Writing Samples :)

From Mad Is On.

Nix and I had just gotten out of seeing The Raven.

“A blonde chick, though?” He lamented like he does about all types of Eurocentrism. “All these raven-haired gentlemen, and they’re all busting their asses to save a blonde girl. Come ON, Hollywood. Isn’t that just a bit old now?”

“Yeah…blondes never were my thing.” 

He rolled his eyes.

“That’s not even what I mean, Red.”

“I know, man. I know.” 

On our way out into the mall, some chick with a beige cap hanging low over her face ran to catch the door before it closed behind us. I stuck my arm out to hold it for her.

“Oh, thank you, sir-“

As soon as she started speaking I felt my heart shrink into this impish little nymph, soft-bodied and vulnerable and easily bruised. I didn’t even need to see her face. I knew that voice. I knew her petite frame and the way her dark hair curled tightly from underneath her cap, and come to think of it, I recognized that skip-like jog she’d done to catch up to the door, and before I could stop myself I said, “Melinda.” 

I felt Nixon grow tense behind me, and he took a few steps back.

Slowly, Melinda reached up to tip the visor of her cap back, until it just barely exposed her eyes. Mouth slightly agape - rosy pink lips, plump and smooth as flower petals - she looked up at me, and I felt like laughing, remembering how amused I’d been when I’d first met her that she was the only person on the planet who actually had to look up at me.

“…Madison. Wow.”

“You look, um…” I couldn’t finish, I guess because I hadn’t finished marveling at her. I hadn’t seen her at all in the near year it’d been since she scraped me off the bottom of her foot  broke up with me, but I was just as enthralled by her as I’d been on the night she tore her tear-brimmed eyes from me and walked away. 

“Thanks. So do you.” Bashfully she smiled a little, and upon the frustrated murmurs of other patrons trying to leave the theater, instinctively I took her by her elbow and towed her out into the mall. She followed, staring at my hand there the whole time until I realized and said,

“Oh…I’m sorry, I-“

“No, it’s okay.”

Nix tapped on my shoulder. “Hey, uh, I’m gonna go to the bathroom really quick.” 

I nodded, only vaguely paying attention.

“…How are-“

“What’s been-“

We started speaking at the same time, and after some nervous laughter, we took turns insisting that the other go first. 

“You always were indecisive,” she reminisced, but the memory didn’t register as a happy one for me, or even as a neutral one. I could probably list verbatim the qualities she’d said drove me away from her. “Indecisive” was on that list. 

“Yeah, well…”

“So as I was saying…how’ve you been?”

“Psh. Great. You know how it is.” I lied out of my ass. I mean, what else was I gonna say? That she was right about me and I haven’t been right in the head ever since? 

“Good, I’m glad. I know we uh, I know we…didn’t talk much…”

“At all.” I corrected her, failing at keeping the bitterness out of my tone. Melinda sighed, her shoulders slouching.

“I’m sorry…I just couldn’t…and I didn’t think you would…”

“Nah, it’s cool.” 

“But you’re…you’re doing well, yeah?”

“Yeah.” I smiled a little, and I think it looked more genuine than it felt. “How about you?”

“I’m wonderful.” She grinned, like she’d been waiting for me to ask. “I just finished up my first demo album a few weeks ago. I’m so excited.”

“Really? That’s awesome!” 

“I know, right?”

“I’d love to hear it some time.”

She giggled and stuck out her hip, hinting at the attitude I’d grown to love so goddamn much. “Well maybe you will, Delaney.”

“Yeah, maybe…hey, um…do…do you still have the same number?”

Melinda’s eyes widened, and I felt like throwing up because I had no fucking clue what that meant. 

“Oh! Um…well…”

“Or I mean if you don’t wanna-“

“I do. Have the same number, I mean. I do have the same number.”

“Can I…can I call you sometime?”

She hesitated with her mouth open mid-breath and the darkest part of my mind wanted to strangle the words out of her. Stop. Fucking. Torturing me. You know anticipation always drove me insane. 

“…How about I call you instead?”

I felt my shrunken heart dry up into a brittle fleck. What she said was that she’d call me, but what I heard was a lame-ass attempt at letting me down easy. 

“…Yeah, that works.” My voice cracked and in my head there was a cut-scene of me smashing my skull into the nearest wall. 

“‘Kay, great. So uh, I gotta run - I’m meeting a friend at the food court, but…we’ll talk, okay?” 

“Okay-” she started to skip off before I even got the word out. “Wait! Wait, Melinda!” 

She stopped, startled, and I think I was equally shocked at the desperation I heard in my own voice. Calm down, Madison. Be cool. Don’t start this shit again. This is how you lost her in the first place. 

“What???”

…What? No, seriously, what was I calling her back for? 

“…I, I just wanted to make sure you still had my number.”

“Unless you changed it…” she said measuredly. “I never deleted it.” 

“Oh…okay, just checking…you know, in case I’d have to give it to you again.”

Melinda raised an eyebrow at me. 

“Okay, Madison.”

“It was good to see you again!” I declared urgently when she took another step away. “Really, I…” I missed you. I missed you so much. “I…am glad we ran into each other.”

“Me, too, Madison.”

I opened my arms for a hug, not knowing or caring if it was the right thing to do. I just wanted to feel her body again. Any excuse to feel the warmth of her cheek against mine, the swell of her chest against mine, her hands caressing my shoulder blades like she’d do when she’d wrap her arms around me…it seemed almost instinctive, the way she leaned in, and I clasped her against me like I was afraid I’d never get to do it again. God, she used the same shampoo she did last year. And I didn’t mean to be a fucking creeper, but I inhaled deeply at the spot just behind her ear, wanting her scent to fill every inch of my lungs. Before I was ready, she peeled away from me. I let my hands linger at her sides before she slipped away, regarding me thoughtfully. 

“See you later?” I was so pathetically hopeful.

“See you.”

No sooner she rounded the corner than was Nix suddenly behind me again, placing one hand at my shoulder.

“You, my friend,” He leaned down a little so I could hear him over the bustle of mall-goers, “are a mess.”

“You were watching?” I stared up at him in horror. 

“Of course I was watching.”

“Oh God, Nix, I’m so fucking PATHETIC!!!” 

I felt like a pile of mud, however that feels, and I turned to him, leaning my forehead into his chest. He put his arms around me, rubbing my back like he does. 

“Not pathetic, just…”

“Whatever, man, I’m pathetic.”

“Okay, maybe a little. But…it’s love. That’s what love does.” 

“…Nixon?”

“Yeah?”

“This isn’t gonna end well.”

“Don’t worry, Red. I’ve got you.”

-end-

Lilac.

The value of my life is measured by how swiftly I would throw it away. But it’s never been just swift - it’s been eager. Desperate. Since I was fourteen years old - since I’d first met his dark eyes and swooned at his darker voice - I’ve been groping at burning shards of him, either nonchalant or oblivious to my charred skin as it flakes away in his wake. 

I am the kind of girl that mothers teach their daughters never to become. 

He lives to soak in my misery. Every tear I’ve ever cried for him I know he’s drank and thrived in.

Jonathan is to me as heroin is to Jonathan. 

“How priceless is the life of someone who can be bought with something that’s doomed to kill him, anyway?” Well said, Jonathan Jedadiah Dimitroulakos. 

I’d have died countless times if not for him and I know he only keeps me alive to watch me agonize. 

“I’ve only ever loved you, Lilac.” He said to me, bearing all of my weight against him as my knees gave with the heaviness of affliction. He placed his lips at my cheek, slid his tongue along my skin. He licked away a tear and sighed out his satisfaction.  I swooned at the sound of his breath and the movement of his chest and I hated myself for it. “You must understand this.”

“You don’t understand love unless you’re forcing everyone who loves you to hurt.”

He didn’t speak, but he pulled away to look me in my eyes. I wondered what he saw there. I wondered if my irises were as broken as I knew my soul was. Assuming he’d left me with a soul at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took it with him when he left, maybe keeping it in a little glass bottle tied around his neck for safe keeping. His eyes were vague, like they’d always been. Black spheres, hinting at nothing but an abysmal enigma. 

“Don’t you get it, Jonathan? You don’t need to hurt me to know that I love you! Jonathan, please, please,” I didn’t recognize my own voice. “If you’ll just stop this madness, if you’ll just stay, I promise you you’ll never need to prove that I love you again. Please…don’t, don’t let us end like this.”

Then the lines of his stony expression shifted into the most odious shadow of a smile I’d ever seen in my life and his eyes darkened - so dark that when I looked into those eyes I think it damaged me somehow. Like it’s left a dent in my sanity. And he parted his lips, allowing his wicked amusement to escape in a heinous chuckle. “My love…this is not where we say goodbye. How can it be? You know our final moments together will be in flames.”

So…those are the words he left me with. 

And I put on this guise of moving on, of knowing other people, of learning to love someone who isn’t an antisocial psychopath bent on ruining everyone who’s ever cared about him at all, ever. 

But I’ve really just been sitting here waiting. Eagerly, if not desperately awaiting the day we’ll burn down together. 

I know it.

He knows it.

He knows it better than I do.

A flashback, from Lilac Tiger-Lilly Youngblood’s point of view.

“…Jonathan, are you really gonna take me home?”

He looked down sharply at me, but seemed to be relieved with the fact that we had something else to talk about.

“Why wouldn’t I take you home?” Sarcasm was intended, but the note wasn’t there. “Well listen up, chick. You told me to stay out of it, so stay out of it I shall. But I expect you to help yourself out of this predicament in exchange. And if you don’t, I’ll handle it my way.”

“Don’t do that.” I begged. He ignored me.

“You’ve asked me - no, demanded that I don’t get involved, but I will if this goes on for much longer.” He took hold of my arm and turned me to face him, and we stood there in the drizzling rain. And then he brushed the backs of his fingers across my cheek, and that feeling of dread filled me up to the point where I thought I might just explode. “I’m tired of seeing so many bruises on your pretty little face.” I could hardly hear him, he’d muted his voice so much. At the same time, though, each of his words rung clearly in my head like a tuning fork struck on a table. Jonathan’s hand then tilted up my chin, revealing the tiny, purplish mark just underneath my jaw. I didn’t think he’d notice it.

“Pretty face…” I repeated, not meaning to say it out loud.

Jonathan swallowed noisily.

“Beautiful, really.” His voice cracked like a pubescent boy. But maybe it kind of was puberty. His voice had been sounding deeper lately, growing out of his fifteen year old self and into someone a little older. 

I was biting my lip. Jonathan swallowed again, let out a shaky sigh, and glanced absently to his left. This was Jonathan being nervous.

This was me being terrified out of my mind.

“You, you shouldn’t say I’m beautiful.” I refused to look at him. I stared right in front of me at his chest. It looked comfortable. I knew how perfectly I’d fit laying there and the sight of it made me want to lean into him. So I squeezed my eyes shut.

“On the contrary, Lilac. I should have said it sooner.” So he tilted my head up to face him, and when his fingertips glided across my cheek, my eyes fluttered opened, and my breath caught in my chest. His face was too close to mine. Close enough for his breath to move my hair. 

I put one foot behind me a little, preparing to take a step back. He noticed.

“What’s wrong?”

I bit back the quiver that was about to take my lip, and then lied.

“Nothing. I, I just lost my balance a little.”

With that, Jonathan took a step forwards. There was so little space between us. I should make him stop. Why wasn’t I making him stop?

“You must understand, Lilac,” he breathed against my forehead, making my head spin, “that I cannot and will not bear watching you get hurt.”

“But…” I was going to say ‘but it’s not my fault’ like I had so many other times, but words were trapped in my throat.

“But nothing.”

Then he brushed his lips lightly over mine. It had been so soft, and so timid, that I wondered for a moment if he’d actualy done it.

We both stood frozen. I wasn’t sure what had been on his mind (and I really didn’t want to know), but I was paralyzed not with fear, but amazement: It hadn’t been bad at all. It was…nice, actually. But that eventually scared me more. I became even more certain that I needed to stop him. I had to. But would I?

Jonathan drew back a little and examined me. I tried to keep myself expressionless. That was something that had always come so easy to him. But not now. Blatantly, he was worried.

“You’re terrified.”

“No,” I argued instinctively. “I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m fine,” I kept repeating it over and over, not trying to convince him at all, but myself. And I went on saying it until he intrrupted me.

“Lilac.” He said my name forcefully, and I immediately shut up, eyes wide and fearful as I stared back up at him, staring at me. “You’re terrified.”

“I’m not.” My lie was obvious. “I said I’m fine. Better than fine. I’m wonderful.”

Then Jonathan brought me closer to him, and that was when he leaned down and kissed me.

It wasn’t anything like just before - only a light touch of the lips, and hardly even a touch, at that. This was a kiss. The slight pressure of his soft mouth on mine was warm and comforting and mesmerizing. Literally. I felt my whole body turn to useless jelly, and Jonathan was my only means of standing, gently cradling me against him. I made some sort of noise, somewhere between a sigh and a whimper - maybe more sigh than whimper. It must have sounded distressed, because he pulled back in response. Not a lot - only enough to break the kiss - and he waited five breathless seconds, gauging me before he moved in again, and my knees gave. Soon he guided me down to the ground where we kneeled, one of his arms grasping me firmly around my waist, and his free hand drifting up from my shoulder to cup my face, and he drew back again - only to let me breathe. I hadn’t realized I was gasping. I felt embarrassed. I could hear Jonathan’s breathing over mine; it was slow, even, but unusually deep. I was glad to see he was affected, too. It showed that he didn’t kiss me just because.

Oh my god…

That was a very slow-coming thought, and I thought it over again andn again as I lay my head to rest on Jonathan’s shoulder. Leaning on him, I could feel the dramatic rising and falling of his chest, and I moved with it. 

Oh my god…

I tried to explain it to myself until it became fathomable.

It did not become fathomable.

Jonathan Jedadiah Dimitroulakos kissed me. It had stayed soft, gentle, and entirely optional. That was a first. I’d never had a say in whether or not I was kissed. It was something that was always forced on me, made painful and unpleasant, leaving my mouth feeling putrid and stagnant. But Jonathan kissing me - I shuddered to think it - had been pleasant. Those, smooth, fill lips of his had stayed close, merely moving against mine in a way that had almost been innocent.

I should have stopped him. When he paused to make sure I was all right, I should have stopped him. No, even before that! It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen this coming. I should have told him back at the Cathedral. Why was it that the words couldn’t escape me? 

I sighed then, in unison with Jonathan.

I knew the answer, and I’d known it for a while.

I belonged to Jonathan. And he wanted me so much. It was too much. Any amount of this feeling he felt for me was too much.

I closed my eyes and tried to find comfort in him. It wasn’t there like it always had been before.

I felt his soft breath pulsating against my neck, and soon his lips were there, and he kissed me repeatedly, slowly trailing his way up my neck, across my cheek, and at my mouth again. He didn’t linger there long.

I didn’t want to meet his eyes, so I didn’t. But in a low, hoarse tone, I heard him begin to speak.

“Lilac…you should know that I-“

I pushed my hands hard against his mouth. I was positive this time. The words were right on the verge of coming out, and I don’t know where I found my voice, but suddenly it was gushing out in long, terrified streams.

“Shut up, okay? Just shut up, shut up, shut the hell up. Okay, Jonathan? Can you do that?” I waited. It wasn’t a rhetorical question.

He grabbed both of my wrists and tried to move myhands. I wouldn’t budge.

“Can you?” I demanded, growing more hysterical for each moment I was without an answer. “It’s a yes or no question! Yes, or no?”

He suddenly jerked his head to the side, freeing himself.

“What the hell is wrong?” He was incredulous. Reasonably.

“You’re wrong!”

“I’m wrong because I-“

“Shut up! I said shut up!” So I covered his mouth again, more forcefully, hoping it hurt him that time. He made a muffled noise of surprise, and his eyes were almost scared of me. “I, I don’t want you to say another word, okay?”

“Mmph!”

“Okay???”

After a few moments he finally nodded.

“Okay, so you wanna know the truth? The truth is, Jonathan, that - those words you were just about to say - that is what I thought you were gonna say back at the Cathedral. That’s what I was afraid of, and it’s the same reason I cut you off just now. Because…because it’s wrong! And I’m really sorry I let you be so nice, and charming, and sweet, and endearing, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like you because I like you a lot, I mean a whole lot, but you can’t say it, please don’t say it, promise me you won’t say it!”

I took my hands away from his mouth then, and scrambled to my feet.

“First of all,” Jonathan was stern, “I’m not promising anything. Secondly, I want to know what is going on right now. Thirdly, I am…I’m…” He was scared, confused, humiliated, belittled…it all showed.

“Shut up!” Now, I’m gonna go back home - don’t follow me or else - and at school tomorrow, we never had this conversation. None of this ever happened.” I turned to run off in some random direction - I didn’t care; I just wanted to get away - but I stopped to tell him one last thing.

“Do not follow me.” 

I could make you rich
If only you got paid
For every time your name passed my lips.
 

From Mad Is On.

Instead of sleeping, which I didn’t think I could have done if I’d tried, I sat up all night in my room reading about Jonathan and Joshua, but mostly about Jonathan.

This kid was seriously all over the internet, and by all appearances, had achieved some level of fame in the classical music world - and even on the punk scene. He’d been the frontman of a band called Death to Flowers, which I’d actually heard of a few years back, but never listened to. He left the band, though, according to Wikipedia, when his quartet started gaining more national recognition. 

He’d won so many awards as a chamber player and as a soloist - but mostly as a soloist. He’d played at the Strathmore, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, he’d placed first in competitions that were held in fucking Europe. 

On Youtube there were dozens of videos of him, playing all these Bach suites like it was nothing, all these sonatas, and even three Paganini caprices that’d been transcribed for cello. 

There were links to articles done on him in papers and magazines. Interviews with local (and one national) news stations where he’d talk about his life as a young musician and writer (did I mentioned he’d published two New York Times best sellers?), and about all his unfathomable wealth…he was a multi-billionaire. Among the 100 wealthiest Americans. Purely through inheritance. He was a major benefactor who donated nearly all of his income (because really, how much more fucking money did he need?) to charity organizations. To human rights groups, to orphanages, to homeless shelters, he spearheaded a regional campaign to bring more attention to male rape victims, he was the owner of a local program that targeted teen guys who were victims of sexual abuse - though all genders and ages were welcome…

And somehow I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that this kid was the burned out drug addict getting high somewhere in my house right now. It just didn’t make any sense, to be honest.

Perhaps I was reading about a different Jonathan Jedadiah Dimitroulakos.

How did that…become this???

That healthy-looking kid in those videos…still slender, yeah, but in that kind of way that basketball players are slender. With a strong, healthy build. He’d had clear skin and a strong voice and alert eyes and his hair looked strong and lush as opposed to just coarse and dry and brittle. 

What the hell went wrong?

I found an old post from his ancient blogspot that hadn’t been updated in years.

They all tell me, “you’ll live”. 

When that phrase is used on other people it’s one of condescension. It trivializes their plight, whatever non-issues are digging into them. “It’s not a big deal. You’ll live.” But when they say it to me?

When Josh or Aunt Lilith or sometimes maybe even Claudia look into my eyes and tell me, “you’ll live”, I don’t think there’s anything more meaningful I could ever hear. 

When I was as young as nine years old, I would tell Joshua that I wouldn’t make it past eighteen. That if some freak accident or a reckless lifestyle didn’t take me, then suicide would. And from then on there would be attempt after attempt after attempt on my own life, and they’d all fail - perhaps I didn’t really want to die, or maybe I just sucked at suicide. I dunno…Joshua always managed to save me and maybe I planned it that way. Christ…I don’t think I can count all the times he’s walked in on my body on one hand. 

And even when there was illness and even when there were the bloody, freak accidents, somehow, by some unfathomable set of miracles, I’d survive. Yet for whatever reason, I feel so fucking doomed.

So they tell me now, “You’ll live.” Like I’m invincible.

Funniest thing is, though, that I can see them all holding their breath. They look at me and they wonder, “Is today the day?” 

What if he succeeds this time? What if he just sticks a shotgun barrel in his mouth instead of all that fancy shit he usually tries and fails at? What if he’s too weak to fight off the sickness? What if this is it?

I’ll be eighteen in two months and with each day that passes they grow warier and warier and Josh knows that we won’t make it through these next few weeks unscathed. 

He knows this, and Lilith knows this, and Claudia and Lilac and Ryan and Gerald, and they are all terrified out of their minds. Because really, when have I ever given them a reason not to worry? 

I am sick of dragging everyone I love into being miserable for me. 

It makes me physically ill.

So then I guess…things were never right for him in the first place. 

I wondered what it was like to live your entire life knowing you were destined for one continuous tragedy.

From Mad Is On.

I was on the floor in the upstairs hall when I woke up. And as soon as I opened my eyes, I violently shut them again because I was hit with the flashback of a high Jonathan from last night. I mean, I was so preoccupied with that horrifying image that I hardly even noticed the smell of bacon and waffles drifting up from downstairs.

“What the…”

I went down there and found Jonathan in the kitchen, scrambling some eggs and glancing over at the timer on the microwave. 

“Good morning,” he said. “Or uh, afternoon.” 

“…What are you doing?” I rubbed my eyes and sort of gawked at him. “I mean I see what you’re doing, but…what are you doing?” 

“Cooking.”

“…Why?”

“It’s the least I can do, right?” 

Suddenly I didn’t know how I felt about eating food cooked by a heroin junkie. Not that I didn’t think he was a good cook or something, but…I dunno, he could have…diseases. But then I watched closer, and saw his hands were covered in latex gloves. So, he knew he had something, then. Or knew that he might. 

“Thanks, I guess…” 

“Also, I cleaned the bathroom upstairs really well.”

“What did you do all that for? It’s not like you left it dirty or anything…”

“Well…” He sprinkled salt into the frying pan, “…It just probably wouldn’t be a good idea for anyone to have used it after me.”

“You mean after you got high?”

“…Yeah.” 

“Do you have AIDS?” As soon as I asked the question, I kind of regretted it. I mean, is that something that you just ask someone? 

“Fuck if I know.” 

When I didn’t respond, he said, “…Madison, I’m really sorry you saw me like that.” 

“It’s okay.”

Jonathan laughed a humorless laugh. “Except, it’s really fucking not. And any sane person would send me packing. Not only do I mooch off of you and take advantage of your kindness, but then I proceed to get high in your bathroom. This is why I left my makeshift family. I just keep shitting on them.” 

“…It’s not mooching when I’m giving this stuff to you. And look, see? You’re trying to make up for it.” 

“Trust me, if I was an actual friend or family member and not just some stranger who’ll be out in two weeks, cooking for you wouldn’t be nearly enough.”

I wouldn’t tell him, but I actually really fucking hated eggs. 

“You’re trying. That’s the important part.”

Jonathan dumped the eggs out into two plates and then grabbed a spatula to flip pancakes over before they burned. 

“Joshua was always trying to get me to cook,” he said. “He’d make me sit down and watch him sometimes. ‘This is a skill you’re going to need at some point, Jonathan. Now pay attention.’ It was so fucking lame.”

“But you miss it.”

“Of course I miss it. I miss when he’d bitch at me for letting my dog sleep in our bed or for not putting my plates in the dishwasher or for forgetting to wipe my feet after being outside. God, he treated me like such a child and I miss every goddamn second of it.”

I shrugged.

“So then call him.” 

He stood very still for a moment before slowly allowing himself to shake his head. “Madison, I can’t.”

“For better or for worse, right? In sickness and in health? You guys said all that shit, right?” 

“I guess, yeah.”

“Then have faith in that.”

Over breakfast we didn’t really say anything. For someone who had never really cooked before though, it was pretty good. 

“It’s gonna suck when you leave,” I said. “My mom never cooks.” 

____________________

I googled him. That night after he fell asleep (or went to the bathroom to get high, I dunno) I googled him. 

Jonathan Jedadiah Dimitroulakos isn’t exactly the most common name out there. The first search result was a link to his quartet’s website. “So he’s legit.” I said to myself. I searched for contact info, scrolling through pages and clicking on link upon link only to find that it had been taken down since the group’s hiatus. 

So I read their bio’s. 

“Joshua Harrison is a world class violinist, and is one of the most sought-after teachers in his area.”

So I googled him next.

“Jackpot,” I whispered, when I found business listings with his home phone number. With a shaking hand, I reached for my cell phone. 

I told myself, Madison, you are a fucking moron. 

So I dialed. Fuck, it was like three AM and here I was calling up a total stranger to tell him I found his drugged up husband in a drainage pipe. 

Two rings. Three, four, five…

“….Hello?” An exhausted voice finally answered. It sounded like the first words he’d spoken in ages. 

“Hi, um, hello, uh…Joshua Harrison?”

“Yes…who is this?” Now more alert, his tone was suspicious.

“My name is Madison Delaney…I did a shitton of snooping in the web to find you and-“

“What is this about?”

“I have Jonathan.” I forced myself to hurry up and get it out.

“…Excuse me?”

“Jonathan Jedadiah…Dimitroulakos, I think? I have him. He’s here.”

“…What kind of sick fucking joke-” suddenly hostile, he raised his voice.

“No! I’m serious! Tall kid, like five feet and eleven inches. Skinny, really skinny. Track marks all over. Uh, longish, black hair, dark brown eyes, he’s got a black hoodie and he said he’s a cellist and that he’s from Rhode Island and that he’s married to Joshua Harrison. To you.” 

There was silence and for a moment I thought he’d hung up or we’d gotten disconnected.

“Hello? Hello?”

“…I’m here.” 

“Oh…”

“Madison, is it?”

“Yes.”

“I, I don’t understand. You have Jonathan?”

“Yeah. My friends and I found him in the drainage pipe we hang out at.”

“You found my love in a drainage pipe…”

“Well it sound way worse than-“

With hope he said, “Can I speak with him?” 

“Well…I, I dunno…he refused to call you when I told him he should. If he knows I’ve contacted you he might run off.”

“Oh…yes…well then…don’t tell him. Madison…how old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen. Where are your parents?”

“In Mexico until next Thursday.”

“Jesus Christ…I need to come and get him, Madison. I don’t want to be a damn creeper and ask for your address but I need to see him.”

“Yeah, of course. No problem at all. Just uh…please don’t kidnap or murder me once you get here.”

So I told him my address. And this guy named Joshua Harrison who was married to Jonathan Jedadiah Dimitroulakos thanked me profusely and said he’d be there in the morning.

From Mad Is On.

I woke up in the middle of the night and when I checked the time on the cable box it was 2:03 AM. 

I let myself remember, only for a second, how when I was little I used to wake up at exactly 2:03 from a nightmare and I’d crawl into Gregory’s bed. 

Anyways, I looked on the couch and saw Jonathan wasn’t there.

“…What the fuck?”

So I dragged myself up and turned on all the lights, looking around…

“Jonathan? …Where’d you go?” 

I heard movement upstairs. 

So I crept up quietly, listening, and saw that the bathroom light was on. “You…you in there?” 

No answer. 

So I pushed the door open, and fuck, I KNEW I wasn’t gonna like what I saw in there. I mean, I was thinking I was gonna find him dead or something and I’d be stuck with a freaking dead body in my bathroom and how was I gonna explain that to my parents…

Nah, I didn’t find him dead, but what I did find was only slightly less terrifying.

He was in the bathtub. Fully clothed, no water in there…he just sort of…sat in there. With his knees sort of buckled and his back curving against the wall, his head lolled down and over to one side, where it nodded and bobbed like he kept falling asleep and waking up. His chin was covered in drool and after a few seconds of wondering what the fuck I’d just walked in on, I noticed syringe in the soap dish, and the thin little dribble of blood on his arm. And he just kept nodding like that, sometimes looking like he was about to tip all the way over. His eyes were wide, wide open, but I knew they weren’t seeing anything. Except maybe stars. 

“Oh my god…” I’m actually not completely sure if I said that, or if it was only in my head. Whatever the case, I stepped back out into the hall and when I remembered I had hands, I forced them to stop shaking and used them to close the door behind me, where I leaned on it and slid down to the floor. 

“There is a drug addict in my bathroom.” I said to myself, knowing he couldn’t hear. Or if he could, he wouldn’t remember. “There is a drug addict in my bathroom and he just shot up heroin. In…my bathroom.” 

From Mad Is On.

We talked until we fell asleep - him on the couch, and me sprawled on the floor.

I learned that he was from Rhode Island, where he had what he called his “makeshift” family. “They’re not related to me by blood,” he’d explained, “but they are the closest thing to a family I will ever have.” His brothers are Gerald and Ryan. He’s got an Aunt Claudia and an Aunt Lilith, but he says Lilith is more like a mother than an aunt. I learned that he only knew his parents for less than two years before they died. His mother committed suicide and soon after, his father fell viciously ill. The very same day he got sick, he didn’t make it through the night. 

I learned a lot of stuff about him. That he used to have a serious girlfriend before he realized he was gay. That he’d gotten expelled from three different schools when he was younger, and that he bought his way out of assault charges from some guy whose nose he broke in eleventh grade. He’s got a Siberian husky named Fate, and he says “she’s the stupidest dog in the world, but I love her even more for it.” He’s got a wicked scar on his chest and on his back - in the chaotic midst of a fight he’d gotten in, the pointed spire of an old fence got shoved through his body. The fact that he lived was, what he called, one of the only things that came close to convincing him that God could be real. 

We talked about God a lot…

He said he always tells everyone he’s an atheist, but really, it could go either way for him. Sometimes he feels he knows we’re alone, and other times he’d bet his life that there’s a greater consciousness out there somewhere. But he would never tell anyone the latter. And even when he does believe in God, he told me, he still hates him. “Most everyone I know was brought up as a devout Catholic. But sometimes life sends you on paths that make all that shit seem…”

“Like shit?” I’d said.

“Yeah.”

I’d told him about how my family was Christian. The kind of Christian that often goes hand-in-hand with conservatism and bigotry. 

“Imagine my parents’ horror when I turned out to be everything they despised.”

I told him about how Gregory used to be Christian, too. But when he got back from Iraq he’d said, “If there’s one thing war teaches you, it’s that God and heaven are only wishful thinking.”

Jonathan told me about the only time he’d ever honestly prayed in his life. He said that when he did it, he honestly didn’t even understand what he was doing or who he was talking to, but it’s just this instinctual thing that happens when you feel like you’ve run out of options. He’d said, “I didn’t care how stupid I must have looked on my knees like that, talking to the air. What I was doing was so completely honest, if there is a God, then I don’t see how he couldn’t have heard me…” 

“But you don’t think he did?”

Jonathan didn’t answer. When I looked, he’d fallen asleep and his chest was rising and falling and his eyes were flitting around beneath his eyelids like he’d already been swept off into a dream. 

So that’s when I closed my eyes, too. 

Just prosing. (possible story idea.)

Hospital rooms are probably one of the worst places anyone can ever be. Even if the reason for being there isn’t all that serious, and even if you’re not the one with needles stuck in your arms or something, the rooms themselves are unsettling. You wonder what the walls have seen. How many feet of anguished family members been exactly where your feet are. The last person who was in that bed - did they make it? Or maybe right now one of your best friends is lying right where someone else was when they died. 

I am sitting on the windowsill, pretending to stare out at the city. Really, I’m watching his reflection. I guess maybe I feel like seeing him indirectly, obscured by the glare of the television and the city lights outside, will hurt less than turning to see him in all his fucked up glory. 

The urge to cry is throbbing in my throat and clawing at the backs of my eyes, and I’m about to give up when the door creeks - the nurse enters and I turn to face her. She’s smiling one of those sad smiles that nurses do when there is a dire, sad situation at hand, but they’re trying to make things seem less intimidating. 

“Visiting hours are over now.” She says in a low, sweet voice - it’s out of place, like ending a minor melody in a major chord. 

The three of us sigh, and one by one, we stand up and head out into the hall. I am the last to leave. I stand next to my two friends - I guess they are my friends now - and we all hold hands, squeezing tight like the nurse is gonna try to separate us next.

“You can all come back tomorrow. He should still be holding up all right.” She says, and we nod, but none of us say anything.

I don’t think any of us have said anything for days. 

It’s like we’re all holding our breath, you know? Like none of us will even think about breathing until that beautiful boy fighting for his life in there either opens his eyes or flat-lines.