Categories > Original > Drama

Buzzcut Season

by AmericanHorrorStory 1 review

It's buzzcut season, anyway.

Category: Drama - Rating: G - Genres:  - Published: 2013-11-18 - 1101 words

0Unrated
I remember when your head caught flame,
It kissed your scalp and caressed your brain.
Well you laughed, baby, it's okay.
It's buzzcut season anyway.


Lung cancer. He'd be dead in four months.

The news numbs her down, leaves no emotions buzzing through her iridescent veins. She is meant to be marrying this boy, this illness-ridden zombie and it kills her. It slices through her like a knife through butter. She loves him, more than anyone has ever loved him before. Even he knows it. He knows from the way she looks at him, with soft eyes and a coy smile. The idea of living a life without him by her side seems wrong, immoral.

Explosions on TV, and all the girls with heads inside a dream
So now we live beside the pool, where everything is good.


For the next few weeks, they stay locked in bed. Bed is their limbo, their safe place. In bed, they can forget about cancer and living and death and funerals. They are them when they're tangled in messy sheets. Holding hands and watching movies has become their entire life. He wheezes a little from time to time, but he can breathe steadily and that's the best part. He's always there, surrounding her, offering her comforting little kisses that shouldn't mean anything but to her, they mean everything because in a matter of seconds, minutes, days, months - they won't be being laid on her dry cheeks. Everything is good and safe inside their little safe haven, when they're connected by crumpled millimetres.

We ride the bus with our knees pulled in,
People should see how we're living.
Shut my eyes to the song that plays.
Sometimes this has a hot, sweet taste.


The radio is eternally on now. She figures that it keeps him happy - he's always said that he loves the sound of her voice, like a nightingale within a murder of crows. Chemotherapy has started now - a rectangular, reddening patch lies on his chest - it's where they aim the radiation, nurses told her for the first and second and third time. She's read all the cancer booklets back to front by now. The waiting room at the hospital is her second home. The receptionist knows her by name, and by the appearance she's tried so hard to maintain. Clean, ironed clothes, neat hair - it's slowly falling apart at the seams. Bags lay under her eyes now. They ride the bus home, listening again to the radio that plays sad songs. Whenever one particular song comes on, she shuts her eyes and wraps her arms round him, biting back the crystal tears that refuse to fall from her worn-out eyes.

The men up on the news, they try to tell us all that we will lose,
But it's so easy in this blue, where everything is good.


It's the programs now. She's moved the TV into their bedroom now. He's forever glued to the cancer programs, looking up cancer websites - every single one of them has provided no trace of hope. It's all blindingly real now - he's going to die soon, and she's going to have to bury him. She'll don the same black dress she wore to her grandmother's funeral, write a sickening eulogy and watch as her lover is dropped six feet under. There's no escaping it now.

And I'll never go home again (place the call, feel it start)
Favorite friend (and nothing's wrong when nothing's true)
I live in a hologram with you.


She swears that the uncomfortable plastic hospital chairs have now molded to her shape precisely. She hasn't gone home in around two weeks. The hospital staff have practically set her up a bed beside his. Day in, day out, she watches liquid pump through his veins. It's meant to be saving him. She thinks it's killing him. Some days, he won't respond to anything and some days he's so sensitive. The sickly sweet stench of vomit lingers round now. She guesses it's probably got something to do with the chemo.

We're all the things that we do for fun (and I'll breathe, and it goes)
Play along (make-believe it's hyper real)


His funeral is, to put it simply, the saddest thing she's ever had to do. His situation had been deteriorating for so long, it was almost painful. To watch someone you love die is the most heartbreaking experience the human mind can encounter, she thought. She didn't have the heart to let them turn off the machine that was keeping him alive. It was doing a shitty job, anyway. No, it was a pillow that brought him to his demise. With tears streaming ruthlessly down her face, she pressed the pillow down, choking down little sobs as he let out desperate gasps. The nurse had come in and comforted her when the act was done. "You're very brave," the nurse whispered as she held the crying girl in her arms.

The funeral kills her. She looks at the coffin, knowing that she helped to kill the body inside. She barely stutters her way through her eulogy. Halfway through the burial, she gives up. Everything is so achingly real and he's dead and there's nothing she can do to bring him back. The taste of her breakfast surges through her throat and she's doubled over now, spilling out the contents of her stomach. They splatter the ground, steaming against the cool wind.

She doesn't make it home that night. She's crying too hard. The road is a messy blur, and she's wiping her eyes every five seconds. She doesn't notice that she's driving the wrong way - she doesn't notice she's edging closer and closer to a cliff. She only notices when she - and the car - are falling, falling, falling. Everything is white for a moment. It's quiet, silent, scary. The silence is almost too loud. It's deafening, crashing over her. Her vision blacks out then, but not before she can feel a pair of arms wrap round her waist. It's him, her angel. He looks down at her with sparkling eyes, a warm smile curled on his chapped lips. It's like nothing's ever happened. He presses his lips to her forehead, still eerily silent. It's okay, though. He's here, and she is with him, and they are all that matter.

But I live in a hologram with you.

SAD THINGS. Yes, I am alive. And well. And totally in love and still 4"9 like how fucking tiny am I Jesus Christ. I'm sad and happy and idk.
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