the downfall. I get the slack, the blame, the mood swings, the “I hate yous”. And he acts like he doesn’t care at all. He must love me. The jealous fits, unexpected visits, hidden kisses. They mean something. I wanna fix him so bad, but he's too busy trying to fix me. He’s so lost, sad. I've never seen someone so sad in my entire life with a smile on their face. He just looks like one of those pathetic puppies at a pet store that’s been there for years on end. And he’ll never get out. I daydream what it might be like if we ran away and got married. Lived in seclusion for the rest of our lives so no one could get to us. We could just love each other and live in silence forever. But it’s not realistic. I know that with time the silence would turn into a constant screaming in my head. It’s inevitable to be happy with him. I couldn’t live that way. I cant live this way. It’s like I’ve been on this downward path since the day I first met him. That day was so happy, and the luster slowly rusted until we grew to have such resentment I couldn’t even breathe. I haven’t breathed in so long, I’m suffocating. The world’s getting smaller and smaller…I can’t make it.
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