Standing on the edge of madness
I look back at all the people
I look back at all their outstretched hands
I stand

Reaching out to them I see
They are but illusions
Haunting me

Once upon a dream they were
All in line, smiles and sighs
But oh, these times, these times

Once, we used to play
I'd watch you run and wonder
I'd watch and watch and watch

One day you ran away

I suppose it's safe to say I've given up writing every day, as well as trying to catch up.

But I will get back into it. I'm going to start writing, I have to. I'm going insane.

∞

I watched, dismayed, as he fumbled in his pocket for what I knew was an engagement ring. He didn't seem nervous nor overjoyed, just as a sailor following course. I felt nothing, it had been a long time since I'd felt much of anything regarding him or what he did. Over and over, mothers and wives and sisters and girlfriends told me this was how it went, the men were just being men and that's how they acted, then they scoffed and changed the subject. While I stood there, accepting the ring with a smile I'm surprised he believed, I knew better. I knew there was something better, I was just too scared to look.

This wasn't how I envisioned this project going - doing three to six days at once? Not quite as effective, but I'll take it.

Late in the night, a soft rap came upon his door and he proceeded with caution. Peeking through the window, he saw that a young woman stood outside, tugging her coat up round her neck and looking from side to side. He opened the door and in her lamplight, he saw that she was a very plain girl, no more than 20, and had with her a small bag at her feet. He politely invited her in and she nodded sheepishly in, hurrying in before he might change his mind.

Less than an hour ticked away on the clock as she sat quietly, her third attempt at the SAT glaring up at her. Images flooded her mind, her report card - straight As, as usual; her varsity jacket for track, a large C adorning the side; her mother's face when her daughter, her pride and joy, brought home a second round of terrible SAT scores. She cringed and before thinking twice, she unpinned her front hoodie pocket to display a full cheat sheet, and began filling in the bubbles.

She sat at her computer, her eyes flicking over the pages and pages of text she'd spent weeks writing. There'd be an error here, a continuity issue there, but other than that, it'd be completely picked over and was decent enough. But still she sat, unable to type a word. Her brain was blanked and she closed her eyes tightly, as if this was a dream. Things had been going so well, but as she approached the last few chapters, the geyser of ideas in her brain turned to a trickle until there was nothing left. Her eyes welled up with tears as hopelessness washed over her; for once, she thought she might finish something. She slammed her laptop shut and left the room, not sure if she'd ever read those words again.

Social media is a danger place for an unstable mind, and hers writhed as she scrolled through page after page of disappointments. Friends she once had, a former love, all had moved on, posting things irrelevant to her and seeming so happy. She wanted to cry, to scream, to call them and yell at them for being so brazen, but instead she sat and stewed, rehashing everything that made her hate every last one of these people until she'd tired herself enough to sleep.

The wind outside howled as the storm grew near. She bustled about, closing shutters and stoking the fire, moving glass away from the windows and the food to the pantry. A rap came upon her door and she was startled, rushing to see who could've possibly ventured out in this gale. She eased open the door and standing before her, soaking wet with a sheepish smile, stood John. The breath was stolen from her chest as he swept her up in his arms and out of the rain, kissing her furiously and stumbling them both over a chair.

Ideas whizzed through his head, humming at the speed of light, just out of reach. His pen grazed the page and he began to race, spilling prose onto the paper barely thinking at all; it was as if he was possessed. He took a deep breath after three packed pages of text, twisting his neck from side to side, each with a satisfying pop. It was this kind of energy burst that was going to finish this book once and for all, but as usually, after such a great burst, he was overcome with a sense of dread, fearing to read what he just wrote, in light that it might not be what he wished.

As she closed the door behind her, she could hear her phone ring; her fiance's ringtone. In her mind, she imagined glimpses of his smile and of his hands, of the way his chest felt when he hugged her and the way his back looked when he carried heavy things. But those short quips were clouded by the heat in the room. Outside, winter continued on, light frost on the window and only a fire and space heater keeping them toasty, but across the room he met her eyes and the heat of her own heartbeat flamed. He stood to greet her and pulled her close and onto her toes as he lightly kissed her, opening the door for the ages of pent-up lust between them.

There wasn't time to spare between the hack and escape, so he worked quickly and breathed as shallow as he could. It was unlike him to rush but the security disengage failed and he was working with narrow minutes to finish the job. Through his head spun codes and characters, but also voices telling him all sorts of things. As best he could, he ignored them, and the computer chirped politely just has he finished. He packed his things and turned to go, but there she stood. He could finally put a face with the name, Detective Harper; a striking redhead in a pantsuit with a smirk not even a .44 could overcome.

Lights were far few and in-between in the house, damp puddles illuminated by candles and shadows bouncing from wall to wall. She hugged her pack closer to her as she crossed what seemed like a never-ending foyer until she was met by a butler. She squinted her eyes and through the darkness, she saw that he was young and handsome, but bore a scar across the left of his face, which he effectively hid with a tilt of his head. He reached out for her things but she cowered back, so he relinquished. "The master of the house has gone to sleep, madam, I will show you to your room." She quivered, and he added in a much less formal tone, "It seems quite scary hear at first, but it's mysteries will be what you find yourself loving most. I promise."

There was nothing standing in her way, no jobs or commitments, no love affairs or family ties, nothing. All that stood in her way was herself; her fear, her doubt, her mind. She looked at all her things back on the sidewalk next to her, it'd taken her weeks to get this far and months to get over the loss. Cars drifted by and she looked for what she hoped to be the last time she'd see the neighborhood where she'd been raised. Ignoring what she heard when she thought a second time, she shot her hand up in the air and hailed a taxi to the airport, knowing deep down that it was time to take the first step.

The rain pattered on the tin roof fiercely, causing the cat to hide under the bed and the children to gather around their mother's skirt. "Read to us," they trembled over one another and she smiled, producing a tattered storybook. Opening the cover, her breath caught in her throat; the note inscribed on the title page always made her heart jump and ache simultaneously. Her late husband had given her this book the Christmas before their first of four children was born. It read: To my dearest Jean, I have no doubt you will be the most compassionate and wise mother; how lucky am I to have a child by you. I hope you'll read this stories to our children as my mother read them to me. I love you, John. It had been months since he'd be lost in the war, assumed dead after weeks of searching. She turned to the first story and began to read, holding her tears for their children, all she had left of her dear John.

There wasn't much to be said about the long dirt road that lay ahead of them. On either side, fields stretched for days only contained by a splintery wooden fence older than both of the combined. In the fields were wheat, or another stalk just like it, dotted with little yellow flowers, pests among the product. Every so often, the sound of a car would come rumbling up the road but it would never make them, for it either turned off while it still could, or was merely a mirage. The boys continued moving north, buckling ever so slightly under the weight of their packs, but never daring to complain. A long journey lay ahead of them, but even so, an even longer fault lay behind them. Each took to one side of the road, keeping their distance from each other, but still close enough to never forget for a moment why this long dirt road lay in front of them, and what would meet them at the end.

He watched her sleep as though she had a secret, and he was waiting for it to spill over into her subconscious. Truth was, she had a secret, but a secret she didn't yet know. Earlier that day, in the midst of a break from working on his novel, he met the mailman at the road for a short chat before collecting the envelopes and heading inside. Absentmindedly he tore through the mail, compulsively separating bills and coupons and correspondence, but he came to a letter thick and marked from the hospital. Without worrying about the addressee, he opened it gingerly and read, practically whispering to himself as the new grew grave. It read this his fiance, who he later noticed was the addressee, needed to return for more tests and possible chemotherapy scheduling for the tumor found in her thyroid. He was flabbergasted and fell to the floor, hurt both by the news and by the fact that his fiance, who would in a month be his wife, failed to mention she was seeing a doctor.

The piano loomed in front of her like a painting from a bad dream. It haunted her with its sharp features now diminished with dust. In her head she could hear sweet melodies, nothing more than a few chords a piece, ringing just like they always did as the days passed. She couldn't bring herself to get rid of it, not yet. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, swaying lightly with the dizziness inevitably caused by the many medications to which her existence had been reduced. For the first time in weeks, she extended a hand to the unsheathed keys, trailing her fingers lightly enough as to not make a sound. Instead of playing, she crumpled to the floor in an angry flood of sobs. As she moved to cover her face she cried out as her left hand covered her mouth and the absence of her right hand flushed past her face as an awful reminder that only in her wildest daydreams would she ever play piano again.