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It was odd, how in a place so full of people someone could feel so alone. It was if a swirling fog cloaked him, separating him and dampening him into a non-entity. His every move felt forced and jilted; turned from stone into an automaton with only a facsimile of life, enough to confuse and mislead but never convincing enough to capture meaningful attention.
He felt alone.
This lonely haze of apathy had grippd him for months now. The swirling tendrils of mist had felt cool and welcoming, a balm against the burning fire that was caring. It became something more common, turning from a polite stranger to a friendly acquaintance. There it had stayed for weeks upon end. And then it happened.
Some say that drifting apart is natural. That if you live long enough you'll drift from friend to friend, friend group to friend group. But then others say that there will always be those few who stand by your side and greet you with open arms regardless of the day, regardless of the month, regardless of the year even!
Neither are true.
You would be lucky to watch the group splinter apart, each going their separate way, ignorant to the rot that is so inevitable amidst the social pyramid that all friendships grow into. You would be so lucky.
Most, however, must confront that ugly ever-present truth. The truth of those that surround you. The truth that those people whom you had invested so much time and effort and emotion into, that those people were not nice. Those 'friends' were nothing more than half-starved jackals baying for the blood of the weakest runt present. It's all fun and games until you're the odd one out, the weird one, the weakest one. Maybe you can't think of jokes fast enough, or maybe you expressed interest in a niche hobby, or maybe you're not talkative enough. Maybe maybe maybe. Regardless, the half-starved jackals will take their pound of meat again and again and again and again, until you have nothing left to give. Even then they will bay for more. And that is when you realise it fully. They are not your friends. They are strangers parading around in the loose skin of those you once called friends. And then the mist welcomes you.
It surrounds you, soothing your pain and staunching the bleeding. It helps you ignore the pain that infects the cuts, it helps you to turn away from the blazing sun that is caring. It grows thicker and thicker until you cannot even see yourself, so it is no wonder no one sees you. And how can you blame others for not seeing you when you cannot see yourself.
The only time the mist thins is when pain blooms. Maybe the odd word barbs into your skin, or the wrong sentence chokes like a vine or maybe, just maybe, it's your own wrong thoughts that makes you bleed pain.
Only then does the mist thin and only then can you see yourself.
And what you see terrifies you. For while the fog staunches your bleeding, it cannot clean your wounds. While it supports you, it does not fix you.
Apathy can stop the hurt but it cannot smooth the scars.
And so you start to realise that getting hurt thins the fog. You start searching for those twisted thorns and hanging vines. You feel the pain and the fog thins. But it is not enough. The fog grows thicker until not even the thorns and vines can mark you, saving you from pain but also obscuring you from the world. It gets too much and suddenly you find yourself bleeding both pain and blood, a beautiful crimson that stains the fog and your skin. It is such a beautiful and enticing colour that you jealously guard it, hiding it from the world for only yourself to see. But the colour crimson bleaches what other colour remains. The fog is stained crimson and you are blind. All you can feel is the fog on your skin, all you can taste is the coppery cardboard, all you can hear is the deadened silence. All you can see is crimson.
What once was beautiful is now mundane, what once brought relief leaves nothing but a hollow ache in your bones.
So after the jackals took your flesh, the fog took your blood. After the fog took your blood, the crimson took your perspective.
And after the silence took your substance, the knife took your life.
The body does not reflect the heart and so the autopsy will not show the scars.