YBFJ

Chapter Five: Hello, Wall

Every card says the same thing.

Love. Soon.

That’s what they promise me — every single glitter-stained oracle, every cracked Rider-Waite, every mass-produced man-city card off eBay or out of the bottom drawer of Lady Darkest’s locked armoire. They smile with their hollow faces and whisper:

“Love is coming, you little piss-boy.”

Juicy. Wet. Soon.

They tell me it’ll be everything I’ve ever dreamed of in those sour, squirming hours between sleep and scream. The dreams where I wake up gasping, soaked in sweat, or piss, or whatever else leaks from the aching core of someone who doesn’t know who the fuck they are.

“You’re scared of yourself,” they say. “That’s why you drink. That’s why the gin bottle’s your cradle and your grave.”

Some say the demons — the real ones — feel just as much as we do. They ache. They wait. They crawl across ceilings in Beijing bathhouses and Memphis motels and whisper through steam vents.

And that morning, I knew they were right.

I woke up choking. Not on a dream, but on air thick as syrup. My chest ached like a haunted cave. My sheets twisted around me like I’d fought someone in my sleep. Maybe I did. Maybe it was me.

I rolled toward the window and remembered Jaina in a Bottle. My neighbor. My once-friend. My ghost-in-waiting. She fell out of bed once — said it was the silk sheets, but I knew it was the vodka in the water bottle.

“Is that just water, Jaina?”

She didn’t answer. She just cried.

I told her not to jump off the balcony.
I told her if she did, at least don’t take me with her.
I told her we could dance to Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah one more time before she went.
She said she’d met him once.
I didn’t believe her. I still don’t.
But it doesn’t matter now.

That time in my life — that era of shattered clocks and ugly mornings — was a beautiful fucking mess.

And I remember one day, maybe the worst day, maybe the best, I got up without a thought in my head. I stood barefoot in the half-light, walked across the creaking floorboards to a white wall — maybe it was brick, maybe it was just painted lies — and I stood there.

There was a painting beside it. I could see a corner of the frame. But I didn’t look at the painting.

I looked at the wall.

Just the blank, dumb, holy wall.

And I said, in my grandfather’s voice, from some ancient place in my bones:

“Hello, wall.”

And for one aching second, I swear to whatever god hasn’t left me yet —

The wall said hello back.