The Perfect End
Murder wears a friendly smile,
like the perfect end in a plastic vial,
no pain.
Sorry I can't seem to stay,
but this bird was meant to fly away.
-Hanson, "Believe"
It isn't normal, this perverse, disgusting obsession that keeps me up at night. But its my secret to bear. Natalie curls closer to me in bed, blissfully ignorant of my inner torment. She murmurs in her sleep, something that may have been my name, and reaches for me. She's a beautiful girl; anyone can see that. So why can't I just let myself be in her arms? Why don't I want her the way a man should want his wife?
And why do I ask myself questions when the answers are all too obvious?
I carefully slip out of bed, making sure to leave her sleeping. I walk into the tiny bedroom next to our's, where Ezra lays sleeping peacefully. I lean over the crib's edge, brushing a hand down his back, over his head. So tiny still, so perfect, so unaware of the issues that the rest of us around him are dealing with. He's given me new life, faith that sometimes even the utter shit of this world can produce beauty, purity, flawlessness. He coos softly, shifting to pull his blanket closer, and I take that as my cue to leave, so that I don't wake him.
I close his door gently, and immediately my legs start moving towards the next bedroom, of their own volition, though my brain is telling them to stop. In that room lays someone as beautiful as Natalie, as perfect as Ezra, and someone completely and totally off limits. Zac.
I open the door anyway. I step silently inside, thankful that my eyes are already adjusted to the dark, to avoid the piles of clothes, video games, and notebooks of lyrics and sketches that he has strewn all over the floor. I move a pair of pants from the chair by his bed, watching him as I sit down, ensuring that I haven't woken him up.
His hair is growing out again, getting wavy, so that it always looks unkempt, making me ache to brush my fingers through it. He sleeps sprawled out on his back, the glow from the window above his bed tinting his cheeks, nose, and full, sensuous lips with an unearthly orange light. His blankets have long been kicked away, only the sheet remains, twisted around his bare torso, with one of his calves stuck out from underneath. I know he sleeps in boxers, but as of this moment, with his hair mussed and the sheet tangled around him, he looks like he's recovering after incredible, back-arching, toe-curling, mind-blowing sex.
Fuck. I'm so far gone. I shouldn't ever think of him that way...let alone allow the thought to linger on in my mind. This is beyond taboo, it is freakish, twisted, but I can't make it go away. It takes all the strength I have just to fight it.
I push myself up from the chair, standing next to his bed for a moment, staring at him. I hesitantly hold a hand out, brushing his hair back from his forehead. He lets out a soft murmur, one that, if I close my eyes, almost sounds like he could've made it while my fingers brushed over another part of his body entirely. The quiet sound is enough to make my pulse quicken and my palms dampen with sweat, so I pull my arm back to my side, a wave of panic rushing over me.
I need to get out of here.
As quickly as I can without waking him, I flee his bedroom. I continue down the hall until I'm in our living room, standing in front of the picture window overlooking New York City, my hands pressed to the cool glass. Nights like tonight make me wish it opened, so I could feel the air, hear the sounds...judge the distance between our 17th floor apartment and the always busy street below.
Sometimes it just gets to be too much, this constant battle for our art; sometimes I wonder if all the struggling is worth it. But those, our problems as a band, aren't enough to make me suicidal. It's everything else that pushes me to the brink of stepping off the ledge. Loving a woman so much, but having difficulties even touching her. Having a baby that stares at me as if I have all the answers in the world, when in reality, I can barely get through each day without feeling like my sanity's giving way. And the worst...harboring a secret that could ruin everything good in my life: my marriage, my relationship with my son, my entire family, even my music.
It happens all too often, my questioning if any of this is worth it, if things would be better if I was simply gone, no longer existent. Natalie, with the help Isaac and Zac and my family would be sure to give her, could easily raise Ezra. My brothers would continue to make music without me. My family would miss me, but they would recover, they're resilient and strong.
I could just break the window and soar into the night air. Quick, with a bang, a simplistic mar on an already dirty sidewalk. Or I could just empty all of the bottles of medication in the bathroom and chase them with the nearly full jar of vodka on the kitchen counter. Painless, a quiet slipping away from this world, from the pain and the self-hatred. Either way, it would be over in no time, and all of this would stop mattering so much. The blank darkness calls to me, luring me, looking so intricately beautiful and desirable.
"Daddy!" Ezra cries, jolting me out of the relaxing chill of the numbness pulling at me, that familiar haunting of silence and emptiness. The warmth of reality encases me again, and I take my hands away from the cold glass of the window, turning my back on the harsh, garish lights of the city. With that one word from my son, the blackness retreats for another night, quietly slipping into my subconscious, just waiting for the next time it can try to lure me away permanently.
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