The Bell Chime

by Mona Kabbani

But what I will tell you is that some of the most extraordinary creations are born in terror. Wielded from molten black . . . if only the wielder is wise enough to see the lava for what it truly is.

Missing: Have you seen this girl? She needs a reality check. Sometimes living in a fantasy isn’t better than facing your fears.

She both hated and loved how carefully he tiptoed around the subject of her mental integrity. Like she was a rubber band stretched so thin and his hands were made of knives.

All her life, ever since she was a young girl, she has been told that she is a beautiful crier. That even in the climax or wake of her most painful moments, she expels them into magic. Funny, because it seems to be that she is in a state of tears more frequently than not, and she supposes it is a good thing then that she does not cry ugly. That at least her depression is beautiful.

She wants him, but her soul is leaking from her body. He wants what’s best and she wants his perfection to seed into her. Ground its roots into her bones, break her and remold her and sprout branches of exquisiteness until she is consumed. Until there is nothing left of her.

“I would think you would be well acquainted with this by now, but we all try to block out that which pains us.”

If you enjoyed this story as it is, then I suggest you stop here. Continue with your breathing and shut this book out. Perhaps revisit it on a day you wish to feel that depression, as I know we all sometimes do, as masochistic as that may be.

“Not everyone is twisted as tightly as you are.

The anxiety prods at her like a bunch of dark demons trying to drag her to Hell. She won’t miss out on a good time because of them. She will calm down and she will have fun.

And she hated the fear in her mother’s eyes when looking over her daughter’s body. How the bruises covered her skin, track marks of what they called her long-term self-inflicted abuse. But that’s not how Lauren sees it. Her body simply shows where she’s been and what she’s done. Like a picture book.

And yet she makes this same mistake every time. Loses track of time or forgets it exists in the first place.

When she opens her eyes, she does not know that someone admired her in passing. She believes she most likely looked strange and wishes she could apologize to anyone she disturbed with her momentary lapse.

It’s late spring and these are late bloomers, but sometime soon they will bloom. Unfurl their delicate petals and greet the world with an open heart. She can only hope that the world will greet them with the same kindness.

Each of them thinks about how stubborn the other is being. How one needs to move on and the other needs to stay put. Because despite her mother’s best wishes, she isn’t ready to let go. And despite how hard it must be for her, her mother wishes she would.

The eventuality that everything is just as it is, that there is no explanation. No rhyme, no reason. These things just sometimes happen.

But what good is a future if you don’t want to live in it?

The time for sprouting into something beautiful and hoping the world will accept you with open arms and cradle you to strength. The time to grow or the time to die.

You’d be surprised how easy it is to justify screaming.

It won’t kill her. But hopefully it will get close. Hopefully it will kill what’s left of her sanity.

And he wondered. He wondered so deeply that as much as he wanted to be attached to her by the skin of their souls, he wondered if they could ever survive each other.

He winced and felt the scars heat up. You could have played his scars like a xylophone. Each one was so grotesquely raised, a blind person might have even been able to read them like braille. If they did, they would have read that these scars were indeed from a car accident. Only they didn’t appear until some time after.

Even in his absence, he still brought about destruction.

“You destroyed it,” Lauren said. She was looking down at his palm. At the poor thing, mourning its early death. “I didn’t mean to,” was all Dylan could say. There are many things Dylan Werner didn’t mean to do.

And it’s funny how sometimes the very thing you gift someone can be the very thing that pushes you away.

“Now tell me something,” Mr. Hardsteen begins. “Can you hear that bell chime?”

The garden blooms—the petals soft and comforting sink beneath her skin. She’s home. His pulse beats erratically in time with hers because they were cut from the same cloth. Destined to be together whether in prosperity or in destruction.

Even my survival is a nightmare.

She is happy. But that doesn’t mean it was the right choice. It also doesn’t mean it was the wrong one.

So, this is where I’ll leave you, dear reader. With a question that I hope doesn’t keep you up too late at night: What would you abandon for happiness?

Thank you for being there when I woke up.