A few weeks ago I was lying awake, it was in the middle of the night and roughly about 2:00am. I started asking God to give me something, a revelation of some kind. Instead he implanted an idea in me which I will strive to follow through.
This blog post is much different to any previous posts and is the first in a series of writings which I feel has been comissioned for awareness of mental health and capability differences.
The cave.
Lively walked into the cave, flicked her shoes off and flopped onto the couch. Calling into the darkness to signal her arrival home she told Skel she'd be a couple of minutes and she would start dinner. She heard him indistinctly grunt in return. He hadn't had a good day then. She was tired and listing in her head all that she wanted done, she told herself she was not going to be able to relax for another few hours at least. Looking into a mirror she saw her skin had become transparent again, the coloured patterns and etchings on her cheek and jaw bones visible. She picked up her pot of “function” and dabbed it on smoothing the colour over the opaque skin, hiding her skull underneath. She had a pot of “content” to conceal the hollows of her eyes better than only using “function”, but she was too tired to apply it just now. She felt her head for a worn patch, and felt it start above her right ear and extend round to the nape of her skull. Sighing, she picked up a fine spool of brown thread and a small needle. Threading it, she raised it to the edge of the bald area and pushed it through the skin. She knew she wouldn't be able to sew all the missing hair this evening but two or three strands would do for now. Start covering what stressing out and pushing herself too much had done to her.
Skel was lying on the bed when she got to him. He inclined his skull round to face her when she entered. “Hey,” he said morosely. His skin suit was strewn over a chair from last night.
Lively smiled and told him she was about to start dinner and went to prepare it.
“I'll come help,” he said, but she had already left the room saying, “No, just let me do it.”
Skel didn’t know how long he had been lying down, ten minutes or so, but he felt guilty enough to get up and to go into another room. He avoided the mirror as he went to sit on his chair, he couldn’t bare looking at his reflection. The empty eye sockets, the skinless, bare boned frame that was he. Even if he put his skin suit on, it would only look like he was okay, he would still know it was only a skeleton underneath. He sighed, what was the point of being alive if you are already dead. Lively came up behind him and came in for a side hug. Skel didn’t know how she could hug an empty ribcage, he didn’t know why either. He couldn’t feel her.
Lively sat down for another two minutes, telling herself to enjoy some quick rest, before she went to see what they had left in the cave fit for eating. Her phone vibrated and as she checked it, Lively saw it was from a friend, inviting both her and Skel for dinner at their house. A little hope rose within her, maybe she could get Skel out of the cave for a while, it always made things a little easier when he wasn’t completely immersed in the barrenness of the cave.
Feeling revived she bounced up to Skel and showed him the message. Skel gave a nod of assent, which she didn’t see so Lively asked him if he wanted to go.
‘Mhmm,’ he responded so quietly that she had to repeat the question. He was glad to be able to get outside of the cave, he had felt trapped in it all day.
Taking note of the time, Lively said that they would need to leave soon so it wouldn't be too late. Skel couldn't just get up and go like people expected, it takes time to dress up as someone who isn't husk of dry bones.
He started the painstakingly process of becoming outwardly human. Being careful of the deep knicks and scratches on his exposed bones, Skel placed his feet into the soles of his skin suit, slowly and carefully, pulled it over his skeleton frame. He looked at himself in the mirror, already knowing that he'd hate what he saw. It was ill fitting, without organs, muscles and other flesh to fill it out and Skel took handfuls of stuffing trying to make the skin sit right. Filling up the void within with bits of cotton fluff just made him feel emptier still. It was all just a lie, a lie that he had to constantly keep up. He had to lie to his family, his closest friends and even Lively sometimes. The weight of guilt was sometimes too much to bear. He was a fake. Just an empty, dead fake. Padding out a costume to make him look alive to the people around him. He scoffed to himself, he was sickened by who he was.
Lively walked in and took the stuffing out of Skel's hand, forcing it in until she thought it looked right. “I had it,” Skel said indignantly. “I was nearly done".
“I know, but it's just quicker if I do it,” Lively replied snatching the flesh coloured thread off the side board. She decided to stitch the gaping seams of Skel’s humanity damaged edges first leaving the hardest seam to last, around his head.
Feeling like he was allowed to do something for himself, Skel positioned what passed as a contented smile, as she finished closing each seam until only enough room for the inch thick cord which protruded from the nape of his neck. She watched as he moved towards the entrance of the cave, it's blackness connected to Skel's mind by the cord and moved quickly out of the way while he sucked in the darkness.
Facing inward he took a backward step outside and started to stuff the cave into itself, like a heavy sleeping bag , then push it through the gap the cord was coming from. This took nearly as long as preparing and dressing in the skin suit. When complete Lively closed the rough edges, straining to close the gap so the cave wouldn't seep out.
They stood and regarded their home, the black inky residue lingered over the windows and the door. Sighing, Lively turned and tried to forget the darkness, out of her sight but firmly embedded in Skel's mind, and he tried to regain some control in of his own.
End.
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