Safe and Sound

Warnings: implied nightmares and depression

The story is inspired by the song 'Safe and Sound'



You really are the best actor I have ever met. Although your act never convinced me the way you intended. The curve of your lips seems so natural, so suited to you, and when your dimples never reached your eyes, my eyes did. In a crowd of people, you tower over everyone. Not because everyone is too little in front of you, but because rays of the sun bloom out of you. In the crowd of your mind, you are nowhere to be found. Not because you believe you are too little, but because tides of water overflow your space.

I know because lakes fall out through the cracks in the poorly closed space called 'you'. I know because you haven’t responded to the knocks on your door.

You don’t realise because you’ve been standing there, waiting. You are under the impression that everyone is convinced, and you are not wrong. Most people are. Yet, as an outsider wanting to be let in, I can see your lights flicker in the lonely night. When all the lights go off, you crave to be held in a way that allows you to die down and crumble and scream. And what would be the point of being a waiting outsider if I never had the chance to be let in?

And it takes years for that door to open and the tides to burst out and clean away every single trace of you, but water still clings to your clothes and the flames still burn in your window.

On the other side of the door (POV change)My spinning head does not let me focus on what I need. I am dreaming a dream every night. The world only asks me to fall and I listen like a fool, descending into an endless abyss of nothingness. As I fall, I can see myself by the edge, watching my body plummet to my own end. A series of flashing lights blinds me every night and the next day, my eyes reopen to see my room. I am dreaming of a nightmare every night.

As my body falls in my dream every night, parts of myself rip away and fall with it. Lost myself in a never-ending tunnel of grey and periwinkle, heart still white, a carved symbol of black roses devouring shades of innocence.

I could stand in front of my mirror all day and witness the water overflowing my room as if it was routine. I could until you knocked on my door.

Now the door is open and so are my feelings. You stand at the frame as water continues to flow out of my room. Fresh air replaces tears in my room and in my lungs. As I don’t have it in me to smile and allow it to reach my teary eyes, I know your eyes reach mine. And as we stare into each other’s pools of green and brown, I realise drowning in them would be much finer than falling in my mind.

You stay there for what seems like forever until you finally move towards me a little too fast, almost as if you are making up for all the times you weren’t here.

Now all I know is that I sit on the periwinkle chair in the middle of the room, the same colour as the tunnel I once fell in. All furniture in this room vanish into the abyss, the same end I once fell in. You on my lap, arms around my neck. My head on your chest, tears in our hair. You merely touch me for a second, and my black roses morph to red, gracing the white. You ask me to cry and scream and like a fortunate fool, I listen.

I dream a dream every night and a part of me hopes this is not one of them. Part of me must be wrong when you feel so perfect in my arms and so fictitious in my mind. At the same time, you are the most real I have ever felt. The closest thing to existing proof that I am not insane. Water still continues to flow out of my place and the window still continues to illustrate the same image of everything around us burning, but at this point, I could care less.

It has been long since one held me like this and I finally crumble and break and scream. Hiding despair behind a smile that never reached my eyes, I forgot how to laugh. 

Of course, water still clings to my clothes and of course, the flames continue to rise higher and higher but how could I focus on that when I have you here next to me, whispering in my ear:

“Just close your eyes, the sun is going down You’ll be alright, no one can hurt you now Come morning light, you and I’ll be safe and sound.”