<a class="postlink" href="http://i833.photobucket.com/albums/zz260/TimeKeys/l13_zps73319dcd.jpg">[ img ]</a><br/>Marko Briant<br/>19<br/><br/>Marko had seen things he couldn't explain all his life. He tried to pretend it didn't exist when he turned fifteen but it seemed to follow him where he went. Maybe his dad would have been able to tell him what was happening but he vanished when he was too young to ask him about it. He had lost his dad at just two years old. He had always seen the dead or demons. Even when he was just a few months old. The first spirit he saw was great grandma Jenny. She was always watching over him and trying to take care of him when his mother seemed to forget. His second ghost was when he was a year and a half old. It hadn't been a nice ghost. It had been very scary and violent. His mother thought he was just having nightmares and he couldn't tell her otherwise. It plagued him for weeks and then one day...it was just gone. During those weeks he got cuts that his mother couldn't explain where they came from.<br/><br/>As he grew older he acknowledged the spirits. The worst things he saw was probably the demons. He tried to pretend he didn't see those as they scared him. Nobody would understand him. Nobody would believe him. The times he tried to tell his mother she told him he was crazy and to stop making up stories. So he began to sink into depression. He had no one who understood. He had needed his father but his father had just vanished. With no one to tell about what he saw the depression grew stronger. At fifteen he decided if he pretended the spirits, good and bad alike, didn't exist then maybe he could be normal. If he pretended the demons weren't there maybe they wouldn't talk to him. Just maybe. It was still majorly depressing to have a secret like this with no one to share it with. Depression became a major part of his life. His mother was heart broken because she had no idea how to help her son. He refused to take the medication they prescribed him. It wouldn't help a depression caused by seeing things no human should be able to see.<br/><br/>Over the years he would slip up and talk to a spirit in public. He made the mistakes of answering spirits. Of acknowledging some demons. Of screaming when a malicious ghost tried to hurt him. He made little mistakes and big ones alike. People began to wonder if he was crazy. He withdrew further until the day he met...her. She was beautiful and didn't see him as crazy. She at times thought he was odd but by this point he had gotten the skill of ignoring the things he saw almost down pat. Depressed or not she saw him and had let him close. She had taken a bit of the darkness in his heart away. Made him feel just a bit happy. After which he had many close calls. Many unexplained encounters with death that he walked away from virtually unscathed.<br/><br/>This didn't belie one secret that was bigger than seeing dead people and demons. He had learned to cut. To make sense of everything. To remind himself he was still alive. This he worked hard to make it so she didn't learn he cut himself. He cut because it was the only way to remind himself he was alive. That it made handling the depression and impossibility of what he saw easier. He cut off and on the entire time he dated her. He loved her in his own way. She was the first one to see him as a good guy. The first one to look past the depression and still care about him. She was all he had. All that kept the insanity boiling from the extreme depression at bay. He had cut himself the day prior to this. Why couldn't he just die? Some of the time he was tempted to cut until he bled to death but then remembered he had someone who cared about him so just cut to feel alive. Inside...he felt anything but alive.<br/><br/>He barely noticed that the people around him were dying ever since he met her. His close encounters with death just reminded him of the malicious spirits he avoided. The good spirits he pretended weren't there. And the demons he pretended didn't exist. He almost slipped up a few times around her. Then...she left him. Suddenly left him without a warning. Just told him it was over and didn't say why. He loved her greatly and this crushed him. Broke his will to care about living. They had been sharing an apartment. Now he sat on the bathroom floor with a knife in his hand and an arm exposed. What purpose was there for living when all he cared about left him. Just abandoned him for no reason. No explanation just up and left him. He had watched her drive away. Away from him and out of his life.<br/><br/>Now he was slowly sliding the blade across his arm. Traveling across his wrist and a bit up his arm. The cuts slowly letting free the blood. He watched it impassively. This just showed he was alive. It made the pain a bit tolerable. It didn't make him wish to live like it normally did. He wouldn't die. For some reason no matter how much he bled he didn't die. He held his arm over the tub where the hot water ran. Half leaning over the side as he sat there. His arm lying in the water. The knife held limply in his other hand. Just watching his blood trailing down his arm. Watching it river its way down past his fingertips and into the water. His eyes filled with anguish and more depression than he had ever felt. The cuts were deeper this time. Probably made that way due to the fact...he didn't care what happened. He felt alive. He could feel the pain and stinging as sometimes the water splashed up onto the wounds.<br/><br/>It didn't matter. She was gone. He was utterly alone to deal with the depression and a world he was trying to pretend wasn't there. His eyes just watched the blood trailing down his arm and into the water his arm was lying in. "She left me...and I don't know why. This proves I'm alive. That I can still feel pain. It doesn't help the earth shattering emptiness I now have in my life." He said. The knife falling from his hand that suddenly was going limp. It clattered to the floor and he didn't bother to pick it up. Maybe this time he could escape. All those close encounters with death. It was like something wouldn't let him die. Like something was refusing him a final resting place. To be refused death was depressing. He hadn't barely noticed that it was because of his girlfriend that all those things were happening. Yet it was like he wasn't meant to die. That he was forced back each and every time. Why did he have a feeling this time...this time wasn't going to be any different.<br/><br/>"Shawna...love you..." He said. He always said that to her but now he was saying it to empty space. To the space that she usually filled. He always cut himself but usually when he was alone and the depression was too much to handle. When he felt dead inside he cut to remind himself that he was alive. This time he cut because nothing mattered. It was to remind him he was alive but for what reason. He had a feeling...this time he wouldn't be allowed to die either. Why did death care if he died? He was just a human. Why was he always allowed to live when by all rights he should have been dead. He was beginning to drift off into a blood loss induced sleep. He wouldn't be allowed final resting this time either. His eyes began to close. The hand that had clutched the knife open and limp the way it hovered over it. "Shawna..." He said to himself as he let his eyes close. Just a little bit of rest wouldn't hurt.