Sweet Hope

It somehow made all this shit real.

Placing the title plaque by my feet, I then picked up a larger board. The lettering was the same non-descript font, the color scheme black against white. But there was a lot more writing, and I began to read…

“The sculptor’s inspiration for his dark and highly emotional ‘Exsanguination’ piece is one born of man’s intense inner conflict with guilt. The subject’s fetal position is due to his inability to face his grief, his inner turmoil bringing him physically to his knees. Each carefully black painted dagger plunged into the cracked Carrara marble portrays the heavy burden of sin on a soul, the reparation of man’s deliberate violation of morality. The punishing daggers are irremovable and a permanent reminder to the subject that his crimes can never be forgotten or redeemed. Nor can he ever be saved. He bleeds his guilt in an eternal ever-flowing state of desolation.”

As I finished reading the last word, I dropped the board to the floor and slumped back against my newest sculpture, feeling like my chest had been ripped open, exposed for everyone to look inside.

How the fuck did she know to write the board that way? How to write what I was feeling this way? How the fuck did she know how to read my work and me perfectly? Like a goddamn fucking book.

Feeling like my lungs were being squeezed in a fist that I couldn’t friggin’ fight off, I pulled out my smokes and lit one up. Taking alternate long hits of my Marlboro and huge swigs of my whiskey, I looked up and stared at the young marble boy holding a gun, crying red painted bullets and a fucking uncontrollable rage swept through me.

With every drag of my smoke and every swallow of whiskey, I was pushed farther and farther to the edge. Images of Levi’s rejection tortured my mind. Aliyana’s damn disgusted face when she realized it was me, Axel Carillo, not her precious Elpidio, Molly’s hand shaking in pure fucking fear as she took mine in hers. And that cunt, Rome Prince’s stupid fucking scowl as he glared at me with nothing but hatred, acting like he was Austin’s blood, not me.

Fuck them.

FUCK THEM ALL!

Standing, I began to pace back and forth on the studio floor, gripping the glass neck of the whiskey bottle tighter in my hand, the ash from my nearly-done Marlboro falling on my chest.

My heart beat faster and faster keeping rhythm with the heavy metal of Pantera’s “Walk” now vibrating off the walls.

I was done. I was done with trying to prove to everyone that I’d changed. I was done with this art bullshit, with motherfucking Elpidio!

I didn’t know how to do 'normal'. Because I wasn’t fucking normal! Never had been. Having a drunk abusive cunt of a papa, a cripple as a mother, and forced to be the man of the house at ten years of age kinda fucks up a kid’s idea of ‘normal'.

Draining the rest of the whiskey, I threw my head back and screamed out my fury, launching the bottle against the wall, hearing it smash.

Spitting my finished smoke to the ground, I marched to the workstation and poured a packet of coke onto the top, reaching into my back pocket for my driving license. Taking the rectangular piece of plastic, I chopped the powder into lines, that sense of excitement swirling in my stomach just imagining the hit that would follow.

I’d never got addicted to this shit, too busy pushing it on the streets, but I’d sure as fuck take a line every now and then, when things got bad. I liked the buzz, the damn mind-numbing buzz the magic dust takes away.

And I needed that now more than ever.

“…You’ve been in prison! Shit, Elpi! What we’ve shared these past weeks… what we shared last night… and you’re fucking Axel Carillo!”

Aliyana’s words throbbed in my skull, her disappointment feeling like the worst kind of migraine. I lifted my head to try and shake off the damn pain, only for my gaze to settle on the image of that fucking sculpture.

Levi…

Levi who couldn’t look at me with anything other than fucking contempt… The memory of him shooting me down today cut me in half.

With the whiskey running thick in my blood and that motherfucking sculpture torturing my mind, something inside of me snapped.

Seeing my hammer lying on the workstation, I picked it up, feeling the cold metal in the palm of my hands and turned to the almost completed sculpture. Wanting nothing more than to have it gone from my sight… gone from my fucking life, I positioned myself behind it, raised my hammer and—

“ELPI!!!! NO!”

Freezing on hearing her voice cut through the loud music and my drunk ass mind, I snapped my head to the doorway, only to see Aliyana friggin’ Lucia staring at me, mouth open and her hands held out trying to stop my destruction of this pathetic sculpture.