PROMPT: Write a story based on the 5-4-3-2-1 coping technique for anxiety.

CW(s): Depiction of a panic attack, anxiety, depression, disturbing imagery, implied/mentions of suicide. 

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"Five things you can see"

One.

He sees the door lock, rusty and half-broken. He has to wonder if he was the one who half-broke it, when he snapped it shut behind him. Then wonders why he can't stop ruining things. Why it's so hard to just stop.

Two.

He sees the toilet paper dispenser, empty and useless. He thinks of the older boys, who like to roll up balls of wet toilet paper and throw them at the ceiling to see if they would stick. Thinks of the mould that grows and spreads there.

Three.

He sees the graffiti on the walls of the stalls, all the misspelled words and dirty drawings. Some of them funny, some of them gross but creative, some just cruel. There are a couple of them with his name. Nothing he hasn't heard before, whispered in class, or yelled out in crowded corridors. But having all of it right there, staring him right in the face, is somehow worse.

Four.

He sees the toilet where he'd emptied his stomach. Wishes for some actual water in the bathroom, for once, so he could've flushed every trace of that awful stench and the reminder of his own gross failings.

Five.

He sees his shoes, worn out, dirty and stained with drops of blood from Mr. Russo's broken nose. Wonders if he'd be punished, and suspended, or even expelled, for hitting a teacher. Whatever they decide to do to him though, it can't be any worse than what his uncle will say or do when he finds out.

"All of this because you couldn't climb a goddamn rope at gym class? What is wrong with you, boy? Man the hell up!"

He would deserve it though. Every last bit of it.

He's useless, and weird, and broken ... a broken mess ... a burden...

He deserves all of it.

He sees two feet, clad in nothing but grey, old socks, dangling off the floor.

"Four things you can touch"

One.

He can feel the hard, cold and damp tiles beneath him. Wishes he could stand or sit on the toilet, so he could hide his feet if anyone else came in. But doesn't trust himself to get up without fainting and hitting his head again. If only the world stopped spinning, for just a second...

Two.

He can feel the sweat running down the sides of his face, his neck and back. Cold sweat. His skin burns without heat, then runs dead cold, but he sweats either way. No more tears to shed, no saliva in his dry, gross mouth, just sweat and more sweat. Like a broken faucet in a bathroom with no water.

Something is wrong with him.

Three.

He can feel his heart lurching, like the spasms of a dying animal, and a crushing pressure on his chest, like the foot of an elephant pressing down harder and harder. He wonders if someone as young as him could actually die of a heart attack. He hopes not. He hopes this isn't how he dies. At school, all alone in a gross bathroom stall.

Four.

He can feel the tight, invisible grip around his throat. It clenches tighter and tighter until everything starts to blur at the edges. He can't speak, can't breathe, can't even swallow without chocking.

He wonders if that's how it felt ... in the end.

He can feel the strands of rope burning his small, shaking hands as he uselessly tries to pull at it and untie those thick, thick knots.

"Three things you can hear"

One.

He can hear a distant drip drop somewhere, echoing in the quiet of the bathroom. He wonders where everyone is. Wonders if anyone is looking for him. He doesn't want to be found, not like this. He'd rather be alone. He doesn't want to be alone. But it's better if he is. If he dies like this, at least no one will have to see it.

Two.

He can hear himself panting, wheezing, whimpering and sobbing from time to time. He tries to keep quiet, tries to curl into a little ball and muffle his pain with his own body, but he can't stop every sound. Can't keep it in. Can't keep of any of it in.

Or out.

Three.

He can hear a ringing in his ear. Faint, at first, just a light buzz that muffles everything around him. But then louder, and louder, and louder, and louder, and louder, and louder...!

Until everything turns dead quiet.

Everything except for that one incessant beeping tone...

He can hear the endless sound of the phone call, as he desperately waits for someone to answer on the other side.

"911, what's your emergency?"

"My dad, he's–!"

"Two things you can smell"

One.

He can smell his body, his own sweat. But he thinks he can also smell the soap and deodorant underneath it, or what little of it still lingered. Any nice, fresh, perfumed scent that he'd tried to attach to his body was gone, weighed down by his own odour. He can't even stand himself anymore.

Two.

He can smell the thick, humid stench of the boy's bathroom. The wet paper, the toilet water, the urine and whatever gross stuff someone forgot to flush. The lid of the toilet in his stall is down, but the faint smell of vomit is still there, churning in his stomach and bubbling up in his throat.

He can swell the stench of wine and beer in the air, from all the dozens and dozens of empty bottles scattered on the living room floor.

"One thing you can taste"

He can taste nothing. He can feel nothing.

His body is no longer his. He is no longer in that cramped, bathroom stall. He never was. He is elsewhere. He is there, always there, in that house, in the middle of the night, after New Year's Eve, seeing the red and blue lights, holding on tightly to the cold phone that he keeps to his ear, hearing the sirens and the voice of the 911 dispatcher, smelling the winter rain...

Tasting the salt of his tears, and his own sick, dribbling down his mouth, as an officer lies to him and tells him everything is going to be okay.

Nothing will ever be okay.

Because he's still there, in that house.

He's never left.

And he never will.