“If you make friends with yourself, then you’ll never be alone”
Ryan muttered the words painted on his walls to himself. With a practiced smile, he willed himself out of bed and into the living room space where his smile morphed into a frown when there was no brunet brewing a midnight coffee. He stood dazed for a moment before he noticed the noisy car horns of busy streets or rather lack of said noise, and it was then he recalled having an episode the previous day which led to him dashing into his car and driving to his beach house. With a sigh, he looked up at the wall clock confirming the time was just a few minutes past 4 a.m. making him immediately wish Armand was there. The brunet would have stayed up with Ryan and sang to him with his voice that could make the angels jealous till he fell back asleep. He dragged himself back to the bedroom.
Armand had given Ryan the idea of getting a place outside the city, away from the city noise and pollution, to serve as an escape-safe-space whenever he felt overwhelmed or had an episode; so a house on a quiet, rarely visited beach, positioned to have a perfect view of the water, just by looking out any of the windows seemed like the best option, and of course this was to be expected since it was cause Armand himself who had personally picked it out. It worked great the first year and half, but now, just like every form of therapy Ryan had tried, it wasn’t working the same wonders. His brain chemicals, taken by surprise at first, have now adapted to the ‘treatment’. But given the view it held, Ryan still visited.
A lot of times Ryan looked back and wondered how he ever survived for so long before Armand came into his life. He stared back up at the painted words on his wall ‘if you make friends with yourself, then you’ll never be alone’ Armand had said those words to Ryan during their first sessions roughly 3 years ago and Ryan, though it was one of the weirdly accurate things he had ever heard, except when considering Ryan’s issues, might have a whole new level of meaning.
Confirming from the flash of the neon light from the digital clock on his nightstand that only 7 minutes had passed since he last checked the time, he realized he had a long night ahead of him, and he really wanted to hear Armand’s voice, but, of course, he couldn’t, cause, being Ryan he forgot his cellphone in his hurried frenzy to leave the house.
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Time rolled by painfully slowly for the dark-haired man with only jenga to keep himself busy with and a can of soda, which, after drinking, he headed back to his bedroom because there is only so much time you can play jenga alone before you get bored out of your mind. He faced the ceiling, shutting his eyes, hoping by some miracle that sleep would finally take over.
The sun still refused to rear its head and deciding he could no longer handle the boredom, Ryan did the only thing he could do in the middle of the night while stuck at a beach house with no cellphone or his favorite human being. In a white shirt over a pair of black slacks and no shoes and a black coat, he headed down to the beach. It was empty as expected, which was a win-win situation. It was quiet, and the air was fresh, not to talk of the calming sound of the ocean and the way it looked surreal with the moon casting its lights down on it, and it also meant he was alone with his thoughts to think about it rationally.
He quietly walked along the shore of the waters with his mind all over the place not thinking about anything specifically, and that was when he saw it. Something lying in the sand caught his eyes. He quickened his pace as fast as one could in the sands. He got closer, realizing it was big and black. Perhaps a dog with black fur. He finally stopped in shock as he stood before the black dog, which was definitely not a black dog. The black fur turned out to be a black gown and, needless to say, the dog was a human, a lady. Ryan paused in confusion, tilting his head to study her features. A brown pool of hair sprawled out around her head, dark closed eyelids with long dark lashes lapping over her pale cheek and dark lips in total contrast to her ghostly pale skin. Maybe the moonshine was playing tricks on him but, most importantly, a steady chest; there was no rise and fall to indicate breathing. He stared longer with eyes fixated on her chest waiting for even the slightest motion, and when he got none, it was logical for him to conclude she was dead except for the nagging at the back of his mind telling him perhaps she wasn’t as dead as he assumed, and he could save her. With a groan, he got down on his knees and hoped he remembered how to give CPR since he never had to give one before.
