Once Upon an Imaginary Friend

If I had a cigar every time I pulled into the driveway just too sit there and stare into oblivion before I walked into the house, I'd have throat cancer. Regardless of the doom that impends on me like a dark cloud waiting to leech into my soul and drown me, being able to collect my thoughts with fire on the tongue always feels a little better.

In winter, the mere fact that I smoke more than I do in the summer scares me. Every winter I think to myself - This is the one that will push me over the edge and I will get hooked till I regret life altogether.

Of course, that's not the case. Forever I had this little voice laugh at me and tell me, "That’s not going to happen. You’d never allow yourself to be like that anyways!" Which, that little birdy rings true. I could never let myself slip like that. Makoto, my one and only support system, pulls me through the darkness when I don’t want to go on. Bearing the weight of my depression and picking me up with a smile or two, he is always there by my side when I need him the most – especially when it comes to writing. I could not have asked for a better friend to go through my crazy episodes together when I either sit there staring at the wall like a zombie or shake him into helping me act out scenes for a story.

One night like the others, I hung my head as I shuffled my feet against the reflecting concrete. Its tiny fake gemstones shined the stars up above and the full moon lit through the dark in matters that still seemed creepy. I actually pinched a thin short cigar between my knuckles for once. I seemed intoxicated with the way the filtered darkness danced onto the black sea below me and hugged my shadow. It was not long till my father trudged out in his sweater vest and unmatched plaid shorts to join me in the smoking festivities. Laughing even though stress ate at his lower back and caused him to walk in a plumber’s hunch of sunken shoulders, he pointed me to get inside to eat a dinner he slaved over - only having no one enjoy it with him.

So I did as my father asked, leaving him behind in the bone-chilling dark. Opening the door, the warmth of a house gradually creaking into its old wooden boards entered my pores. Sighing as if the heavens created a new world in my lungs with just the smell of meatloaf and clearance Yankee Candle, I felt more at ease for the first time that entire day. My skin crawled against the heat as I took off my jacket and thought about losing time with myself and my imagination.

"Hey, you’re home! How was your day?" It was then a spark dearly called into the hallway, bouncing its way to greet me at the door. Behind outdated cabinets picking at some remains of the meatloaf that made my stomach churn, stood Makoto in all his glory. He immediately sidestepped the counter at the sight of me and slowly but surely approached in a sense of caution to my every move.

"Hi," Looking to the kitchen behind him and then back into eyes that stood a couple of inches above me, I could not help but smile as well as I could. "It’s Wednesday... so take a guess."

He scoffed, choking to hide a laugh that I ignored, “Pretty shitty, huh?"

The truth sometimes comes too close for comfort in his words. Wednesday’s were not only the worst day of my week, but this one especially had been peeling away my guards and causing cracks in my shields.

Walking past his tall figure, eyes glued to the food and not to that radiating smile, my stomach sounded like it grew a mouth and sluggishly ate its way out of my skin. Giving quiet love to my father who was once again swelling inside his loneliness, his courtesy to my wellbeing beckoned me from atop the stove; a pot of pasta with my invisible name in his handwriting.

I felt Makoto follow behind me. I could only picture his posture as he studied me to make sure he said the right thing and never the wrong. His arms crossed over his chest, peeking over my shoulder to catch tiny glimpses of my face that were child’s play for him to read.

“You dropped the astronomy class, didn’t you?”

Stirring the poorly measured canned of Alfredo sauce, he hit the nail on the head with his golden hammer. I felt my forehead furrow into the act of my annoyance that pinged to the peak of Mount Everest.

“Makoto, let me tell you something… I would rather you choke me with this wooden spoon than talk about that astronomy class. EVER. AGAIN!”

I turned almost hitting Makoto in the face with the wooden spoon (I casually would rather have shoved down my throat) the front door opened. Freezing in my tracks, I peaked around the cabinets find my father taking off his jacket near the kitchen table.

His face lifted into the wonderment of my sanity as his mouth curled under to match the question at hand. "Who are you screaming at?"

"My phone. It's being stupid."

Good answer.

---

That was not the first time my father almost caught me acting and talking to someone that did not exist. When I was younger my dreams and fantasies were rapid. I had at least eight imaginary friends at once and I remember riding on broom sticks or turning into a fearless warrior with all of them. I still vividly remember a time when I was 10, where I told my father that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles want to play with me outside and we are going to save the universe together.

In those times when life appeared humble, I still like to believe I have the right for at least one imaginary friend. Even if I’m 22.

I ate dinner as my father spoke to fill that void he has inside him. Watching an episode or two of Law & Order: SVU, my father explained he was heading to bed and spoke sadness about missing my mother because she works too much.

For the rest of the night, I found myself escaping reality with Makoto. Sitting on the corner of my bed, I felt this immense pain and guilt. Makoto himself stood in the corner of the room, huddling against whatever depression burned his brain. I felt the need to scream- to cry- to fall to the floor and die. What I really craved was to shake him; to yell about how wrong he was about us and everything that fell from his mouth was a bag of lies he used to trick me into staying with him.

Behind his brunette bangs constantly shielding his face from the tears he did not want to show, his bottom lip flicked out under his teeth. He slammed his hands against the sides of his thighs with frustration probably eating at his core. When he breathed easy with a sensitive switch following through his shoulders and lifted in his face with a smile.

“Okay! How was that?” Sudden sharp tones of his voice caused a break in the air like a curse was lifted. My room’s ambiance of rustic and forever peace returned and put an end to the lingering livid tints it once had flying around.

Rolling my conclusions in a long groan, I sensed incompetence once again of fully grasping the true origins of my emotions, “Mmm- I felt it… but I didn’t really feel it.”

“Again? We’ll be doing the same scene for the 5th time tonight…” I could have sworn I saw his body almost fall over in double over and collapse like he got a sucker punch to the gut.

“Oh just the fight scene, please?” I clapped my hands together and a bright silver halo popped up over my head, along with the pout he could not resist.

He sighed. Throwing his hands about, he trudged over to me to sit beside me. “Anything for you.”

He really was my perfect mechanism of getting everything right. Acting out scenes and emotions only for a mere story that probably meant nothing, but meant the world to me, was the reason for my madness. If I don’t feel it- see it- believe it actually exists- then nothing made sense for me to write. Empty lies would become of it and I would no longer have an outlet that I so desperately required.

“You’re the best~!”

If timing and society were even more against me this night, a light knock echoed through my wooden bedroom door. Hearing a shuffle of feet underneath and possibly a clack of a wedding ring against a wine glass, a small cry out for attention and affection called, “Melanie?”

My mother and her sweet whispering voice caused me to stiffen and my face to fall into a frown of misfortune. The knock interrupted the scenes placement and totally disrupted the feelings I held for a scene I needed to write. My blatant disappointment in my mother’s appearance caused Makoto to snicker at me.

Throwing my fists in the air around my head as to release the growing distress (which was not helped by Makoto’s chuckling), I stood and walked to the door dragging my feet along the carpet. “Yeah?”

“Hi,” When the door swung open, my mother’s voice fluctuated in her happiness to see me and shivered lightly at the attention she received, “Who are you talking too?”

“It was Ren! She called me on Skype.” The excuse of my best friend and her internet presence presumed as the best lie I could give my mother without her wondering any more than she needed. I was not about to tell my mother that her daughter talks to a ghost of her own foolish head.

“Oh alright! I was going to watch Game of Thrones from the beginning… do you want to watch with me?”

The plea of her demanding to be with someone was so apparent, that denying such a request would have made me feel guilty. I smiled at her as she danced a tiny jig in the hallway convincing me to come with her. I just couldn’t help but laugh, only forgetting all of the things that made me troubled with her arrival.

“Of course! Let me grab my comforter so we can snuggle!”

“Tehehe- yay!”

I stood in the door way, watching her skip downstairs as she told me to hurry. Giggling to myself because sometimes my own mother reminded me of a child, I turned to Makoto who had stuck his nose far into some unknown book and sprawled out along my bed. He did not even notice me pull the comforter out from underneath his goofy apparition. What he did notice, was my struck middle finger as he started laughing when I practically tripped out the door because mother called for me again.

“I love you!” He practically screamed throughout the whole house, though I was only one who heard it.