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Confessions	By : fahlosuee Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Nine Inch Nails Views: 1241 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I don't know any of these people. I kind of wish I was making money from this so I could pay back my student loans, but I'm not.

Chapter List
- 1-Confessions
- 1
Notes: Despite the fact that our narrator is never named, his identity should be pretty obvious if you know anything about early Nine Inch Nails.

I can safely say that I knew him first. Sometimes, I also think I knew him best. Other times, I don't think I knew him at all.

***

"Promise me that you'll never leave me."

We're a couple of scared teenagers. It's a rainy night and he's going through one of his moods. He's hugging me close; as if he's afraid I'll disappear. Our apartment is small, cramped and dirty. The roof is leaking again and our landlord is impossible to get ahold of. I'm weak from hunger and there's nothing to eat but ramen and expired salad dressing. Yet there's no place on earth I'd rather be.

"We'll get out of this, I swear. We'll make it together."

Together. It's a nice word. He promises me the world and as we lie there, it feels possible.

***

Half of what he promised me came true. We got our break, but we didn't stay together. Fair trade? I don't think so. I could have handled living and dying a perfectly unremarkable life if he was by my side.

But we fell out and I found myself faced with the prospect of spending the rest of my life without him. I often wonder if there was any way we could have stayed together with all that happened.

***

I can't say that I don't know what happened. I know perfectly well what happened. Like most disasters, this one did not come without warning. It began with a growing distance between us. There had once been a time when I felt as though our thoughts were connected. But that link between us was rusting and brittle, threatening to snap at any moment.

Part of it, I suspect, was the drugs. His addictions were slowly but surely changing him into someone I barely knew. On top of that, well, there were the pressures of fame. And then, there was everyone else. I won't name names but there was one person in particular who stood to benefit from having me out of Trent's life and I don't doubt he secretly rejoiced the day I threw in the towel.

I think Trent felt the growing problems between us, but he had nothing to say. We both kept on pretending, at first. We both wanted our relationship to last, I guess, but we didn't want to work at it. So we both denied that there was a problem at all. I hoped things would get better. They didn't.

Our fights escalated. The best I can say about that is that we had the good sense to wait until we were alone.

I can barely remember what we'd fight about. Anything and everything. I can only recall one incident at the moment:

He grabbed me by the wrist and hissed into my ear, "I know you. You have everyone else fooled, but I can see right through you. You're little more than a passive aggressive emotional sadist playing at being a low-key nice guy. You pretend to be everyone's best friend cos you like having people in debt to you, don't you."

Even now, I'm not sure how I could have possibly responded to something like that. For what it's worth, his judgment of my character was not far off. I've certainly never claimed to be a saint. It's also true I don't much like the limelight; I'd much rather work behind the scenes. And really, one of us had to play the role of "nice guy", since he was regularly going out of his way to be a colossal prick.

***

There was once a time when I felt like Trent and I were becoming the same person. Two halves of a whole. My sister used to tease me about having a crush on him, which I always denied. But there were times when he'd look at me and I felt like I'd do absolutely anything to see him smile.

The early days were the sweetest. Of course, at the time, they didn't feel like sweet times. But everything was so much simpler then and our problems made sense.

He used to cry on my shoulder all the time back then. "It's completely hopeless," he'd sob. "We should just give it up and go back to Pennsylvania."

I'd always tell him to keep his chin up, that he was doing the right thing, and we weren't going to die in the gutter.

This was our little charade. However cocky and self-assured he may act, Trent was—probably still is—very insecure and constantly needed care and attention. Maybe I'm a doormat but the truth is, I loved looking after him at first. And I think Trent knew that he was selfish. "I don't know why you put up with me, but I'm glad you do," he'd often say.

***

After ten years together, our relationship was dying a slow, tortuous death and he couldn't accept it. I didn't want to accept it either, but I couldn't deny the obvious forever. I threatened to leave him and he laughed hollowly.

"Leave me if you want. I don't care. I made you. You need me more than I need you."

Later, I threatened to leave him again and he reacted with anger this time.

"After all this time, this is how it will end. You want just to leave, when I swore I'd die for you."

"No, you didn't," I muttered.

"What did you just say?" His voice had a threatening edge to it, warning me to tread carefully.

If I had any sense, I would have said nothing. But sense was something I'd been lacking in at the time. I looked up at him and spoke slowly and deliberately.

"You weren't going to die for me. You were going to die with me. Because we were both young and stupid and, you know, it wasn't like you had anything else to do."

He stared at me in disbelief. I immediately regretted what I said, but I couldn't take back what I said. He hurled a chair across the room at me and stalked out.

I sank to the floor and buried my face in my hands.

***

Yes, we'd had a suicide pact, back when we were both a couple of nobodies with crappy jobs and mounting debts. Well, okay, actually, like most things, it was Trent's idea. He'd originally threatened to kill himself because his dreams of being a musician were going nowhere fast.

I tried to talk him out of it, of course, but he wasn't swayed.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't do it."

I went through the standard reasons, "Your family will miss you", "Things will get better", etc. etc. Finally, I simply admitted that there was only reason: I couldn't bear the thought of him leaving me behind. He actually honored that one, and looked thoughtful for a few minutes before he came up the perfect solution: we could commit suicide together! We'd never have to worry about paying our bills, we wouldn't be cold or sick or hungry and best of all, we'd be together.

Idiot that I was, I agreed. He wrote about four or five drafts of a joint suicide note and I even went so far as to buy rat poison at a hardware store. That's how completely stupid I was. I didn't realize that death by rat poison is quite possibly one of the most painful ways to go, short of being eaten alive.

Naturally, we didn't go through with it. I guess I can be given the credit for that, albeit indirectly. There were a bunch of stray cats in our neighborhood that Trent and I adored. We used to leave a window slightly cracked so that they could get in to eat food that we'd leave out for them. Well, that day I'd left the poison laying out and Mimi (one of the cats) got into it before we could off ourselves. Coming home to her dead body on the doormat knocked any suicidal daydreams right out of our heads. She'd clearly died in agony, bleeding out from underneath her skin. And the smell... I ran for the bushes in the front of our apartment complex and threw up everything I'd eaten that day.

I knelt down by bushes and waited for my head to stop spinning. I probably spent around ten minutes there, trying to get my bearings when I heard Trent anxiously calling my name.

I took a deep breath and went back toward our apartment. "Um, I think we have a problem," he said, sheepishly.

That was like saying that the Marianas Trench was a little deep. Trent had also gotten sick, but he hadn't made it as far as the bushes or the bathroom. Instead, he'd thrown up all over the kitchen. Furthermore, because of the temperature, burying Mimi was going to be impossible; the ground was frozen solid.

I taped up the box of leftover poison and we went back to the hardware store and asked for a refund. We put Mimi's body in a cardboard box and threw it in the Cuyahoga River.

We drove home in silence in a crappy car whose radio only picked up the signal of an oldies station. In a strange moment of serendipity, the next song that came on was "You'll Never Walk Alone." He pulled over then and began to sob, "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." Without him saying anything else, I knew what he meant.

Looking back, I've sometimes wished that we could have swapped fates: that Mimi had lived and Trent and I died. If we'd died then, all the pathetic promises we ever made of never parting might have come true. And he would have been mine and mine alone forever.

***

You're probably wondering now why I left him. I left him because I was flat-out exhausted. I'd given him everything I had and he only wanted more. He was sinking deeper and deeper and if I stayed, I probably would have only enabled him.

I like to think I made the right choice, but I don't know. Maybe I only made things worse.

***

I eventually made good on my threats and prepared to leave, he wouldn't look at me when I told him goodbye. He thought of it as a betrayal. It was pathetic, I'll admit. I was running away, but I didn't have a choice. I couldn't stay.

I spent our first day apart in a daze. I knew, somehow, that that was the end. There would be no reconciliation, no reunion. We had damaged our relationship beyond repair and it would never mend. I threw myself into work as a distraction and it helped. But there was nothing I could do about the loneliness that night brought. During our first six months apart, I constantly dreamt about him. One dream was of the two of us at 10050 Cielo Drive. We were in curled up in the bedroom of the guest house and dawn was breaking. I'd lay in bed watching him sleep until he'd turn over and smile at me.

And then I'd wake up alone. Those were the days when I could remember everything about him so clearly. His laugh. The sound of his voice. The way he'd cock his head to side when he'd talk to me.

As the years passed, the initial agony of separation became a dull sort of ache. The dreams stopped and my memories blurred.

To his credit (and mine), even as the years passed, we kept what happened between us to ourselves. I guess I'm just not the type of person to whine to some music journalist about every single bad thing Trent ever did to me or write a sleazy tell-all book. I'd rather keep our personal problems personal.

I can only assume he feels the same way.

***

I heard later that he managed to kick the drugs and the booze. He seems pretty happy now, and for that, I'm grateful.

I know I hurt him, too. I spent several years with the gnawing feeling that I pushed him over the edge. But somehow, without me, he came back from the edge and seems to have found stability.

I'm still working on learning not to be bitter at how we ended up. Wallowing in that won't change anything, though, and I've come to accept that. Maybe one day we'll meet again someday. Yet even if we never do, I can honestly say that I'm glad we met and that the years we spent together were some of the happiest of my life.

***
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Confessions