You caught me. When I was being vulnerable with my heart in the open.

It had been a rainy day, and I escaped to the landing once again. Classes were overrated. I did not believe in them then. I do not believe in them now. They just give me more chances to see monsters walking in broad daylight, being tolerated because they have claws outside their bodies.

The rain had just stopped falling, leaving behind puddles of rusty water on the chance depressions in the landing, making me scoot closer to the railings. Droplets peppered the railing, the stairs, heck, even the peeling paint in the metal bars caging me in. But I sat there anyway, pulling out my notepad and scrawling the annoying idea which has been plaguing the back of my head since morning.

"If he smiled at you, he'll break your heart / If she winked at you, she'll rip you apart," you said, your voice popping up so close to my ear. I remember flinching so hard and whirling so fast my rear slipped off the wet step I sat on, sending me crashing to the landing. Right on time for me to see the shock rippling in your radiant face.

You apologized. Or maybe you did not and instead helped me up while I lamented about my soaked clothes. The only thing I remember was me wrenching out of your grip, out of your personal space, and glaring at you. "Go away," I hissed. Back then, I meant it.

But you have a talent of making people's wishes come true. Just not in the time and the way they wanted.

You stooped and picked up my notepad which had landed pages-first into a nearby puddle. Apparently, I had thrown it when I fell. "Who writes such dark stuff?" you gave it a shake, tossing droplets of water which still has not invaded my visible thoughts, my heart strung on a line of refined thorns. You handed it back to me, smiling as if there was something you found funny. "You have a knack for this."

I snatched the notepad away and tucked it into my pocket. "Forget what you saw," I remember saying. Those words...they were aimed at the monsters tormenting me as soon as I entered the school's hallways. "They are not for you."

"What's the use of spouting words if they're not going to be heard?"

It was an innocent question—one of the things you liked throwing around without care. To answer it now as I should have answered then—there are words which are better off unsaid but you still cannot help but say anyway. To wish ill of someone, to dream of gouging their eyes out in their sleep, to curse them to the depths of hell for making you feel misery out of their own accord—these things I would never say aloud.

But I would spell it out on paper. I would tear their souls and devour their bones on paper.

I will scream on nothing but paper.

Because paper burns. Paper rips. And paper fades with time, like the rest of us do.

It must have been the answer I have given you then—I cannot remember. But my memory forever kept the gentle smile you gave despite all the undeserved anger I threw your way. "Words live forever," you said. "They outlast even the person who uttered them."

You must have not heard anything I said. Maybe I did not say them at all, because they worked better if they were on paper.