Title: Where is Donnie?

Summary: Waking up. It seemed so easy to everybody else.

Authors Note: Random thoughts of Donnie Darko.

Waking up.

It seemed so easy to everybody else.

But for me… it was always different.

Sometimes I woke up in awe, in awe of the rising sun across the valley where I lived.

Sometimes I woke up in fear, in the middle of the golf course that my father played in, and there would be men staring down at me.

And sometimes I would wake up, in the middle of the desert, cactus stood guard as I slept, and watched me… wondering what I was dreaming.

But always, I would wake up alone.

Where is Donnie?

Where is Donnie?

Where is Donnie?

I know there is something on the streets, waiting for me.

It's a hunger, something that calls out to me.

There are visions in my head, voices that tell me to do things.

Whispering secrets, they lie on my bedroom floor and snake out into the wide world when I am asleep.

I have to follow them.

Its night and I walk through my house, itself whispering words of comfort in my ears as its eyes follow me out of the house.

I follow the words to wherever they want to take me, they are my friends, and they protect me.

No one else could understand.

Where's Donnie?

Where's Donnie?

Where's Donnie?

The page in front of me, the words play in my head and rearrange themselves, to better scenes, better stories.

There is a brief knock on the door, and my mother walks in.

The look on her face, I know she wants to talk to me about something, about the dinner… about where I go…

I don't care.

"I'm reading get out of my room"

There is a look on her face, dismay.

"Where do you go at night?"

I can't tell you about the words mom, I say, I can't tell you that they lie at your feet this moment.

"Would you just get out of my room?"

"Did you toilet paper the Johnson's house?"

I'm like a child, being taken back to the 6th grade; she had stood in the same spot.

"Is that what you came here to ask me?"

"No"

"I stopped rolling houses in the sixth grade, mom"

"What happened to my son? I don't recognize this person"

Where is Donnie?

Where is Donnie?

Where is Donnie?

The words lie at her feet, and start to wriggle as I yell at her; they're going to tell me something new tonight.

They roll around and form a new word.

"Bitch"

Saying it aloud reminds me that I am awake.

Walking to the bathroom I open the mirror, and there are my pills, waiting like a construction worker all in orange, but only dealt with working in deconstruction.

I take the pill.

I feel nothing as it slides down my throat.

I look at my reflection.

Is it so bad that I want it to be over?