On Lannister’s 22nth birthday, things were dreamy. He was the champion writer of the Yanmire Magazine team at Woodsworth Academy for the Gifted, he was the man of any particular hour that night because that night was his; and whether Lannister Macalester admitted it or not, he was in love with that feeling, raising champagne glasses and chin all in one to salute the times as they were. Those times were about his success.

For the better part of six years, he spent every waking hour being something. Unsure of what that was, he let himself settle into the new roles that needed accustoming to. Lannister made a well enough way for that better part of six years because he was still Lannister; intelligent and sensitive, modest and humble. He always believed he had the ability to see past a face, to see what was there behind eyes and flesh, to stare deeply into solace and know what was a bane and what was a blessing. He used to know when someone was upset just by looking at them, even when it wasn’t obvious, there was the first look—and the only look—and that one look was all it took for Lannister to be able to discern sadness from fealty and madness from guarded discontent. He had the perfect way; his way; of telling people he knew what they felt, and it was perfect, the way he made people love him. It was his mark of success—but it was also his greatest Folly.

The rules never quite applied to Lannister when he was himself, and not because he broke them but because he decided they were not there to hold him back. When he could think it was always about what he thought first and foremost, even when that was placed under much scrutiny. The rules were never first and foremost to Lannister’s mind, and so he left the first zone of comfort behind for the second zone of learning. He was learning well and better than he thought he would. Then, at some point after the better of six years, Lannister met a boy.

His instinctive nature was that of self-doubt. He was always a strange child, disdained by his difference from everyone around him, even his parents and his siblings. He was certain that his life should have taken place in a more large, more accepting world. When he graduated elementary school and walked into the front doors of Sacura Heights on that first day, he truly felt fear. He didn’t know what was to be found, but it was short-lived. He met kids as strange as he was, and he and they became glorious friends. They were friends for an unerring amount of time.

Within that time, he was part of the consistently accurate bond he shared with those friends because they constantly reminded him of who he was. They loved him for Lannister, because there was no other Lannister and it felt right to love him. Over those years he had a difficult time with people who appeared similar, both physically and ideologically; they made him feel like he was not himself. It tore him apart thinking that someone else was going to replace him. Yet at the end of all that hatred, he had only to look into a face and listen to a voice to know that it was not true. And there it is he would whisper to himself. There’s the difference.

Michael was the first mistake. When Lannister met him, he bore deep and expressive eyes into his face and he saw past that. For a moment, his mind told him, not yet. Wait.

But he didn’t listen.

His best friend, Elizabeth Edenwaith had introduced them to each other. Lannister sat on the city bus bound out of Riverside for downtown with her beside him, showing him pictures of this boy’s face—and it was the same at it always was, Lannister was amusedly skeptical. He saw a picture of this Michael but nothing changed in him. He was not moved to take charge of that bus and drive straight into the heart of love, and that was because it was not there. Time had not shifted into the exact moment where Lannister met the person he was saving himself for, and that was the ideal. But certain things made it hard for Lannister, and it was in his own mind that he had slowly began to gain confidence over those long years. Suddenly, Michael was the answer to those problems, and that confidence was no longer appreciated. The first of Lannister’s traits, humility faded out of existence. In its place came into view arrogance, materializing through his indignation of the world.

He was made to believe nothing of the over-confident sort during his childhood. Lannister’s father insisted that he and his sister take lessons in a Korean martial art with him alongside them. They trained for four years, and over that time he was not great. He was naturally mild, passive aggressive and quiet. When all the other students shouted in ferocious fervor, Lannister did the exercise and the techniques with boding silence and unheard determination. His sister Eireann was blunt and forceful and fit in very well in the class. His mother told him, Lannister you have to practice. That’s the only way you’ll get better. She was right, and he did. He became just as good as his sister, with age and tempering and discipline. He knew how to defend himself at the end of those four years, but he also knew how to achieve something. He knew work and sweat; he knew aching muscles and damaged pride. He knew failure. At the end of all things, he knew success because he worked hard and never gave up. He gained confidence.

When Lannister first met Michael, he looked as he always did and felt disappointment. The double-doors to the Footlocker mall entrance came open at a certain degree, and Michael stepped through, out of the world and into Lannister’s gaze. He wasn’t ugly, in fact he was the opposite. Michael was beautiful and heralding of himself. Confident. Lannister ignored his conscience and before anyone could blink, he destroyed himself. Within thirty days, Lannister’s second trait, modesty, had fallen to the ground and shattered into tiny fragments of the past. In its place, marked by blindness and misguided content, appeared immorality.

Michael was short lived under the influence of Lannister’s new traits, and they broke off from each other in different directions. Time passed between then and within the definable years that were coming to a close. He began to keep the company of people who knew of his prowess, who called him ‘great’ and ‘gifted’, taught him that there was simply no use in caring about other people. To say so fervently that he did not care about what others thought of him or did with their lives. His ultra-violet vision began to diminish, burning slowly but surely out of sight and mind like a chemical reaction that had no place to call home. There was strife in his mind, between Lannister and all the other feelings he had housed in his body. Surely, his beholden sensitivity began to numb and crack like dry hands on the hottest of pavements. He became insensitive to the world around him, and there was a lacking in his life. Lannister felt the first feelings of doubt in all the days he hadn’t felt them. Those memories came rushing back from the flimsy brick wall that held them in place.

Lannister met Mark online, without any precedent of who he was or what he wanted, only that he was attractive and he thought the same of Lannister. He had lived life at that point being swallowed up by the labels, putting them on every viable surface because he had convinced himself if he didn’t, then he wasn’t Lannister. He wasn’t the intuitive mess that he claimed to be, that by what means he figured could only be justified in naming himself psychic. That by what means he knew the words to every song could only be known in Memorabilia, and by what means was he even real if he had no labels to show for it? So Lannister took off his clothes, but not before listening to that constant accurate song of words in his head and dismissing them as fears or doubts. He took all the time he would have needed to keep the last, cognizant moment of himself, but he didn’t.

Lannister took off his clothes and posed in front of a mirror, and he slit the fabric of his being with the knife of stupidity. He took a picture of himself and sent it into the void of destruction. At that moment, Lannister had overestimated his intelligence. He could no longer think straight. And for a moment he stopped himself, and he ran a bath in front of that mirror. He sat in it and he thought long and hard. He let the brick wall fall clumsily to the bottom of his soul and the emotions came flying out of his mouth and his eyes like blood from a hemorrhaging brain. He curled himself up into a ball of regret and wept, but there were no tears. That acidic chemical had killed his feelings, and the glands behind his eyes exude nothing more than pathetic whines and dry cries for help.

Lannister realized that was what gave him the ability to see behind the face of a person. That by some mystical whimsy he wept for every person he came across, and the vision those tears gave was more than enough to see the tears of another, inside and out.

Elizabeth came to him the next day. He was a broken clock, potential for greatness and close. So close to greatness. She told him what he was and what he had been.

“You were intelligent, modest, sensitive and humble.”

“Now, you’re oblivious to reason, you’re immoral, you’re arrogant and insensitive.”

“You became so tangled up in being a ‘Writer’, so obsessed with being ‘that guy who reads Tarot’. You let the labels overrule what was right and wrong, you let them destroy who you were. You broke yourself.”

Lannister fell into her arms and wept for the first real time in a long time. She hugged him, standing out in the cold bus shelter in minus thirty degree winter. His tears froze almost as soon as they left his soft amber eyes. She smiled at him and told him it wasn’t over. Her words meant the world to him.

“There’s always hope, Lannister. You never truly lose yourself, only sight and sound of it. Go and get it back.”



He went home that night and was a mess. Lannister didn’t remember going to sleep, but the lights of his bathroom mirror faded out of existence, and he felt oddly warm as the bath water got colder around him.

He dreamt of a large, open room basked in harsh unnatural light, looking up at a white ceiling. He could not move his arms or legs. His neck was sore, and his eyes were leaden with lethargy. It took all of his strength to lift his head and look at his surroundings. He was strapped into a metal observation table wearing a virulent blue sleeveless gown, numerous thick tubes protruding from his bare arms and the backs of his hands. He looked to his right as his breathing began to trip and fumble, and beside him there was someone else. They were strapped just as he was, looking up at the ceiling with determination and clarity. Between the two tables was a stand with sharp operation tools and above those beeped machines that flashed different colored lights.

The other person turned his head and looked at Lannister. Moments, and it seemed like an eternity passed as he stared back into his own eyes. It was him.

There were other people in the room when Lannister twisted back to look around the open and empty space, all dressed in white and veiled in containment masks. They crowded around Lannister and his other body, wiping his wrists and arms with gauze and numbing agent as they prepared to inject translucent yellow liquids into him. The other people moved the trey of operation tools closer to Lannister, and his heart began to beat faster. He looked around him wildly, he turned his head to look at his other body but the people kept pulling him away. They pulled at his jaw as he tried to look back at the other figure extending a hand gently out towards him, smiling, asking him to stay awake. Lannister pulled at the tubes and ignored the frantic beeping, grasping for the boy’s hand, straining to keep his sight. The people around him struggled and tightened his straps as they prepared their operation.

Lannister grabbed the boy’s hand. They held onto each other for dear life, smiling, crying, gasping for air, and hoping; trying to find their way back to each other. They squeezed their hands tighter as the scalpels and syringes cut into Lannister’s skin, wet with sweat, opening him up and tugging at the edges of his sanity. He whimpered and groaned as he tried not to scream, keeping his eyes looking at his own. His other body smiled at him, tears rushing down his face he said,

“Lannister, wake up, you’re fine! Lannister, wake up, you’re safe!”

And the last thought that entered Lannister’s mind as he slipped out of consciousness holding this boy’s hand with cold metal instruments gouging his arms was that he was safe.

Wake up,

You’re safe.



The light in the room was natural—it was dawn—and the energy in the room was helped by the insurmountable number of yellow roses and tulips and the few stuffed animals surrounding his hospital bed. He awoke feeling gingerly to the indescribably warming smile of his mother.

“You’re awake.” Her voice was the heralding of good times and warm summer breezes.

“Wake up, you’re safe. Momma’s here to hold you.”

Outside the room, leading and underestimated neurologist Doctor Rayburn flipped to the patient assessment form marked Macalester, Lannister on his clipboard. He ran his pen down the page past medical and surgical history, going through his patient’s physical assessment. He smiled down at the thin page; blood loss, stress, anxiety, after-affects from self-induced psychosis, attempted suicide.

He took his red pen and wrote on the blank line under mental status, in gentle and cursive script,


Out of Touch.





He checked the tiny box beside it, capped his red and took a deep breath as he walked slowly into the room beside him.








“I see you lying next to me
With words I thought I’d never speak
Awake and unafraid

Asleep or dead.”
-
My Chemical Romance,

Famous Last Words