27 Years Old, And Still A Long Way To Go [Short Story]

27 years old and I float in an aquarium full of holy water. 27 years old and my fangs are already falling out. I’m surrounded by the elements of my psyche who seem unable to understand quite what to do with me.
“She’s dead,” said the nurse with the plasticine liver.
“No,” said the doctor. “She’s dying.”

“She needs an injection,” said the preacher. “This holy water solution isn’t working.”
“I agree, she needs an injection,” said the vampire with the puerile smile and 70s sunglasses, letting his tongue flicker out between his cracked lips as he did so.

“Let’s try some LSD,” said the tiny mouse of a psychiatrist, with her dark brown hair and thin wrist bones. “It’s experimental - but the usual methods haven’t been working.”

“Give me that,” said Cernunnos, taking the syringe away from the psychiatrist. “LSD is for hippie children. What she needs is a real dose of hell.”

“Hell,” said the philosopher, boy with a top-knot tight enough to choke. He stopped Cernunnos from unzipping his pants, revealing the blackened fur underneath his belly-button like dark moss. “Hell already exists in her.”
“Are you sure she’s not dead?” Said the nurse.

“I wish I was dead,” I said. “Sometimes. But sometimes, I think I just wish that I was happy.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Cernunnos. “I’m so tired of you infantilizing yourself.”
“You would make such good friends with Virginia,” said Edgar Allan Poe, who was sitting in the corner of my mind. “You could write her stories, and she could love you.”

“She just needs a good role model,” said Dante. “A Virgil to guide her through the dark woods.”
“Please,” said the nameless girl, eyes like coal, whiskey-lips tasting sour even from the other side of the room. “Everyone else had to go it alone.”

There is another visitor in my room who does not speak. I think she is a female but it’s difficult to tell, because she is little more than a trembling shadow.

27 years old and I thought I would have a new set of problems by now. I thought that I would stop riding a crest wave inside of another wave. Hurtling, deep-wide. Never did learn how to surf. Sinking back - my head becomes full just so I can empty it out again. I keep reading books, searching for the person like me. Searching for the way out.

Here is a brief list of my problems: A black cave sits inside my chest. I’m too smart for my own good, but was never taught how to utilize my intelligence. I desire an unconditional love that doesn’t exist. I go to outerspace and I come back with stars stuck inside my head. I’m a little gross. I’m careful to never get close to anyone, because I have difficulty separating feelings of closeness from fear of abandonment. I don’t believe in my own happiness. I can’t date writers anymore. I’m a ‘free spirit’, whatever that means. I’m like that weird kind of pretty where people are surprised that they’re attracted to me. I read a lot of books.

A brief list of things that are not my problem: I’m too stupid/broken/ugly/incapable/selfish/lazy.

27 years old and I would like to get out of this aquarium. I said as much.
“I would like to leave,” I said. “I would like to go back to my life, because I am tired of this aquarium.”
“I bet you dream of paralysis,” said the nameless girl with the whiskey lips. “I bet you dream of heavy things falling on top of you - like pianos.”
“Let me check her temperature, just to be sure,” said the nurse.
“Who could love you?” said the horned god, Cernunnos. “Who could love you, but the most insignificant, ugly and small creatures?”
“I don’t think I’m that bad,” I said.
The room erupted in laughter.
“Give her the LSD,” said the vampire. “I’ll suck her blood out through a tiny hole in her nose.”
“I’ll climb into the aquarium with you,” said the philosopher. “And we’ll get drunk and talk about the heat death of the universe.”

“None of this seems helpful,” I said.
“All writers are hopeless and insane romantics,” Poe said. “Haven’t you ever read your mythos?”
“Mythos?” said Dante. “Fuck mythos. This is about destiny.”
“We’re trying to help you,” said the doctor.
“We’re trying to help you,” said the nurse.
“We’re trying to help you,” said the philosopher, and the horned god, and the vampire, and even the preacher, with his bible full of bullet holes, even the little shadow, who before had never spoken.
“Then help me,” I whispered. “And get the fuck out of my way.”

I climb out of the aquarium heaving water, the water that ceases to become holy, and as I tumble out the lights go out, and the people in the room disappear, and I left with nothing but the sound of my breath in the empty room echoing sharp on the concrete walls, and the sound of the water still sloshing against the sides of the walls. And I’m 27 years old and I’m fucking sick of this aquarium, do you hear me? I want you to hear me, I want you to hear how fucking angry and sad I am, but there’s no one here, it’s rattling around in the skulls. I will have to tell myself. I am fucking sick of this.

My muscles no longer seem to work except in spasms of heat, brought on less by ability and more than will. I cross the room in jolts. It’s so dark that I must feel along the walls. And it’s so quiet. Fuck, it’s so god damn quiet, and without all the voices in my head there is only the tremulous ache - that heavy noise of a flatline, like the moment after a heavy note is struck, a silence that builds upon itself, strings one moment after the other, catches the heartbeat. It doesn’t even feel familiar, the rattling in my chest. The only thing that is familiar is the groping, the searching, the emptiness extended to the end of my fingertips.
Until that is, I touch the door.

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