Dark

It was cold. 1

Cold and dark2

Of course it was dark – he still hadn’t opened his eyes since he had slipped and fallen nine feet to the floor of the ravine. The cold was easy to explain as well – it was winter, and it had been so for about two months. 3

Despite everything, he still found it safer to be out here than back there with all the sadness – he found that it was more comfortable to be lying on his side in the snow with his leg burning and the rest of his body going numb than it was to be back at the home where they were still having his brother’s funeral. 4

No matter what they had told him – he had realized this partway into the service and just before he had decided to run off – it was his fault. He hadn’t known something was wrong before, but he knew that if he had just been paying attention for once instead of horsing around with his stupid friends he would have caught something. He would have noticed an expression that wasn’t supposed to be there or the lack of something that should have been there, or else… 5

If his brother had had to look towards someone else for love then of course he hadn’t been given enough attention from the someone who already loved him. If he had to use a computer to find someone who wanted to be with him, then how far had the person who he had depended on for his whole life distanced himself from him?
It must have been cold for him, having no one there.6

He wondered fleetingly what time it was – if it was past four o’ clock, everyone would have stopped crying – everyone’s tears would have dried by now and the boy in the casket would have faded from their minds as they turned their cellphones back on and wondered what they would have for dinner and at what time their nightly soaps came on…7

Time didn’t matter to him now. The fact was that his twin was gone forever and that he’d never be happy again and that he would have to go through the rest of his life knowing that he’d been the one who had killed him – who had utterly destroyed him no matter what his parents or his friends or that doctor at the hospital said…
He hated the hospital – the hospital was uniform hallways that smelled of clean death and were full of uniform white coats whose occupants summed up the loss of the most important person in the world in a false expression and a fake apology. He hadn’t wanted to go into the hospital – hadn’t wanted to see his brother’s cold, pale body flowering with bruises – he hadn’t wanted to see how a vague web entity had suddenly become very very real and destroyed this beautiful being both inside and out…8

He didn’t know how his parents couldn’t understand. They had said he should see him – give him one last farewell before he was sent to the morgue for more prodding and poking and discovering exactly who had caused this and exactly what had happened…9

He didn’t know how his parents couldn’t understand the fact that he hadn’t really died that night – he had died before – long before that – when he couldn’t trust his parents or his teachers or his friends or even his brother who was supposed to have loved him even more than anything in the world.10

He swore he was feeling the tears freeze to his face. 11

He wondered how it had felt for his brother – dying. Had he been fully aware – feeling the burning pain of his assault as he sobbed his pleas for life to the deaf forest and the blind stars? Had he floated – like this – his memories assailing him as his body broke again and again against the cold ground?12

No. No, he realized – his brother would not have ‘floated’, silent and thinking with a mind separate from his being. He would have been all there – crying for his other half – his brother – his twin that would never come to save him – who had never come to save him…13

He could only hear his own cries now – they fell heavy and muted upon snow-filled ears. They were short, sharp gasps of pain that lengthened into tearful child’s wails. He supposed that this was the reason they had found him.14

It sounded like they had saved a little bit of the funeral, just for him. He could hear his mother’s sobs and his father’s stoic sniffles and someone’s cellphone beep-beep-beeping before whoever it was on the other end picked up and translated wept syllables into intelligible words.15

Someone touched his face, drawing cold fingers over his eyes – wiping away his tears? – and muttering whispered promises. The ambulance is coming, it said. It’s gonna be okay…
Please, his head said as his mouth kept screaming; please stop lying to me…16

Soon, very soon the wails of the siren rose to match his own, and soon after that, hands were touching him, holding him – pulling him onto something and into the ambulance where the warmth made his fingers swell. Soon he was at the hospital – close to the room where his brother had been pronounced dead – the numbers were invisible to him and so all of the rooms were where his brother had last been aware of his fear and pain …17

18

They were all there in their Sunday best, crowding around his bed and shoving around his cast with different coloured sharpies. His mother held his hand and gave him a watery smile – his father mussed his hair and said nothing. 19

He couldn’t meet any of their eyes… He couldn’t even move…20

His body was frozen because it was cold.21

Cold, so cold…22

So cold and dark.23