Stories

springbreaakkk – E.W. Farris

*:・゚✧?ʀɪɴɢʙʀᴇᴀᴋ[2017]

The agony of his broken heart or whatever. The heartbreak caused by the girl with the pouty, pouty face.

His sneakers hit the pavement. Joshua walks home from the bus. He walks up his driveway, cold.

Their spring break came early that year.

—12:45am     Tues

+

msg.

of all the
girls in the
world i end
up with u. . .

( _ _)

Joshua takes his shoes off at the door.

—1:00am     Tues

+

msg.

and am i
gonna feel
like this
forever?

Joshua skates on the hardwood with his socks on. He skates into the kitchen.

The money is on the dinner table.

Joshua tucks it inside his pocket.

He opens the refrigerator. Joshua takes out bread and mayonnaise and then lunchmeat. He lathers mayonnaise on the bread. Joshua thinks “Lucy.” He cries onto the bread.

—1:03am     Tues

+

msg.

i dont wanna
feel like this
forever. . .

Inside his bedroom he opens his retainer case.

The pill belonged to his mother. It was the winter after the grandfather died. She was prescribed medication and refilled often.

Joshua pops the pill.

—1:07am     Tues

+

msg.

but i guess im
gonna feel
like this
4ever

(つ﹏<)

Joshua thinks about making coffee. The pill had only made him touch the house plants repeatedly before he felt tired. He sits on the couch.

It is nighttime when the doorbell rings.

Joshua stands up.

The doorbell rings again.

A voice says “Joshua?”

He pulls at his hair.

The voice says “I can see you through the window.”

Joshua sees them sitting on the counter.

Dad always forgot them when he went on a trip.

The front door is opened.

He says “I’m high.”

“The sunglasses gave it away,” says Daniel.

—12:01pm     Wed

+

msg.

thinking
abt how
ur with

him

– lil peep

Daniel says “Where’s your dog?”

They sit in the living room.

“Dead,” Joshua says.

“What?”

“It kept shitting all over the place,” he says. “We put it down.”

Joshua pushes his sunglasses up.

Daniel says “That’s terrible.”

Joshua looks down at the shoebox on Daniel’s lap. He says “Do you have the stuff ?”

Daniel blinks. “Yeah.”

Joshua removes the money from his pocket.

“Where are your parents?” asks Daniel.

“I don’t know.”

He laughs. “You don’t know where your parents are?”

Joshua sighs aloud. “Cruise.

“For the whole break?”

“Yes.”

Daniel says, “What kind of cruise?”

Joshua digs his fingernail into his palm.“They didn’t tell me.”

“Like warm or cold?”

“They didn’t tell. . .”

“Well, which one would you think they’d go on?” asks Daniel. “Warm, or cold.”

That takes a second. “Warm.”

Daniel drops the shoebox on the table. He grabs the money from Joshua. Daniel says, “I’m sorry about Lucy.”

Joshua locates the same lump in his throat.

“What about her?”

 

“I heard you guys broke up.”

He scoffs. “We were never together.”

 

“Really?” Daniel turns around. “Is that true?”

 

“Yeah,” Joshua says.

 

“Richard will love to hear that. Doesn’t want there to be any beef or anything.”

 

The lump increases in size.

 

“I’d like you to leave,” Joshua says.

 

Daniel shrugs. He walks to the front door. “And Joshua,” he says, “would it kill you to not be a moody bitch all the time?”

 

— 3:27pm     Wed

+

msg.

 

i hate
myself
more than
u ever could. .

_

There were LSD tabs and several grams of weed in the shoebox. There was a bong. Joshua was not old enough to buy a bong.

He climbs upstairs to the bathroom.

 

— 9:24am     Fri

+

msg.

 

i know that
im crazy but
pls bb would
it kill u to call
me. . . (◕︿◕✿)

On his iPhone Joshua plays rap music. He picks tiny pieces from a clump of a weed. He puts them into the bong. Joshua plays a podcast about the Sopranos.

He sits down on the toilet.

Joshua takes a hit.

The podcast could finish their thought on the role of antihero.

Joshua stands up and paces.

The podcast talks about character development. It talks about how everyone seemed to crumble in the end.

He trips face first into the shower mat. He drools on the shower mat.

The podcast mentions how nobody ever changed.

Joshua lapses into the memory of his bleeding heart.

??? ????????

 

In the kitchen Joshua searches in the refrigerator for a drink other than alcohol. He had just danced for an hour.

Lucy leans on the counter. She scrolls though her iPhone.

The party is at its peak.

Joshua walks up with a glass of orange juice. Lucy blows vape smoke above his head. She says “Where are your friends?”

Joshua blinks.

Lucy points to her nose.

He says “Oh.” Joshua says “They’re not my friends.”

Lucy nods. They had the hour before done coke in the bathroom with two boys who had lined up lines on the granite next to the sink.

There is only the sound of music.

“I like your crop top,” he says.

She doesn’t look from her phone. “Thanks.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Where’d you get it?”

Lucy says “Internet.”

He bites into his tongue. “Are you new in town?”

“No, I just transferred to Evergreen,” she says. “That’s why I came here. . . to make friends.”

She takes a vape hit.

Joshua says “You came alone?”

She blows out the vape hit. “I was ditched.”

She returns to her phone.

Joshua says “I fuck with your middriff.”

“Huh?”

He takes a big sip of his orange juice.

“Your middriff looks like it’s from a Renaissance painting.”

Lucy says “Do you wanna get out of here?”

“I don’t drive.”

She takes him by the hand and together they cut through the party crowd. Joshua breathes out cold air. Lucy thumbs at a key pad. They are outside.

Her car makes a noise.

Lucy says “I’m hungry.”

—7:02pm     Fri

+

msg.

 

i wouldve
died for
you
</3

 

 

Joshua rises from the shower mat. The podcast talks about Italian Americans. He exits the bathroom.

Joshua collapses onto his bed.

He pulls out his iPhone. Joshua holds it above his face. He takes a photo. Joshua looks at the photo.

He overthinks his existence.

 

??? ????? ????

 

They sit in the Taco Bell parking lot listening to Lil Peep.

She says “You make me feel fat.”

“Why?”

“You’re not eating. I’m eating.”

Lucy bites into her burrito.

Joshua says “You shouldn’t. . . feel that way.”

Lil Peep finishes a verse about his drug addiction.

Lucy pulls a blunt out from her bra. “Do you have a lighter?”

In the backseat they hold hands while stoned.

Joshua says “I think you’re very pretty.”

Lucy says “I think you’re pretty, too.”

Lil Peep sings about heartbreak in a punk whine.

“Can I tell you something?” she asks.

“Yes. . . tell me. . .”

“I don’t have any friends.”

Joshua snorts. “Me either.”

“No,” she says. “Like.”

She struggles to get it out. Joshua rubs his nose on her neck. She leans into him. They smell each other in secret.

Lil Peep finishes a verse about dying young.

“Basically in ninth grade there was this group of bitches who for whatever didn’t like me, who actively despised me, and I’ll spare you the drama but basically I was so miserable that I had like a breakdown in front of my parents and kept screaming that I was gonna commit suicide if they ever, ever made me go back to that fucking school.”

She finishes the blunt.

“They caved in and let me drop out and so I started doing online school and the thing about online school is that you only have weekly assignments and I would do all of them in a day like super caffeinated. The rest of the time I would watch movies and listen to music and smoke weed.”

“That sounds sweet.”

“But like. . . I never left my room.”

He puts his face into her chest.

“Why’d you transfer to Evergreen?”

“My dad thinks I need to socialize.”

Lucy sticks her fingernails into his back. They make eye contact. She climbs on top of him. They kiss with passion and tongue.

The Lil Peep album finishes then repeats from the beginning.

 

— 7:02pm     Fri

+

msg.

 

it takes like
three seconds
to txt back. . .

 

(;´д)

Joshua texts Lucy three more times.

He says “I’m gonna kill myself.”

Joshua takes another selfie.

the flower

 

Lucy says “It’s not that I don’t want you to.” She says “It’s just that I don’t want you to think you have to.”

“I’ve never wanted anything more in my life,” he says.

“Shut up.”

Her pants are half removed at the knee.

Joshua says, “I love giving head.”

Her underwear is exactly what he imagined. They have a pattern like a doily.

Joshua kisses down her stomach.

“I can just give you a blowjob,” says Lucy

He smooshes his face into the doily. Lucy’s body moves in rhythm. He finishes removing her pants and gives a kiss to the inner thigh and kisses above and around the flower and, when he slides her underwear away, she produces a wet gasp and locks her legs around him and—

 

It would be a moment he would return to like frozen pizza. It would be after she blocked his number and all the issue which rose from their falling out. It was after Joshua texted her over one hundred times without any of the messages delivering.

 

He’d return to it late at night with his face in the pillow, weeping.

 

+ mood: (⁄ ⁄⁄ ⁄) joshua_haha

Post:

 

i will be feeding myself lsd until i ‘transcend’ or die or maybe both ha ha ha
i will record it all here

JOSHUA MELTDOWN: 2%

 

The delivery driver looks at Joshua.

Inside it smells like marijuana.

Joshua does not make eye contact.

He says “Is this the veggie pizza?”

The delivery driver rolls his eyes back. “Go ahead.”

Joshua opens the box.

He does not do the math for the tip.

In his bedroom Joshua sprinkles LSD tabs on the pizza. He strips nude and eats in the dark.

 

 

+ mood: (´~`) joshua_haha

Post:

 

i got pizza as like a ‘last supper’ and i wanna fast so i can lose weight and look more aesthetic and i also heard not eating makes the high more intense or ‘trippy’ or whatever but if im being honest its mostly to lose weight . . .

 

JOSHUA MELTDOWN: 9%

 

Joshua finishes eating the pizza. He turns on the speakers for his room. He turns on the strobe light. He plays music.

Still nude he does twenty-five push-ups.

He does fifty squats.

He performs a specific ab exercise.

Then does it again.

 

+ mood: (^-^*)joshua_haha

Post:

ok ok ok

 

think im starting to feel sum

 

JOSHUA MELTDOWN: 16%

 

Joshua stumbles away from the laptop on his desk.

 

The music plays while the anime segues into its outro. The strobe light project colors at a fast rate. Joshua is focused on his hand.

 

+ mood: (^-^*)joshua_haha

Post:

 

*  her pouty face

:*:・ 。 .

*  . . .”transform”

 

*  my aesthetic image

 

*  the power of my new aesthetic

 

* (˶◡‿◡)(´ `)

 

*  most beautiful boy in the “image. . .

★⌒ヽ

 

*  ugly :*:・ 。 . ˚º·

*  I Will Purge It From My Soul

)つ━━✫・*

⊂ ノ ・ ゜ +.

し ー ー J ° + *´¨)

*  dfsalhjflesio;ewf;iklkl;

*  

¸.·’* (¸.·’* (¸.·’* (¸.·’* (¸.·’* *¨)

*  the look of her pouty, pouty face

JOSHUA MELTDOWN: 22%

 

. . .and as he does more push-ups he becomes aware of his experience like a 4D ride at a theme park where they would project a movie on a screen and did whatever matched the movie like splash water or jerk you around in your seat and Joshua feels the same detachment as he did when he rode those rides except now it’s for his own life and the seat was in a place where he could not describe; and his push-ups made him bob up-and-down such that his head was in the air and his nose to the carpet and there was nothing, nothing but but up-and-down, not the sweat leaking or the muscles which felt wobbly, it was just the push-ups that he hoped would erase his every memory, like the memory of her stretched across the bed, vaping, (up-and- down) until he is gasping for air, until exhaustion spreads like a virus all over his body, until—

 

the humiliation

Joshua tries on clothes in the mirror.

 

Lucy lies across the bed.

“Can I keep this one?” asks Joshua.

He poses in a striped sweater.

“No” she says.

“Please?”

They were in her bedroom. It was after their date at the mall.

She says “Would you pay me?”

Joshua lies on the bed and onto her.

Lucy stands up. She stares at the door.

“I’m seeing someone.”

“What?”

She says “I’ve always been seeing someone.”

Lucy sucks on the vape.

Joshua notices his heartbeat. “As in. . .?

“As in we’re seeing each other,” she says. “As in it was on and off but I guess now it’s strictly on and so. . .”

There is a silence.

“Who are you seeing?” asks Joshua.

He chokes on his own tears.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

+ mood: (^ 。 ^;) joshua_haha

Post:

 

Sophie’s It’s Okay to Cry

 

 

image

∀`)*゚         +through

゜゚*

*crying        +birth

´• •`̥ into

 

her bosom       image

                  —

image

 

+mom

image

*  ”beauty” +door

(´•̥̥ ̥̥̥`̥) +her

 

image   *how i will

always

´ 。 `)return       +wet
           to

       feeling—!

image

*even

         after    image    +image

image

      all

        this

           time

 

 

JOSHUA MELTDOWN: 28%

 

Joshua cries into his hands while the Sophie video plays on his computer. His sweat is cold. He reaches for the bong that sat on his desk—

 

the humiliation (cont.)

 

And he did what he always did in those situations which was put up a casual front before crumbling under the weight of his emotion. He not only wept but would question his pattern as to what point did they decide to dump him. He wanted to know, he explained, so he could better participate romance with the next person. But this was bullshit. It was just an execuse for Joshua not leave and in the hopes that

—as they were explaining—they would decide midspeech not to break up with him. With Lucy it is dif-
ferent. . .

 

JOSHUA MELTDOWN: 35%

 

Joshua blows smoke out bong. The heat of his room now had the same comfort of the womb. He turns back to his laptop.

 

(cont.)

. . .in that she kept staring ahead at the door. He says, “Are you not going to tell me?” He says, “You should at least tell me.” Lucy bites down on the vape. She keeps the pouty expression since breaking the news.

This makes Joshua cry even harder. “Why are you so cold?” he asks. Lucy blinks. She describes a deadness that started the first time she saw her vagina leak blood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

+ mood: ˚º·(˚ ˃⌓˂̣̥ ̣)º·˚ joshua_haha

 

Post:

 

Charli XCX’s Vroom Vroom

 

 image image*:.. *・゜゚・* imageimage

_image  +  *bb    +tight.    *bb

+tight⇒_m _

 

 +pouty, pouty           . imagei

 

(•)* * i feel*・ ゜ ゚・

 

 

=. bb][pls.    !!    image

 

+sexdeath .imagei.

 

 

━━━━||Φ|(|T|Д|              image

 

*Suicide By Choker

 

T|)|Φ||━━━━

||)Φ||+cutting ….

 

 

image * for u

 

*:...*・゜゚・*        image

 

image

image

\○_⇒_/\○_

 

 

 

 

 

*:..:**:.. \ . . image. ‘) ハッ

 

+Edge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*pls=*bb                *

 

 

JOSHUA MELTDOWN: 41%

 

Joshua tries on a turtleneck. The collar chokes him. The fabric digs into his skin. He puts on a pair of tight underwear. It forces his private parts into one position.

 

(cont.)

But oh please, oh please, if she could let him know, please. Joshua sinks down onto the cries on the carpet; and he knew that he was making an ass of himself and knew that it was probably better to just move on and just bid farewell forever but he would not—could not—behave in a way which would spare him pain. So he kisses at her toes. He begs to know who she was fucking. Lucy looks down on him in contempt. She says, “Do you really wanna know?” and sticks her foot inside his mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

+ mood: ˚º·( ‸ ◕&) joshua_haha

Post:

Lil Peep’s “Cobain” (ft. Lil Tracy)

 

+white dick

 

his     +taste!

°°°°+lookalike

+omg          ° °

°°°(*´﹃`*)+semen

♡  ♥  ♡ +omg      

 

image  +lookalike.        ( ´,_」゚)

  +lookalike ♥   image ♡      ♥°。    °。♡

image

 

————-««○ ✧*:・゚✧image

♥  ♡image    ♥ ♥    ♡    ♥° 。    ♡

 

+peep (R.I.P.)(◞≼⓪≽◟°°

*⋛⋋◞. od image. * ・image

 

xx ・    image +omg image

inside me♡ ♥xxx

 

♡     image     。 ° +richard          x.

♥   ♡   ♥   ° 。 ♡ ;;;:;

;:\. °    。 ♥+cock.

*:・゚       xoxo . . .

 

image

image

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOSHUA MELTDOWN: 53%

 

There is a pain in his chest. Joshua coughs out smoke. In the car the father argues with the mother. His lungs are on fire. “The sunglasses,” the father says. “I cannot leave without my sunglasses.” The mother opens the window and receives the cold air like holy water. Joshua reaches again for the bong.

 

(cont.)

Her foot goes deeper into his mouth. “I let him,” she says, “fuck me. Have we ever fucked?” He shakes his head. His erection becomes stronger. Joshua makes a quit plea with his eyes. Tell me more.

 

JOSHUA MELTDOWN 60%

 

The parents drive into the neighborhood. Joshua gets his on his hands and knees. He gets into push-up position. The mother says, “You idiot.” She says, “You complete idiot.” The pain in his chest is a tiny dagger. The father pretends not to hear. Joshua places the bong next to him on the carpet.

 

(cont.)

“His thing,” Lucy says, “is larger than your thing.” Her foot is driven deeper down his throat. She says, “And you know how he is tall and blonde and skinny?” Joshua nods. “Well, that’s what his thing is like. It is tall and blonde and actually not skinny, no, no, not at all skinny, no. Thick. Do you wanna hear about a time we fucked?” A single tear runs down his cheek.

 

JOSHUA MELTDOWN 75%

 

Joshua places new weed inside the bong, lights it. Joshua inhales then gets into the pushup position. In the car the father turns down their street.

 

(cont.)

“It was right before the party where we met. I fucked him in the bed right here. I let him fuck me with- out a condom because I like when people fuck me without condom. But then he came early and I was pissed.”

 

 

Joshua does push-ups. The parents park in the driveway.

JOSHUA MELTDOWN 81%

 

(cont.)

“It was the same night where you eat me out. Do you remember? I tired to warn you.”

 

JOSHUA MELTDOWN 84%

 

The agony of his broken heart of his broken heart or whatever. It felt like a rising heat. It felt like someone pinching it. Joshua reaches ten pushups. The smoke is still inside his mouth. He does fifteen pushups.

 

(cont.)

“The taste,” she says, “of another man.”

 

JOSHUA MELTDOWN 91%

 

Joshua sees squiggly lines in his vision. He does twenty push-ups. The parents open the front door.

 

(cont.)

Lucy removes her foot from his mouth. Then she walks over to her bedroom door and opens it. “Now if you don’t mind I need to do my skincare routine.” Joshua leaves head down without taking off the turtleneck.

 

JOSHUA MELTDOWN 98%

 

Joshua collapsed on the ground. He pulled the turtleneck over his face. The same deadness that Lucy had described leaked into his whole being.

 

JOSHUA MELTDOWN 99%

 

The parents opened the door to the horror show.