Delirium - Snap

The classroom thrummed with the sounds of pencils scurrying across paper, incessant fingers tapping on the worn wood of age-old desks, squeaking erasers and hands brushing away their pink residue to the floor. The professor sat behind his paper strewn desk, occasionally rocking back in his old, groaning chair while flipping the pages of whatever paperback he was perusing. Even the tick of the clock on the wall was just loud enough to hear, if one was really listening.

Kira Hozaido was listening.

Her exam remained untouched on her desk, its spaces for answers as blank as her stare. The maddening symphony of her class pounded down on her thoughts. She resisted the urge to relieve herself with a pull at her frizzy dark hair, to chomp down on the fragile skin of her fingertips and peel it off till they poured red, to reach for the matches in her backpack and set fire to her damned desk and. . .

No. She grit her teeth, pulled back the long sleeve of her mauve shirt and looked hungrily at the thick rubber band wrapped around one of her wrists. After weeks of clawing at useless stress balls and countless failed attempts to meditate, her roommate, Tom, had proclaimed the stinging snap of a rubber band to be the best destresser there was. Kira, intrigued, agreed to put it to the test.

She stretched the elastic back taut, let it go and didn’t flinch when it bit into the papery flesh of her wrist. Her body tingled and a small smile twitched across her lips. She did it again, and a third time until a bright red crescent lit up across her skin. It burned, and Kira’s smile grew teeth. The cacophony of her class a mere afterthought under the band’s distracting bite, she turned her attention to her test, scrawled her name at its top with a shaking hand and went to work answering its myriad questions.

With an occasional pause to snap at her wrist again, she finished just shy of the time her class was to be let out. She didn’t bother going over her answers, instead gathered her things, hurried to turn in her test and avoided the gazes of her fellow classmates because of course they were looking at her. Of course they saw her tearing away at her wrist, all of them questioning and giggling and looking.

Kira slapped her paper down on her professor’s desk, left the room with her head down, rounded a corner in the hallway on tingling feet and pressed herself up against a wall. She snapped her wrist over and over, stabbing it and cracking it and trying to drive away the rampant paranoia that consumed her mind. Her professor wasn’t coming after her, demanding why she wrote nothing but scribbles on her test. Her classmates weren’t laughing in an uproar behind her.

Her wrist wasn’t starting to bleed.

Hot moisture spread across her fingers, and with mellow realization Kira brought them to her eyes. Crimson blood stained their tips, and a glance showed the rubber band to be in similar condition. The liquid was seeping through thin cracks in her swollen skin, like tiny insects digging up through the earth. Of course, they weren’t insects. That crawling sensation was just her blood, her skin reacting to the rubber band’s abuse.

It wasn’t bugs, it wasn’t spiders or ants chewing through her thin layer of skin, breaking out from the tunnels of her veins where they whispered to her, telling her what her classmates were doing and thinking and. . .

Kira bolted down the hallway, every step another inch away from her intruding thoughts. “Not real,” she breathed, remembering her roommate’s lessons. She needed to focus, focus on something real because only she was real, and not those dark, dastardly delusions that tried so hard to envelope her mind.

She burst through a door to the fresh air and shining sun of a spring afternoon, clung her eyes to the first real thing she could find. A tree. A full grown specimen bristling with leaves and branches thin and thick, all gently swaying in a passing breeze. Its shadows flickered across the ground, dancing over its massive roots that swam in and out of the earth like enormous snakes.

Any and all of Kira’s paranoia was immediately replaced by the urge to set the tree on fire.

She knew she couldn’t, of course, not with the cache of matches and variously colored lighters in her backpack. Not with the bottle of lighter fluid she poured only just a smigeon of the other day to light up a marching band of ants. She gripped her stinging wrist while imagining how impossible it would be to tear off chunks of the tree’s bark, leaving its bare, dry innards exposed to her arsenal of pyrotechnics.

A dry gulp crawled down her throat, settled in her empty, trembling gut to no comforting avail. The rubber band’s sting was nothing compared to the thought of standing in the heat of fresh flames, feeling them lick at her body and soothe her corrosive thoughts. “Call Tom,” she whispered numbly to herself, and with scraping hands she dug her phone out of her pocket.

Taking a seat on a nearby bench, Kira kept her gaze set on the tree while her phone droned in her ear. She set her backpack down next to her, reached into a pocket to fish out a lighter and began flicking at it idly. When her roommate finally picked up, her stare had become enveloped by her tool’s tiny flame flickering in the wind.

“Kira!” said Tom with plastic enthusiasm. Nothing he said ever came out as naturally as Kira thought he wanted it to, like a computer feigning a foreign accent. “How did your test go?”

“I think I wrote words on it,” she answered. Her sleeve slid down to remind her of her wrist, all worn and stained with trickles of red. She let her lighter die, placed her hand gently on her lap and let her eyes settle on the leafy behemoth before her. “And I used the rubber band like you said.”

“Good,” he lilted, “and how did that work out?”

“It cut my skin open,” she said, “and now I’m sitting in front of a tree and I want to set it on fire.”

Tom laughed, an icy series of hyena squeals that were the most genuine sounds he made. “Well,” he said, and after a brief pause added, “don’t do that. I’ll be by to pick you up. Where are you?”

Kira took in a breath, looked around the open area of the campus she was seated in. It was littered with trees, all of them as huge and thriving and alive as the one closest to her. She saw them all become ensconced in spreading flames, their leaves falling like meteors onto their adjacent brethren, all of them falling in a conflagratory game of dominoes. They writhed and they popped and then there was a dark murmur in Kira’s ear.

Her fantasy broke apart in the instant she thought the murmur was a demon whispering to her, but it was only Tom repeating his question. Kira blinked, felt a cool breeze waft through her thick hair. “I’ll walk to the parking lot,” she said, dark eyes staring vacantly at the faraway asphalt. “Look for me.”

Tom said he would be there soon, and Kira flipped her phone shut. She didn’t move from her bench for several minutes, stared at the nature around her and gently rubbed her wrist. When she finally stood up, she focused on that stinging pain, and twisted it whenever her mind began to stray toward its infernal needs. She walked slowly, and only slower when several students paced by her, chattering away together or on their phones about how strange Kira looked, of course.

When she reached the parking lot she felt the presence of the nature behind her, sky scraping giants standing and gazing down at her curiously. Why do you ignore us? they demanded, making Kira quake and shiver. She sat down on the sidewalk, held her head tightly in her hands. Face us! they called, and she felt their presence grow. Burn us!

With tightened lips she let go of her head, slipped her bloody rubber band onto her other wrist and began pulling at it. Every lash that sunk into her skin shrunk the giants down, sent them skulking back into their green domain. Their commands lingered on the edge of her thoughts like a bad taste. She ignored them and huddled her legs close to her chest, twisted her rubber band tightly around her wrist until she knew it would start going numb.

Some time passed before she let it go and flexed her fingers around. Pins and needles assaulted her nerves as blood rushed back into her joints, and a certain calm fell over her when she looked out to the barren expanse of the parking lot. The black asphalt baking in the afternoon sun mesmerized her, its white and yellow lines warbling around in the heat.

Tom’s car slid in front of her view a moment later. Its silent electric engine always managed to sneak up on Kira. She picked her things up, opened the sleek white car’s door and stepped into its air conditioned interior. Tom was wearing a powder blue long-sleeved shirt, and despite the falsity behind his toothy robotic smile she found herself even calmer in his company.

“Let me see your wrist,” he said, icy blue eyes moving to the purple sleeve stretched taut over Kira’s wounded hand.

She pulled her seatbelt on and grimaced. “It’s not that bad.”

The car idled silently while Tom took his hands off the wheel and placed them in his lap. He stared at Kira, and when his steady gaze began to crack the fragile peace she had managed to construct, she conceded and pulled her sleeve up. Red crescents criss-crossed one another on her skin, the worst of them now clotted and crusty with flecks of dried blood. Kira kept her eyes elsewhere, hissed when Tom brushed his fingers across her inflamed skin.

“I think you did less damage when you were only pulling your hair,” he said. “Was class really that stressful?”

Kira pulled her sleeve back down, crossed her arms and leaned against the cool surface of her window. “Can we just go home?” she said.

Tom clicked his tongue, and after some hesitation shifted the car into gear. He turned up the light strings of some classical music that eventually let a soft smile crawl across Kira’s lips. “Actually,” Tom said as he pulled out of the college campus, “I thought we could have a bonfire.”

Her smile stretched into a grin and she sat straight up in her chair. “Right now?” she said, excitement bubbling in her gut. “For real?”

That hyena laugh escaped Tom’s lips. “Yes,” he said, “and yes. I’ve already got everything ready.”

Kira clapped her hands together, turned the music up while Tom began driving them toward the woods where they always held their bonfires. Ever since Tom took her along just one year ago, Kira had always looked forward to their fiery expeditions. Her head rested against her window again, she closed her eyes and reminisced on their past endeavors.

There would be a neatly dug hole in the ground, filled to its brim and thensome with the wooden skeletons of old furniture and scrap pieces of lumber. Tom prepared them by himself in various forest clearings, all of them carefully chosen for safety, and none of them ever in the same place twice. He would surprise her with a bonfire trip once per month, usually, but this one would mark the second time in the past three weeks. Kira couldn’t complain. After today, she needed the release.

It took them a half hour to leave the city proper and onto roads littered with fallen leaves and twigs. The woods were more brown than green, its skinny trees sparsely placed amongst the loamy earth. Squirrels and sparrows darted around the scenery, clutching their foraged food and watching in frozen silence as Tom’s car rolled past them.

He took a turn down a dirt road, fully enveloping them in the woods. Kira felt her excitement mount up in her throat, the sort of emotions kids went through the night before Christmas morning. She unzipped her backpack, reveled at the sight of her matches and pulled out her bottle of lighter fluid to feel its weight in her hands. She remembered dousing the last bonfire with a gallon of gasoline Tom had brought along, and licked her lips in anticipation of what he had in store for this one.

When they reached Tom’s latest firepit monolith, Kira wished she was less surprised.

The wood was stacked as it always was, meticulously organized into a monolith waiting to erupt into flames. The clearing was a safe distance from the surrounding trees, and its hole was lined with a healthy bunker of dark earth. There were even two collapsible chairs placed near the pit with a cooler between them, assuredly filled with roastable food and sweets.

The only difference was the bound and bloodied man pulling himself further and further away from the pit.

“Oh,” Tom said, switching off the engine. He got out of the car without sparing a glance to Kira, who sat frozen in her seat.

“Tom?” she called, and was answered by her roommate shutting his door. She watched him walk toward the man, his blue shirt and black slacks clashing brazenly with the nature around him. The man, whose feet were bound in thick rubber bands, quickened his struggling pace when he heard Tom coming up behind him. His screams were muffled from within the car, and grew to their full volume when Kira climbed out of it.

“Stay away!” the bound man yelled, his voice high-pitched, desperate. He crumpled into a fit of coughs when Tom sent a solid foot into his side, flipping him over onto his back. “Please, let me go!”

Kira stepped to the edge of the clearing and couldn’t make herself go any further. “Tom!” she called again, her voice strengthened by burgeoning panic.

Tom sent his foot savagely into the side of the whimpering man’s head, then finally turned to Kira. He flapped his arms out by his sides, met her gaze with his plastic smile. “Come over here,” he said.

She took a glance back at the car, held her lighter fluid close to her chest. “Who is that?” she said, and kept her feet still on the ground.

“You’ll find out,” he said, “if you come over here.”

With a dry gulp Kira stepped into the clearing. Memories of past bonfires began to flood her mind, how warm and welcoming they all were, all except for one detail: their smell.

She stopped next to Tom, looked down at the lightly breathing man. His clothes were filthy with dirt and deep dark red of dried blood. His wrists were raw, even moreso than Kira’s, with thick red bands arcing all around them. Clutched tightly in one of his hands she spied a sharp splinter of wood, and kept quiet about it. Similar scars marked his cheeks and the sides of his mouth, leaving them swollen and cracked. His eyes were puffy and malformed with purple bruises, and fresh blood trickled down from his newly broken nose.

The smell was always something Kira chocked up to chemicals on the furniture Tom threw into the fire, or even animal droppings buried in the ground. It was acrid and nasty and while Kira was assuaged by the roaring infernos, those odors never quite escaped her.

“This is how I deal with stress, Kira,” Tom said, kneeling down next to the stranger. He slapped his face around, gripped his marred cheeks tightly with a pale hand and laughed his hyena’s laugh. “I tie people up in these. . .” He reached down to the large bands tied up around the man’s feet, tugged them up and down violently. “. . . and I bury them in our little pits, and I have you finish the job.”

Kira held her lighter fluid more tightly, took her breaths in more quickly. She stepped back from Tom, felt her thoughts unbutton themselves in a surge of panic. Her memories turned into deafening screams, the dying throes of all the people she had burned alive for the past year. “Were they alive?” she heard herself say, and froze when Tom’s laughter echoed through the woods.

“No!” he yelled, and climbed on top of his captive. Tom sent his fist into the man’s face over and over, punctuating his every strike with words he spoke savagely to Kira. The victim’s screams gave way to becoming throaty gurgles of blood and spit. “They were all dead!” Blood arced up with his clenched hand, stained his blue shirt and flecked the leaves around him. “Every last one!”

He ceased his assault, and broke back down into another fit of giggles. “But this time,” he said, turning to Kira, “this time you were going to kill him.”

Kira yelped as Tom bolted up from the man and gripped her shoulder in one hand and her face in his other. She felt the hot blood that stained his fist slide against her cheek. “Because you’re so stressed, Kira,” he breathed, “and if this works for me, then it can work for you!”

He shoved her away after speaking, toppling her down to her rear when her legs wouldn’t support her anymore. She moved her feet up through the dirt, brought the close to her chest and hugged them. The blood stained rubber band around her wrist crept into her vision, and with grit teeth she tore it off and threw it to the ground. She did the same with her lighter fluid, buried her head into her knees and gave in to the pressing lump in her throat.

“Stop crying you-” Tom shouted, his words interrupted by a subtle squelch Kira didn’t bring her head up, only listened to the sounds of shuffling feet and labored breathing coming toward her. It was a giant, just like the trees before, wanting her to burn and destroy and burn and burn and

thump.

Kira looked up from her sobs, and saw Tom laying in front of her. A sharpened piece of wood was sticking out from his punctured neck, gushing out blood that pooled into the cracks of the earth below him. His body jerked and spasmed as he tried to force breath through it, to force words out of his trembling lips while his eyes locked with Kira’s.

Nothing came out, and after a while he stopped moving altogether.

The man, a bloody mess reaching helplessly for the dusky sky, whimpered in agony, but his throes were muted murmurs upon Kira’s ears. She watched as Tom’s blood crept toward her bottle of lighter fluid, picked it up with a shaking hand before they met one another. With a sharp breath through her nose she brought herself to her feet, staggered her way over to the bonfire and drenched it with every last drop the bottle had in it.

She retrieved her backpack from the car, yanked out a book of matches before tossing the entire bag into the pile. After several failed attempts to strike a match, she struck one up, lit the whole book up with it and dropped it into the monolith’s depths.

The fire took its time to start, crackling and popping from its center until it roared into a wondrous display of curving flames and floating embers. A growing ballroom of orange and red dancers, all of them moving in steps Kira was oh-so-familiar with. Movements and dips and dives all performed under and over collapsing pieces of lumber, snapping joints of disassembled chairs and tables.

It was everything Kira hoped for in a fire, and it felt cold to her now. Even in its flickering glow, she still wanted to yank her hair out, to chew her fingertips open one by one.

To pick up her rubber band, and spread its heat across her unfeeling skin.