Chapter Text
Her stomach is on fire. An IV drips nutrients into her bloodstream. Through slightly blurred vision, she can make out three shapes surrounding her hospital bed: Aubrey, Hero, and Kel, all with apprehensive, confused expressions. Further away, she can see Basil. He’s clad in a hospital gown too, though none of his injuries are particularly threatening.
They were finally all together. She croaks out a laugh, drawing the attention of Aubrey, the one closest to her. She calls for the rest of them, drawing their attention to the now lucid girl. They ask her for her needs and her wants—another pillow? Some juice? She laughs fondly, weakly, shaking her head. Her wants, huh?
Her wants…
A dream of her, staring down an emotionless, monochrome, fifteen-year-old-girl in a white sundress. Her fingers press piano keys, playing a melody. Distantly, she can hear the soft, alluringly imperfect croon of violin strings.
She knows what she wants to do.
For the first time, she knows what she has to do.
“I have to tell all of you something.”
△○□×
Death smells of toast.
This fact has haunted her for four years. After Sunny died, the two synapses had been interchangeably linked. She abhors toast now. She can’t even enter the bakery section of the Othermart without retching.
The cemetery’s fragrance is of rising dough and freshly made loaves. It lingers in the air like a foul, acrid odour, a haunting reminder of the biggest mistake of her life.
It should’ve been her. She shouldn’t have pushed him so hard. She shouldn’t have shouted, said all those horrible things. Maybe if she hadn’t—if she had just swallowed her pride, for a few seconds—then Sunny would be sitting beside her, instead of six feet beneath her sneakers.
His tombstone is polished calcite. The letters had eroded away slightly, and overgrowth had formed on the edges, but she can still trace the inscription. Even thinking his name calls forth a memory. A wide-open eye, a soulless pinprick pupil beneath a ravaged mop of onyx black strands.
She tears her eyes away from the tombstone, palm covering her mouth as she fights the bile rising into her throat. In the corner of her eye, she can see a new bunch of poppies as red as crimson, their clay flowerpots huddled together against his headstone. The fresh, rosy smell hints at their young age: Basil must have come by recently. He’d been doing that a lot recently.
Another wave of nausea rolls over her. Brine threatened to spill onto her cheeks, down a path that has been travelled many times before. She doesn’t know whether to throw up or burst into tears.
So, she steps back. She takes a deep breath, swallows the gall in her esophagus, forces a smile onto her face and wipes sorrow from her tear ducts. It wouldn’t do for Sunny to see her cry; she owed him that much, at least.
“H-hi, Sunny. It’s… it’s been a while.”
No matter how many times Mari came back, she could never quite find in her the words to adequately describe the slurry of emotions that stirred inside her when she read Sunny’s name carved into the stone. Every time that she attempted it before, the syllables had clotted her windpipe. Her locution crumbled to ash, like Something had wrapped small, slight fingers around her neck and squeezed tightly. Her voice, once powerful and resonant, reduced to a feeble, weak snivel.
So, she settled for talking about something else. Anything else; anything that wasn’t Sunny’s death or her role or her list of regrets and meaningful things that she wanted to tell him, even though that list is a mile long and could likely reach his casket should she have written it down on a long sheet of paper. Instead, she talks about what she sees. What she feels. What she hears. On a normal day, she would talk about the weather. The shapes of clouds that had caught her eye. The taste of lunch that afternoon.
Today was not a normal day. It was, by no uncertain definitions of the word, abnormal.
Mari exhales a shaky, unsteady breath, as if she were staring down from the peak of a mountain rather than a four-year-old earthen tomb. Yet despite her shuddering body, her smile remains steadfast.
(She was always good at faking it)
She opens her mouth, and the words catch at the back of her mouth. Like all the times before, miniscule thorns dug into her pharynx, lodging the words into her throat, and blocking her airways. She feels herself begin to choke again on words that she could never say. On a normal day, this was where she would give up. Push the thought back into the deepest parts of her Headspace and talk about something else. Something meaningless. Pedantic.
Again, this was not a normal day.
She squeezes her hand into a fist. She feels the blood flow into her fingertips, liquid fire pumping through her arteries. Then, she beats it against her chest and coughs the blockade free. A rush of air fills her lungs. Then, “I… Me and Basil told everyone about what happened. What I did.”
It's strange, the might that words can carry. Like a hammer to glass, all it took was a few sentences for Mari to tell everyone the truth. To upend everything.
To shatter her image.
It’s my fault.
I killed him.
I pushed him too hard.
I stopped being your sister. I started being your worst enemy.
Somehow, thinking the words doesn’t make her feel any better.
Her smile starts to waver, and beads of saline pool at the corner of bagged black eyes—her mask was starting to crack. Fracture lines ran up and across every inch of porcelain.
So, she says the words out loud again. One more time, as if it would make a difference.
“I messed up, Sunny. It’s a-all my fault,” Her voice was hiccup-laden and pitched five notes too high, “I—I’m so-sorry…!”
That’s all she can manage before the tears spill and her composure is completely broken. In front of Sunny’s grave, Mari breaks yet another promise: the promise to never let Sunny see her cry, pulverized to dust as Mari sobs and wails into the eraser-grey sky, pushing her palms to her face to absorb the stream of tears that ran down her face and dripped into the grass. The droplets that escaped littered the verdant grass beneath her sneakers, and the ones in her eyes blurred her vision, turning Sunny’s headstone into a figureless, shapeless grey blob that blended with the emerald ground and upturned chocolate dirt.
She stays like that for a while, as her crying gradually wears down. It’s a slow process—she’d gone through a lot, after all—but eventually her sobs turn into sniffles, exhausted of tears and grief. The reservoir runs dry. Eventually, she stops wiping away tears and snot, drying her sodden hands on the sides of her vest.
Eventually, she manages a thin smile. She even manages to feel embarrassed a little—here she was, losing her composure in front of Sunny just when she told herself that Sunny shouldn’t have to see her cry.
“Sorry, Sunny… I didn’t want you to see that,” She murmurs, looking first at the weathered inscription, before looking up at an overcast sky, bright in spots where the sun managed to poke holes in the thin sheet of stratus clouds, “But I guess I sorta deserve it, h-huh?” She laughs somberly, “I think everyone hates me now. Basil definitely does, at least. But I feel better about it; I’ve finally stopped running away from my problems. Aren’t you proud of me, little brother?”
She takes a few steps towards the motionless headstone. She stretches a hand toward the calcite and caresses it, feeling the cool, smooth stone, and the chiseled letters that ran across the top, still legible in spite of four years of heaven-sent rain and snow.
OUR DEAREST SUNNY. THE WORLD SHINED BRIGHTER WHEN HE WAS HERE.
She smiles sadly and takes a step back. Light cascades on his grave, a final curtain call for his beautiful existence. At least the world let you keep the light that you always had.
“I’m finally going to college at the end of summer. I won’t be able to see you as much as I did before,” She caresses the edge of Sunny’s tomb as her feet start to wobble. Her stomach turns, and she has to steady herself on the chiselled marble, her pale hands holding her upright as the nausea flits through her.
A small part of her (with sheet-white skin and an emotionless face) laughs at the irony; the last time she’d put both hands on her brother, it ended with one of them dead. Now, here she was, using his memory to soothe her soul, her hands clasping the headstone as if it was a reasonable facsimile of her brother.
Some things never change.
Once the dizziness subsides, she takes a deep breath. Her thoughts are a jumbled gordian knot, and she has to weave them back into a proper, elegant pattern, “I’ll still come visit, though!” She says cheerily once she’d finally gathered herself, pumping her fist into the air to instill a surge of energy “It’s the least I can do—there’s no escaping your big sister!”
A nail of pain spikes through her stomach where the gardening shears had pierced her skin, and she winces as it sends white hot agony burning through her veins; maybe it was too soon for things like that. She drops her hands back to her sides, and she shakes her head in disappointment at herself—stupid Mari, she chides, thinking that it’ll be as easy as that. Some wounds never heal fully. That’s why scars are left behind.
Emptying her thoughts into the deep expanse of her mind (perhaps in the junkyard of Otherworld, if she felt like being creative), she glances at Sunny’s grave, the inscription on the stone still unchanging, unwavering. The eternal, unerasable reminder of her own mistakes. Sunny’s grave stares impassively back at her, a weightless gaze that she can barely feel, yet somehow smothered her through nothing more than its existence.
It was comforting, somehow.
“…I have to go,” She whispers, “See you tomorrow, little brother.”
And Mari turns to leave. She casts one more glance back at Sunny’s grave before she exits, as if she were waiting for someone—anyone—to respond. As if she would turn around and find that Headspace had leaked again. That hallucinations of days gone by would peek from behind the gnarled bark of trees or cast furtive glances from behind tombstones.
But there was nothing. All that existed in the cemetery was the inexplicable, paradoxical limbo of mortality. Life breathed into caricatures of the dead, existing solely to be remembered and grieved over, whose purpose flip-flopped between keeping a memory alive and giving the deceased a spot to rest. Both equally important, yet equally opposite.
Mari leaves behind the scent of toast and soft earth patches. She leaves behind carved, polished stones, decorated by the tokens and memorabilia from those who refused to forget.
△○□×
With a sharp breath, he wakes up.
Adrenaline pumps in his veins as choir music fills his ears. Wildly, he glances around—drinks in the sights that overload his senses. One by one, he recognizes objects and music. The ornate, gilded designs snaking around and up the supporting marble pillars like gridlines. Rows upon rows of wooden benches, separated into two columns by a scarlet rug that ran down the middle of the church like a runway. At the very front, there’s a lectern, decorated with a banner as red as the rug that ran down the church, with a mahogany leatherbound book resting atop it. A dark musical instrument, its lid propped up by a stand and its keys shining ivory and—
He recognizes where he is.
Adrenaline still circulating, he slumps backward in the church pew, resting his head against hardwood. He sighs and closes his eyes for a ten-count. Enough time so that the buzzing in his ears and the flashing lights dancing behind his eyes would hopefully cease. When that doesn’t work, he takes a deep breath. Inhale for four seconds. Hold for seven. Exhale for eight. He does it again. Then for a third time. He does it so many times that he worries that he’ll drain the church of its oxygen—but that’s a silly thought, so he pushes it away and lets it float into the grape juice cosmos of his mind as he calms himself down.
Then, when he feels that he’s rested enough, he stands up and leaves through eggshell-white doors, sauntering through the nave as if he were a ghost.
△○□×
He’s not sure at what point he realizes it, but he’s pretty sure he’s made a mistake.
Beneath a thin abalone-grey veneer on the verge of shattering, a basketball player stares blankly at a gravestone made of calcite. Kel alternates his gaze between the inscribed stone and his older, distraught brother. Hero stares down at his feet, his hands clenched into fists as his arms dangle loosely by his side. His brother is as silent as a mouse, his mouth moving in an unheard whisper.
Unease suffocates the two of them, miring the cemetery in an invisible haze, and there is nothing that Kel wants to do more than to run away, as far away from this place as he could feasibly run. He’d always hated the graveyard; the overpowering silence and deathly scent felt so overwhelmingly antithetical to him, like death itself was offended that Kel had dared step past the gate. Coupled with Aubrey’s and Basil’s near-daily visits and visiting Sunny was all but impossible.
Instead, he kept a framed photo on their altar to the dead: a picture of a small, dark-haired boy, gazing blankly to the side from the inside of a large box swaddled in blue gift wrap. A red ribbon was draped over his head, and a kitten was perched on his shoulder; a gift from Basil, before everything had turned sour.
Kel laughs awkwardly, Oh well. No time like the present.
“Hey, Sunny.”
Hero shoots him a surprised glance. Kel catches it and smiles widely—a bright, infectious grin, threatening the quag of unease, “It’s been a while! Sorry for not visiting ya more, man. Life’s been really hectic these last few months,” And I doubt that Basil or Aubrey would be happy to see me here. The second part of his sentence was left unsaid, tossed into a recycling bin at the deepest recesses of his brain, “Still, I’m gonna try and make it a habit to swing by more often. Hope you don’t mind another person visiting you constantly!”
That declaration banishes the discomfort. For a small, fleeting moment, everything is okay. There wasn’t anything of substance to talk about. There was nothing wrong. Kel was just here to visit an old friend—a childhood playmate who died much too young in a tragic accident.
Except, that’s not what happened, is it?
His purpose having returned to full clarity, the anxiety surges back like the tide. His smile wavers a little along with his legs, “Kel… I don’t know if I can do this,” Hero says quietly, his voice soft like dandelion fuzz.
“Heh… Yeah, I know what you mean. This is kinda awkward, isn’t it?” Everyone kinda… fell apart when you died, Sunny. Basil and Mari stopped coming out of their houses. Aubrey started hanging out with some real nasty people. Hero and Mari… things can’t get worse between them. Heck, even I didn’t really know what to do for a while… I hope you’re not mad at me for visiting that much these last few years.
Hero nods silently. Kel doesn’t blame him for not speaking, the atmosphere was that oppressive. They’re completely motionless, statues atop soft earth as Sunny’s tomb patiently awaits their next move.
Faced with an abyss gazing back into them, one of them was bound to blink.
He’s not sure how much time has passed before he feels a weak tug at his shoulder, “Kel… let’s go,” A weak voice pleads. Kel almost wants to hold his ground—to shake his head and keep them there for at least a few minutes longer—but it only takes one look at Hero’s face. A single glance at a face plastered with worry and regrets and every pessimistic emotion on the ambit of humanity is all he needs to relent.
Kel sighs, “Alright.”
Silence trails the two brothers as they vanish from death’s eye. There is no fanfare when they depart; they leave no memories behind amongst the maze of obelisks, keeping their thoughts close to their hearts. No flashbacks of their friend long gone. No stoic expression lingering in their minds.
They are not quite ready for those. Not yet.
Kel stares at the sky, his back flat against the snow-white planks as he gazes up at a horizon mid-segue from blue to orange, puffs of grey mottling the gradient. Beside him, Hero takes deep, slow breaths, his nose pinched between index fingers as he expunges stress with each exhale.
The park is a much less stressful place, less empty than the desolate cemetery. The evergreen foliage rustles softly, unperturbed by the looming threat of change brought by the passage of time. Birds sing suppertime melodies in celebration of an ending day, unaware of the troubles still plaguing the town’s youth, having been drenched in Faraways’ off-kilter air for years. They were only concerned with the present, in constant pursuit of surviving to the next day.
I envy them, he thinks, watching a small sparrow hop across the grass in search of seeds and mealworms, it must be nice to live simply. Not having to worry about stuff like this.
Hero took another deep breath, decompressing as carbon dioxide escaped him. It was easy to do in the park, away from death’s clutches amongst the company of warbling birds and deciduous trees. Kel’s stress melting away felt palpable to him, like a weight lifted from his chest. If it weren’t for Mari’s confession, still anchored in his mind, he might’ve even forgotten about it.
Mari…
Kel sighs, “Hero, we can’t keep avoiding this.”
He casts a cock-eyed glance towards his brother, slouched over with his head cradled in his hands, looking like the epitome of misery. Sympathetically, he pats Hero’s shoulder, his mouth etched into a deep frown as he consoles his sibling. Hero manages a faint smile, its corners trembling from the conflict that had spontaneously saddled itself back into his life.
Hero chuckles morosely, “I know. I know. It’s just…”
It’s hard. Where do you start talking about your childhood friend being an involuntary murderer? Of her brother no less?
Somehow, Kel didn’t think that the English-class rhetoric of an essay’s opening hook would be fitting. He stares down into his lap, his mind like clear, smooth ice as his elocution escapes flees him. Faced with no directions on how to proceed, Kel did what he did best.
“What do you think, Hero?”
Wing it.
His brother looks up at him with a questioning glance, Kel clarifies, “How do you feel about this? I mean… you and Mari were dating, right?”
“…Yeah. We were,” Hero’s voice is hollow and dry as an old heartbreak washes over him like saltwater waves stinging open wounds. Embarrassment lances through Kel like a needle through sewn fabric. He winces, but continues, nonetheless: Newton’s First Law.
“Sorry. This probably isn’t easy, huh?”
Hero’s gaze falls to the ground, pulled by gravity. Silence fills the air once more, leaving Kel to fill in the gaps, “I can’t believe it either. I mean, it was a possibility, but Mari… she’s Mari. I always thought that Sunny just… fell. I’m pretty sure all of us thought that.”
Kel exhales a breath he doesn’t know he’s holding, stress holding his frame stiff, “It must be way harder for you. You were closer to her than all of us. I can’t even imagine what it must be like, Hero. So, tell me.”
The wind picks up then. A soft gale at first, murmuring into his ears, it doesn’t take long for the breeze to intensify into a whirlwind, the air screeching as it roars through the air. Air threads through the gaps in trees and between blades of grass jutting out of the ground like miniature soldiers, the rustling foliage providing an étude accompaniment in the natural minor scale.
Then, just as suddenly, it’s gone. The howling winds abruptly evanesce, swallowed by dead air so quickly that the trees of Faraway Park suffer whiplash as they snap back into place. The wind had both arrived and disappeared so suddenly, in fact, that Kel wonders if it had been there at all.
Before he can ponder too deeply, he’s pulled from his thoughts by a silent voice.
Hero’s voice.
Kel turns to his brother nursing a bittersweet smile on his face, “Mari… she was always a perfectionist, remember?”
Memories of Mari—eternally cycling through the same collection of measures on her piano for hours on end—flashed into his mind. It was less of an open secret and more one of her most defining characteristics.
And one of her greatest flaws.
Kel nods, not wishing to sour the atmosphere, “Yeah.”
“She spent ages practicing, over and over again, until every note was perfect. She wouldn’t have accepted anything less from Sunny. Do you think that’s why they were arguing?”
Kel bites his lip, dread slowly pooling into his gut. Cautiously, he speaks, “Maybe,” Where are you going with this, Hero?
Hero wasn’t having any of his neutrality. He hangs his head and groans into his hands, “God, it totally was. Sunny was terrible at emoting. And he loved Mari, he wanted to make her proud. He probably never told her that it was getting too much for him; that he couldn’t handle it.”
“Hero…”
“And then he’s dead. Because Sunny couldn’t live up to Mari’s expectations, no matter how hard he’d try.”
“Hero.”
“The worst part is we could’ve said something. We should have made sure that Mari wasn’t being too overbearing on him.”
“Hero.”
“God, Kel, we could’ve stopped it. You and I both knew how demanding Mari could be! If I’d just said something, told Mari to calm down a little, Sunny might still be—”
“Hero, enough!”
A shove at his shoulders causes him to glance up. Kel’s uncharacteristically indignant expression greets him as he pulls his gaze upward, the younger brother’s cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk, “You can’t blame yourself, Hero! Nobody knew how bad it was! Nobody! Mari made a mistake. Sunny hid it from us. It sucks, I know. I wish that it never happened! But you can’t blame yourself for his death, Hero! You can’t predict the future, so stop acting as if you can!”
He probably looks ridiculous at that moment, anger surging through his veins like a pyroclastic flow and setting his skin aflame. His nostrils burn with each breath taken. His brow furrowed deeply. Kel had never been prone to losing his temper; seeing him so irate sends Hero for a loop. He actually recoils at how livid his younger brother had gotten, his shoulders tensing in fright.
Thankfully, like all of Kel’s outbursts, the anger is fleeting. Self-consciousness suddenly fills him at the sight of Hero’s stunned, afraid expression, pouring from his ears as it overflows like a mug with too much liquid. He chuckles nervously, scratching his nape, “Er, my bad. I shouldn’t have yelled.”
Hero shakes his head, “No… that’s okay. Heh, I probably needed that.”
The silence they return to is strangely amicable. Despite the weight of the topic, he felt oddly serene, the tension slowly bleeding from the air like a deflating balloon. He feels his anger drain along with it, dribbling from him like syrup from a spile, until all that is left is the worry that had created his wrath.
“We’re not even sure if Mari actually lost her cool. At the end of the day, I don’t think it even matters. What matters is that it happened; Sunny’s dead, Mari pushed him, and Basil never told a soul. All that’s left now is for us to figure out what to do next.”
His brother says nothing. Kel spares a glance at him in concern, but he needn’t bother: one look at Hero’s resolute, sturdy expression is enough to convince him that his brother will be okay.
“So, what do you think?”
It takes Hero a few minutes to answer, his gaze laser-focused into his palms as he studies his palm lines with the intensity of a chirologist. Eventually, though, as the sun inches ever-so-slightly across the marmalade tapestry of the horizon, Kel gets a response.
“I’m not sure. Logically, I know I should forgive her because it was years ago, but… I told her I had her back. I told her I had her back, no matter what. Watching her just… turn away from everyone? Without telling anyone what was wrong? That stung, Kel.”
Stung isn’t a strong enough word. There might not be a strong enough word in the dictionary. I don’t think you were ever the same after you two broke up.
“Yeah. You two were really close. I seriously thought you guys were gonna end up married at some point.”
Hero smiles grimly, “Yeah, I did too… Wrote out a roadmap for my life and everything when we were fifteen. Heh… funny, the way things work out.”
Wisely, Kel says nothing. He watches cars purr down the road, streaks of colour bright against the verdant vegetation, beside a young man who’d just had his entire world ripped out from under him for the second time in four years. Aside from the transient hum of motors, the near-inaudible chatter of passerby, and the quiet song of mid-day birds, there was nothing.
Nothing, until Hero deems it fit to speak again.
“What should I do, Kel?”
Kel looks at his brother, still staring deeply into his palms as though they would reveal the secrets of the universe and so much more, “My brain tells me to forgive her. But my heart hurts every time I think that; it yells at me not to let things go so easily. What should I do?”
Hero glances back, studying Kel’s head as it tilts to the side like a curious animal. He expects an answer to come after some time—the cogs in Kel’s mind slowly spinning to life, before spilling a thought out into the open once he’d given it enough thought; the typical Kel answering process.
“Just take things one step at a time.”
Hero blinks. Once. Then twice, caught off-guard by his immediacy. Sensing his confusion, Kel elaborates, “Hero, you’re still emotional about this. What Mari did… it was messed up, yeah, but this is super heavy!” He throws his hands in the air as accentuation, “This entire mess has been four years in the making. Thinking about it, We’ve all been messed up for a long time. It’s way too soon to decide about something like forgiveness or virtue. Give it some time.”
“Yeah, but how much time?” Hero asks, a question stuttered and fragmented by his breath, “How much time should I give?”
Kel shrugs, having already pondered the answer to this question a long time ago, “At least give her until she leaves for college. I think she deserves that much.”
Hero looks back down his fingers, interlocked together like the fibres of Mari’s picnic basket. Three months, huh? He thinks, the number imprinting into his mind like a bright neon sign. Strangely, it’s comforting to think of. A warm, soothing caress. Aloud, he says, “Yeah… yeah, I’ll try. I think I can handle that.”
“Awesome,” Kel’s smile was a scarred, relieved light. It was mangled and war-torn and the corners trembled, but it shined brilliantly nonetheless, as if its radiance was in spite of how weathered it had become.
The silence is broken one final time, as they part from the bench and prepare to head home before supper. Hero pats Kel’s shoulder fondly, drawing his attention whilst he’s standing and stretching his limbs.
“Hey, Kel?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks,” He ruffles his brother’s hair. Kel makes a move to complain, but the words die in his throat once he turns back to Hero and sees him smiling the most genuine he’s smiled all week. The distaste washes away, leaving a subtly sweet satisfaction as an aftertaste.
“Heh, anytime.”
△○□×
Even in its yawning throes, the sun is irritatingly bright.
It strikes him with impunity, the smiting ultraviolet rays raining down on the alien town with feverish intensity. He steps onto the cement sidewalk, the door to the church crashing shut behind him as the world opens wide. He turns to face the world, a silent prayer uttered in his head wishing desperately that he would be met with an empty, vast void of white.
The world mocks him in a Vincent Van Gogh painting of emerald green and ultramarine. On a familiarly cracked pavement street, a cadmium yellow car blasts down the street, at once both startling him from his fugue and confirming his horrible reality: he was somehow still in Faraway town. He was still alive. He still breathed in and out as though the last few days had passed as normal, and his most recent memories weren’t of him hurtling through the sky, air pulling at his face as the ash-grey pavement rushed towards him from below.
Experimentally, he pushes a finger gently at his eyepatch, hissing as pain arcs his eyelid beneath the cotton.
Not a dream; at least, not in the traditional sense.
Hand dropping to his side, he lets his gaze slide around the world, his feet slowly whirring to life as he starts ambling down the street, tugged down the sidewalk as if under a magnetic pull. Parallax pushes the houses out of view faster than the trees, each step taken revealing another abode tucked behind the one he’d thought was the last—another domino standing in line, waiting to be toppled.
The church hadn’t been the only thing he recognized. He recognized these houses too: one with a leaky, drooling pipe. Another with a newlywed couple. A third, a love undaunting in the face of dissent. And the fourth…
“I hope you can find some peace. Or, you know, some happiness.”
The next house bounds into view. His eyes land on a decrepit bungalow, its olive door faded from the sun and its vinyl siding cracked from disrepair. A wafting stench of rancid food and acrid death tore through his nostrils. In the tarmac yard, a lone, ballet-pink pinwheel stands, its plastic petals motionless in a breezeless sky.
His pace quickens. His footsteps are heavier and more uncontrolled. He doesn’t slow down until the house has vanished from sight.
△○□×
She was used to eyes following her around.
With tourmaline hair and a seafoam ribbon, she sticks out like a sore thumb: a bright sun against pastel hues, riding an old blue bicycle with a worn nail bat clutched in her hand. Kids stared at her in awe. Adults whispered to each other as she passed, disgust in their glares as they told their children not to be like her. It’s quotidian at this point—a song and dance that’s long since gone out of style yet kept alive against its will. She’s heard it all before. Every insult is woven with snobbism. Every upturned nose and disdainful glance.
It follows her like a shadow, a miasma of words with an umbra darker than the one nipping at her heels. Even as she hops the wooden fence that enclosed Faraway’s boneyard, she hears the not-quite whispers trailing behind her, voiceless worries pinned in the still, dead air.
“What a miserable child…”
“There she goes again. Why haven’t the police done anything about her?”
“She’d better not touch a thing in the cemetery. If she does, I’ll put her in a tomb. Mark my words.”
She brushes them off as she walks further into the treeline—though once the words were like saltwater to an open wound, by now their sharp edges had dulled into blunt tips. They barely even phased her anymore; her skin had grown too thick.
She touches nothing. She disturbs no one. Faraway Town’s most dangerous delinquent carefully slinks her way through a maze of tombstones and flowers, tracing a path to a destination in a familiar rite that she’s performed over six-hundred-times, before she reaches her destination: one specific gravestone, a calcite slab that even the world seemed to shine down on.
She plummets to her seat with a wane smile, dirt kicking up around her in a plume of smoke. It sullies the hem of her jean skirt, but she doesn’t care. It’s an old skirt, anyway.
“Hey, Sunny.”
It’s relaxing being here—away from expectations and judgement and disdain. The quietude that the cemetery provided, away from bustling streets and gossiping mouths, had always been a plus when she needed to get away from everything, but there was something else. Something beyond the shallow comfort of silence: Sunny had never been judgemental, even when he was alive. No matter what she spoke of or complained about, he had always given her a rapt listening ear. In that respect, death hadn’t changed a thing.
Despite everything, she found herself smiling a little, visiting Sunny’s tomb. His corner of the plot, tucked away from society, had become her go-to safe space; even over the lake that they had frequented as kids. Sunny was comforting. Inviting. Every time she visited him, she felt at home.
Sadly, all fruits ultimately rot, regardless of how sweet. This visit was a little different. A cataract fog clouding her eyes had cleared, leaving a horrifyingly crystalline image in its absence. For the first time in four years, she knew the truth—a truth that she hadn’t ever considered.
Mari killed Sunny. Mari killed her own brother.
Aubrey’s smile dissolves. She sucks air through clenched teeth, as agony from stress spikes in the space behind her eyes.
“Shit.”
Suddenly, the air feels hostile, sucking the soul from the world around her until it’s a dried-out husk, leaving behind nothing but the stragglers: her. She leans back, resting on calloused palms as she stares up to the sky, a sky that was mere moments away from sobbing and spilling its sorrow into the world.
Because, really, what else are you supposed to do when you find out that one of your best friends murdered her younger brother, who just so happened to be one of your other best friends? Even if it was an accident… it was still awful. Unthinkable. More than that, it made her feel… wrong. Like thousands of ants were squirming beneath her skin, desperate to escape. The hairs on her nape stood tall as rolling waves of nausea had tossed her stomach back and forth.
It’s why she was here so abruptly: she’d been at Gino’s with the gang, desperately trying to put Mari and Sunny out of her mind. When she tried to eat, she’d gotten two bites into a slice before retching, and she knew that she could no longer put this off.
A beleaguered groan escapes her lips into the horizon. God, what was she supposed to say? Eloquence was never her strong suit—that was always something Mari was good at. She had always been more suited to punching her problems or shouting at them until they went away. Unfortunately, this one had no escape; no way to pull the wool over her eyes or beat the problem into submission.
What could she do?
Sighing again, she curls her hands into the ground, digging up umber dirt with her fingers and clumping the loose soil together in her grip. She squeezes the wad of dirt like it’s a stress ball, the grime squashing into a ball as she lets her gaze drop towards Sunny’s grave, the inscription on the tombstone just barely visible to her less-than-perfect sight.
Then, she shuts her eyes.
The wind whips around her in a frenzy, picking up a supernatural speed as it whips her clothes and hair carelessly askew, strands of coral pink tickling her nose and catching in her mouth as the air around her whistles in her ears. Tree branches rattled like they were wind chimes, the music of boughs and foliage.
“Hello, Aubrey.”
When she opens her eyes, there’s a boy leaning against the tombstone. His hair is a windswept onyx. His jacket is just as dark, and his expression betrays almost nothing. If it weren’t for the slight frown tugging at his lips and the unmistakable fondness in his eyes, you would’ve thought the boy to be emotionless.
It’s understandable, really. Most peoples’ last memories of him framed him in a wooden box—elegantly crafted, housing a body much too small. His face had been deathly pale, inexpressive. His arms had been crossed over his chest. His eyes had been shut.
When she opens her eyes, Sunny stares back at her, his lips pursed and his brow deeply furrowed, “Hi, Sunny,” she says, a soft smile creeping onto her face at the sight of him.
“What’s the matter?” His airy voice masks his shrewdness—his sharp gaze that always whispered of knowing more than he let on. Aubrey pinches her eyes shut and exhales one more time, before she blinks open to stare at him directly.
“Mari told us the truth. She killed you.”
The short pause swallows them whole. Its silence deafens her, tinnitus ringing noisily.
“I see,” Sunny tilts his head indifferently. He lifts himself until he no longer leaned on his grave. Striding over, he collapses to a seat by her side, tucking his knees into his chin and wrapping his arms around them, “And that bothers you?”
For a split second, a surge of anger rushes through her. Merlot soaks her vision. Smoke pours from her ears like a steam whistle. Enraged, she curls her right hand into a fist and slams it into the earth as she turns to him, “The fuck do you mean?! Sunny, you died because of her! She was your sister, and because of her, you’re…!”
Gritting her teeth turns her voice into a seething hiss, and she turns away, shutting her eyes again, “Damnit!” She whispers under her breath, raising her filthy, dirt-coated hand to press at her pulsing temple. She was losing her cool—she had to get a hold of herself. Like how Mari had taught her once upon a time. Before everything had gone wrong.
Her eyes still shut; she inhales air through her nose. Four seconds. She holds her breath. Seven seconds. She exhales. Eight seconds.
This was the Faraway cemetery. She was with Sunny. She was safe. She was okay.
Four seconds. Seven seconds. Eight seconds.
Everything would be okay.
Four seconds. Seven seconds. Eight seconds.
“Of course, it bothers me,” She murmurs once she’s certain she won’t make another scene, her once simmering rage brought down to a lukewarm discomfort, “I… I miss you, Sunny. I know that everyone else does too. Why else would your death destroy our friend group? Both Mari and Basil stopped going outside for years! Hero and Mari broke up! Kel and I can’t even talk anymore without yelling!”
She angrily sighs, pushing those thoughts away—one problem at a time, after all—“To hear that it wasn’t an accident, that Mari, of all people, killed you? God, what am I supposed to do?”
She opens her eyes, and Sunny’s piercing gaze cuts through her. He’s sitting directly in front of her now, his head leaning in so that he can study her face. His eyes roam across her sweeping, carnation-pink tresses, and her artificial cerulean irises as he drinks in every detail, every tell. After what feels like an eternity, he leans away.
“…You don’t hate her,” He concludes.
Aubrey says nothing. Instead, she casts her gaze solemnly to the ground. Her hair slides forward, tugged by gravity to shadow her face—enough hair so that her face is almost entirely obscured.
Unperturbed, Sunny continues, “You don’t hate Mari for killing me, because she was your big sister as much as she was mine. You don’t want to hate her—a part of you doesn’t even think that she’s telling the truth. How could the perfect, all-loving Mari kill her younger brother, right? It’s almost impossible to think about.”
Sunny glances off to the side. A blue morpho butterfly hovers nearby, its wings fluttering in the still breeze. He stretches his fingers out towards it, “But it happened. Basil said so. Now, despite every cell in your body screaming at you to despise her, to hate her with your guts… you can’t. You might not love her like you used to… but you don’t hate her. Not entirely.”
The butterfly perches on his finger, its antennae twitching as it crawls up his smooth, peach-hued skin, “And you feel guilty because you don’t hate her. You feel like you’re letting me down by not hating the person who killed me.”
Tentatively, she raises her gaze to him and suddenly she is exhausted. Her muscles are weary and burn with every movement, her eyes flutter open and shut, and her lungs ache with every laboured breath, “What should I do, Sunny?” She asks, her voice a tired, quiet whisper, barely heard above the silence of the world, “What’s the right call to make?”
Sunny shrugs as he gives her an erudite stare, “I don’t know the answer to that.”
She wilts from his words, and Sunny shakes his head, “You knew I wouldn’t know, Aubrey. Don’t be so surprised,” He leans over to flick her temple with his finger—she feels nothing aside from a light, pleasant breeze, and the rolling turmoil of uncertain despair that spins the earth and tosses her stomach as she remains motionless.
The boy beside her sighs, with frustration and warmth and concern, “Go talk to her.”
His suggestion cranks everything to a halt. A pause button to her brain. She turns to him, her eyes wide, “Huh?”
“Go talk to Mari,” Sunny says smoothly. He rises to his full height, dusting the dirt from the hem of his jacket and picking loose grass blades from his pants, “Maybe you’ll reconcile. At the very least, you’ll hear her side of the story in more detail. She deserves another chance.”
A spark of hope jolts her to life, yet she doesn’t dare let it burn out of control. Carefully, she proceeds—the next question she asks is almost frantic, like there were live wires powering her, snaking through her body like veins, “But what if I don’t forgive her? What if I do end up hating her?”
Sunny smiles. Though it is faint, barely existing, weakly pushing against the apples of his cheeks in a struggle for its existence, it is one of the brightest things that Aubrey has ever seen.
“Then you can say you tried. You won’t have any regrets.”
His words are like a drain, the flood of anxiety that drowned her sweeping away as an answer is revealed. Aubrey laughs and shakes her head, “Man, you make it sound so easy, I’m a little annoyed.”
“Two heads solve a solution better than one.”
“Shut up,” She says without malice, a matching grin on her face as Sunny’s solution drives away the anxiety that plagued her; worry like shadows filling a room, chased away by the ebullience of a lightbulb, “…And thank you. You always know what to do.”
Sunny’s smile widens a little more, and he bashfully turns away, his ears red, “…I always tried my best.”
Aubrey’s gaze drifts towards Sunny’s tombstone, and her grin turns wistful, “…Yeah, you did.”
It is then that a fundamental law of nature is fulfilled: the conservation of mass. Her stomach, for days, had been filled with the emptiness of dread and terror, her appetite lost ever since Mari had broken the news to them all. Now, with her worries momentarily resolved, all the dread and terror that accumulated in her throat and tempered her appetite had been sucked into a vortex. In its absence, an entirely different feeling began to seep into its place, filling the empty mold that the anxiety had left behind.
Aubrey’s stomach whines and she laughs nervously, “Shit, I’m hungry.”
“Go back to Gino’s. Maybe you’ll catch Kim and Vance.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea,” She slowly nods to herself, turning towards the rusted iron gates of the entrance, panic suddenly striking her as the gravitas strikes, “Shit, I gotta go now if I’m gonna catch Kim!” Quickly, she launches to her feet, pirouetting towards the exit, “Thanks again, Sunny. Sorry I didn’t clean your tombstone today—but I’ll come back tomorrow! If you give me a day, I’ll make sure it’s polished. Deal?”
“Of course,” He replies, as mild as the day, “Enjoy your lunch.”
“Bye Sunny!”
With a final farewell, the delinquent sprints off, leaving the boneyard empty once more. The memory she leaves behind to disappear is of a tidy, dark-haired boy with coal-black eyes, a jacket of Rorschach ink, and a subdued, somber expression. Within a sudden second, he ceases to exist, having no reason to do so without the pink-haired author of his ethos. It was like he had never existed at all.
But that’s to be expected: there’d been no wind in the Faraway Cemetery that evening. The air was as still and silent as a stone, not once moving or picking up, as if in fear of rousing another old idea from their eternal bout of sleep.
△○□×
He stands on the edge of a curb. He curls his hands into fists. Then, he squeezes them, his hands clenching and unclenching them as he drinks in the world at large.
Trekking further beyond hadn’t lessened his familiarity one whit—it had the opposite effect, actually. It intensified it, amplifying the sensation until it rolled around in his lungs and rattled his skull as familiar trees and familiar roads and familiar houses and—a car roars by, a machine growl that startles him, tossing all of his thoughts into the atmosphere.
He recollects what’s left of his rumination, the culmination and collection of every notion he managed to prevent from escaping. At the forefront of them is one loud, raucous scream: You are still in Faraway. Alive.
The thought sickens him to his stomach. Luckily, there is a simple enough remedy.
He heads north—towards an aging park with an old, squeaking swing. His eyes are drawn to the empty asphalt, his ears primed in search of another metal shriek and the tailing whisper of rushing wind. As he saunters across town, a part of him idly takes in more of Faraway: Summer-stained thoroughfares and trees of oak were both familiar and foreign to him at the same time—it was like someone had walked through his memories and pieced together a facsimile of his home but changed the smallest details along the way. Unfamiliar cracks in the sidewalk. A missing tree, only a stump where it once stood. A house with a different coat of paint. There was something unusual about everything, yet he couldn’t tell if it was his own faulty memory, or something else entirely.
A screech pulls him from his thoughts. Glancing further ahead he sees a cobalt-blue truck, barrelling down the street at what looked to be a breakneck pace, no intention of stopping.
Perfect.
He inhales and exhales, pushing regrets and longing and confusion into his breath before expunging it into the air, letting his emotions diffuse into the warm, summer air. For a moment, all the white noise halts. The squeal of the car and the humdrum of a sleepy town all fall away, and he is all that remains, standing at the edge of the curb alone. So very hopelessly alone.
Then the thought, like all the rest, is pushed away into the depths of Black Space.
As the roar of the truck nears, and the smell of gasoline and exhaust fills his nose, he steps forward onto the street.
△○□×
HOOOOONK!
The squeal of tires and the loud cry of a vehicle blaring its horn pulls his attention, just for a moment. As Basil looks up from disturbed earth and memories into the skies, a flock of sparrows soar into the air. Dots of charcoal skitter across the empyrean, and once they vanish out of sight, he sighs and looks back at the ground. More specifically, at the ground surrounding his best friend’s grave.
A splash of scarlet catches his eyes. Glancing at a bright, brilliant bouquet of papaver rhoeas, he feels a slight smile encroach on him: like every other flower surrounding the headstone, the new additions were healthy and adjusting well to the new environment. Their red petals were vivacious against the pale grey of the obelisk. He still had it—his green thumb, as Kel loved to call it. Even after years of inertia, of lying in his bed counting pockmarks in the popcorn ceiling, his skills hadn’t deteriorated.
At least something hadn’t changed.
He dips his hand, and his watering can takes a bow. It cries from its sprinkler and bathes a family of six Camellia japonica living in a cracked and battered pot. Basil watches as the flowers seemingly perk up from the attention; like parched man finding an oasis, thankful to the heavens for a drink.
In spite of the pot’s condition, Aubrey had nurtured the flowers expertly. As if she’d tended to it at every waking hour of the day.
Three flowers left. Basil lifts the watering can back up, tilting it until no water spilled from its nozzle. He takes a few steps towards a triplet of Lilium brownii, before letting the water fall once more.
Kel had been proud of the ones from his family garden. Hero said their parents hadn’t uttered a word when they caught him digging through the flowerbed.
Two flowers left. He takes a step back, the list of flowers to water now one name shorter. He turns to the moon-coloured Pecteilis radiata that he’d planted all those years ago—when the casket had first lowered, and the dirt had been shoveled on top. As the rainwater falls once more, he finds himself humming a song—an amateurish rendition of Stardust Diving.
He vanished soon after that—wilting in his home for years, the smell of death and rot in the air as his garden perished one by one. It took him a long time to start caring. But, then again, it took a long time for him to do anything, really.
One flower left.
He turns to face the last flower, loitering in the earth: a lone, stalwart Helianthus annuus planted a little off to the side, staunchly glaring into the sun. It stood proudly above the other flowers. Not just the flowers, it also towers over him, its hazel-coloured eye sweeping its gaze protectively around Sunny’s grave.
Basil gives it a wide berth as he walks past it, setting the watering can amongst the rest of the garden.
Mari had planted it here. Taken care of it. Let it flourish. He’s never commented on it: the irony of Sunny’s killer fostering a plant with his name is punishment enough. It’s the only flower in the nursery around his tomb that he refuses to touch. Even her name sickens him.
The flowers are startlingly good at gentrifying death. A shell of flora envelops Sunny’s in-laid casket protectively, warding evil from even stepping near his headstone. Standing at the foot of the memorial, he feels a strange sort of serenity, an odd comfort around the grave at odds with the somber melancholy and the fragrance of toast. Somehow, despite everything, he felt safe.
He felt content.
All of a sudden, Basil is all too aware of a strain in his cheeks—the sunken skin of his dimples and the crinkled skin of his crows feet—He’s smiling. it’s a feeling that’s almost foreign to him, having been long forgotten amidst the years of self-loathing and guilt. Even his body felt lighter: his shoulders were slouched, and his neck lacked any aches. It was like he’d been freed of his shackles, leaving him free for the first time in years.
He hates it.
He hates how he can smile. He hates how relieved he can feel. He hates it he hates it he hates it, with the burning passion of a million Scoville units, scorching hatred searing his skin and burning away every other emotion that could’ve possibly seeped in through the cracks.
He doesn’t deserve happiness. He doesn’t deserve the tranquil quietude of Sunny’s grave; not when he rewrote his last living moments into a lie—the biggest lie that he and Mari have ever told.
“I… it was an accident, okay, Basil? Sunny… he tripped. He missed a step going down the stairs. Basil, look at me! Sunny tripped, okay? He tripped, Basil! I... you… you believe me, right? I’d never do something like that to Sunny!”
Held for too long, his breath forces its way out of his mouth. His diaphragm crushes the air out of his respiratory system and expels it into the atmosphere. Slipping out along with his breath was a laugh—curt, yet more bitter than alcohol; He pinched his eyes shut and smiled. God, he was the worst. He should have known better—should have told the truth from the very start.
Instead, here they were. Four years of spun wheels and tears. Anger and suffering. Pain split amongst them all and tossed between them like a ball.
“When you died… When Mari pushed you down the stairs… I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what to tell anyone. The paramedics said I was in shock. Shock that my best friend died. They were right… but it wasn’t the only reason.”
Basil’s eyes crack open. The towering sunflower looms overhead, an intimidating eye pressing an overwhelming gaze against him. He doesn’t falter.
“Mari lied to everyone. Pretended that you tripped on your own. ‘It was an accident’, she told everyone. Nobody knew that you two were shouting at each other just minutes before he fell. Nobody knew that she was pushing you too hard… that you were so stressed out about this dumb recital. No, it was just an accident,” He feels his hands clench, heat starting to spread beneath his epidermis, “It’s ridiculous how easy it is to lie, isn’t it? To pretend that horrible truths could never actually exist, stopping them from ever seeing the light of day. I suppose that’s why they call honesty a virtue, haha…”
His laugh is like a croak, a dry wheeze from a dehydrated voice. His gaze drifts towards the tombstone’s inscription, and guilt forces his eyes shut again.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t say anything. I could have said something to the paramedics. Could have argued against Mari, told someone, anyone, that she was just a filthy, horrid liar! But I didn’t, Sunny! I let everyone believe that you fell down the stairs on your own—that everything was okay, and that Mari was just as perfect as she had always made herself look! Now look at us. Everyone’s basically ignoring each other right now; nobody knows what to do next, all because I couldn’t tell anyone the truth.”
As he smiles, tears slowly streaming down his face as sluggish fluid beads, his self-loathing reaches a crescendo and nearly swallows him whole.
“Did I do the right thing?” Basil asks nobody—because there was nobody to answer in the stomping grounds of the deceased. Not for a murderer’s accomplice, grieving the death of his victim, “Keeping your death a secret all this time… Did I make the right call, Sunny?”
Sunny doesn’t answer. It’d be stupid if he did. He’s dead. Even you can remember that, can’t you?
He breathes in and rubs the tears from his cheeks. Then, once they’re sufficiently dry, Basil forces his eyelids open.
Yeah. Yeah, I can.
Basil opens his eyes to a beautiful sight. A gold tinge, radiating from the sun as it yawns past the horizon, layers the scene in a warm glow as light spilled onto his tomb. The flowers nestled around Sunny billow in the wind, perianths softly growling a harmony alongside the breeze. The slightly overgrown grave marker rests quietly in the dirt.
It’s a beautiful view; a view that, sadly, he is doomed to forget.
Aware of his eventual fate, he basks in the sight. He studies how each flower preens in the sunlight, how the world seemed aware of its robbery—stealing Sunny away from the world decades before his time—seemingly pouring sunlight directly onto his tomb. Not for the first time, as he lingers in the cemetery for far too long, he considers breaking his promise to never bring his camera to Sunny’s grave.
Then he remembers the wails. The wretched sobs, of ruined souls; a fractured family, mere moments before it would irreparably shatter. He remembers that he’d studied Sunny’s face before they lowered him into the dirt and thought that Sunny looked as if he was asleep. He thinks better of wavering. He ridicules himself for even considering it.
Sunny deserved better.
Let the dead rest.
With nothing else to do, Basil studies. He stands and stares at the sight, trying so desperately to ingrain each flower, each crack in the calcite, into his mind. He’s memorized the inscription by now, he mumbles it in his sleep. He remembers every single flower in Sunny’s garden and how many there were of each. Why was this so hard?
Basil stares. He stares, he stares, and he stares, even as his eyes hurt and threaten to fall out of their sockets. He stares until his feet start to hurt; when they do, he sits down, crosses his legs, and continues to stare.
It’s only when the sun finally sets, and the world is painted in a deep blue, that Basil stops, tearing his eyes from the headstone and turning to the exit, kicking up dust as he shuffled towards the gates. He leaves behind both a silent adieu—a wordless nod—to a person long-gone, and a memory. A vivid memory of a grave surrounded by flowers, bathed in a sunset blanket, gone.
He keeps with him a chilling realization: his footsteps were lighter than they’d ever been before. His shoulders lacked the anxious tension that he was intimately familiar with. The fog surrounding his head, after four, long, murky years, had begun to clear.
△○□×
He sits at the edge of the world, tapping the tips of his shoes together and languorous wondering where it went wrong.
He was so sure that his plan would work. The cars roaming Faraway Town were notoriously careless, speeding through thoroughfares like they were in a race. It would have been child’s play for him to have finished what he started—rid the world of the stain better known as his existence.
And yet, here he was, still alive. Motionless, yet more awake than ever, the rest of the town falling asleep. The only evidence of his failure were the scrapes on his knees and his elbows—patches of skin scraped off where the asphalt had gnawed at his skin. A part of him wanted to blame the unnatural competence of the driver, swerving around him more fluidly than a jet stream, but he knew better than that.
Something had stopped him. He had stopped him.
…Why?
Traitorous silence and chirping cicadas are his only answer. A frown etches on his face, the thoughts in his head popping like bubbles as he chases them away—that’s a dangerous line of thinking, he’s realized; it would lead to nothing but ruination.
He stares upwards instead, distracting himself with the sky, a pale Prussian blue after the sun had completed its nightly rites and left Faraway Town to the mercy of the moon. The town, cloaked by the shade, leers at him. Shadows nip at his heels, ready to swallow him whole if he lingered for just a moment too long.
Something grabs at his shoulder; a weight pulls at it, midnight towering over him and dragging him back.
He whirls backwards to face nothing. Just empty, thin, suffocating air.
Time to start moving.
He rises on spaghetti-weak legs. He glides down the sidewalk as though he were in a daze, tracing a familiar path up an oft traveled pathway. Staring at nothing but the dense, dark fog, he walks. He walks, and he walks, and he walks. He passes consecrated stone statues and picket fences, a plastic pink flamingo, and a small doghouse, its sole inhabitant likely fast asleep. Despite the darkness wrapping all around him, every step he took was carefully placed, engraved in his muscle memory by rote.
It’s a short journey—no more than fifteen minutes at a toddling pace. A beige-roofed house lies at the end, its windows peering into dark rooms giving the illusion of void-black eyes and the slightly unkempt nature of his mom’s garden were invariably familiar. Like he hadn’t left it at all in the last few days. Like he hadn’t jumped from a hospital rooftop. He was home; where nothing had changed, and Something still lurked in the halls.
If he could ignore the cluster of sunflowers on the far side of the lawn, and the empty space where Mari’s rickety, tattered picnic basket once sat for seasons on end, he might’ve even believed himself.
He wipes his shoes on the doormat. A clammy hand rubs against the hem of his sweater vest before he pulls his house key from his pocket. As he pushes the key into the lock, panic briefly flashes through him—would his key still work?—before there’s a telltale click and the door swings wide open, the pitch-black depths of a whale’s mouth revealed, beckoning him inside.
The floorboards creak beneath his weight. The door shuts behind him with a soft thud, ensconcing him in a darkness that, ironically, made it easier for him to see. He could make out the vague shapes of furniture, darker hues of black against the bluish-charcoal smog: a couch in the center of the room. Tables of all sizes. A large, framed photo hung beside an old television of a family of four: a mom, a dad, a young girl, and her even younger brother (they’d thrown that out years ago, and it was supposed to be rotting in a landfill.)
He recognizes where he is.
His fingers twitch. They grasp onto desolate air, searching for a nonexistent rubber. He’s suddenly all too aware of an emptiness in his hand; of a lack of weight, safeguarding him from the worst the world had to offer.
His breath catches in his throat. His heartbeat races to life. With featherweight footsteps and the immediacy of an imminent nuclear meltdown, he rushes towards the kitchen. He doesn’t stop, not even as he trips over the fringe of the living room rug and nearly crashes into the floor, too busy dancing over shadowy hands and leering spiders crawling on the wood. not even as his shoulder crashes against the wall, pain blossoming from nerve endings as he dodges past dark, stringy tendrils hung from the ceiling flooding the house in black.
He doesn’t stop until he’s in front of a knife block (hadn’t that already been packed?), a family of handles poking out of a cushion of wood. Like King Arthur pulling Excalibur free, he yanks the knife out with a firm pull. Moonlight peeking through the kitchen window glints off the blade like a stroke of white paint, the rubber handle strikingly dark against his pallid hand.
He lets out a breath he doesn’t realize he’d been holding, the air disrupting into silence with a soft whisper. He blinks his eye shut and rubs at the lid, pushing fuzzy shapes into his vision as he opens it once more to a regular room. Though the kitchen had been as empty as the church, it had seemed almost thrice as hostile—faces leering from behind corners, hands ready to grab his limbs if he strayed too close. Now, armed with his weapon of choice once more, Something had retreated once again. The inky corruption faded. The creatures vanished. All that was left behind were kitchen appliances and dishes, left behind to dry on an old dish rack overnight.
Experimentally, he swings the knife a few times. The tip arcs through the air, slashing through Sprout Moles and Sweetheart alike with no trouble. Even the knife’s heel felt lethal, ready to puncture through the most dangerous foe.
Of course, Something would run; armed with a knife like this, it would never be able to reach him.
He almost allows himself a smile when the world goes white.
A whiplash in lumens stuns him like a flashbang. He raises his free hand to shield himself from the sudden luminance, stepping backwards from the countertop. Who turned on the lights? An intruder? Panic seizes him at the thought of someone else in the house, and on instinct, he raises his weapon, the knife pointed in the general direction of the light switch as he lowered his shielding hand from his face. Who’s there? What are you doing here?
A soft, sharp gasp echoes through the air, slamming into him like a punch to the gut. It’s familiar, this voice, even though all he’s heard is the intake of air and nothing more. It’s a distinctive timbre. Familiarly cloying, yet with a strange, billowy undertone—an extra note of acerbity that wasn’t there before, underlying every single note in her register. He knows this voice. He knows it way too well.
As his eye snap open, a part of him crosses his fingers and hopes that what he sees is not what he thinks he will see. It’s the hopeful part. The imagination, the blind optimism, the part that dared to hope. Dared to smile. That part hoped it was his mom, plucked from bed by his stumbling and fussing at the sight of her frail, sickly son. That would mean that he’d dreamt up everything else—that would mean that everything truly was the same.
The rational part of his brain scoffs. He knows this voice. He knows it way too well.
This wasn’t his mother.
He opens his eyes to a lie. A girl, somewhere around Hero’s age, stands by the light switch. Her hair is a dark rat’s nest. Her eyelids are heavily bagged. A purple shirt and pajama bottoms are unfamiliar to him—but that was to be expected: she’d grown the last time he saw her, four years younger and her body eerily still in her casket. Her face is twisted into an odd look: one of confusion, slowly being crept upon by utter disbelief, as if she couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing. Her mouth moved slowly, like a fish’s popping mouth, struggling to process the sight of him.
Eventually, though, she manages. After what feels like an eternity of silence, an endless standoff between two universal impossibilities—him and her—she whispers one single, suspicious, hopeful, broken, terrified word.
“…Sunny?”