“Are you a ghost?” I find myself asking. Ghosts don’t exist, idiot. But him standing here, feet away, not moving more than his gaze, it’s a figment of my overheated imagination. He’s dead. He’s been dead for nearly a year. “Am I dead too?” The words tumble out on their own accord, but somehow I feel so lost. How the fuck is he here and why the fuck do I feel sad?
Isn’t heaven supposed to be bliss? My ankle still hurts, my head throbs with questions, and my heart feels raw as fuck.
He doesn’t move, just stares, much like me. Is this real?
“Say something,” I whimper, needing something.
“What could I possibly say to make this okay?” The gravel in his voice drops me to my knees. My heart beats erratically while my breath seems to stop coming through my lungs.
How is this happening right now?
I stare at the mirror image of me, but not. We don’t resemble one another anymore. The way we’ve both aged is astounding. Him in a scarily athletic way and me in a broken one.
How the fuck is he here?
My mind travels to how the guys were inside whispering. Did they know all along?
“Col,” my brother rasps, breaking my heart all over again. His voice, it’s so deep. It’s so different. It’s not his but it is at the same time.
My brother is alive.
My brother isn’t dead.
My brother is here.
My brother isn’t in that coffin.
Thoughts of how I experienced the last nine months without him weigh heavily on my chest. The beat of my heart increases and my breathing becomes shallow and quick.
Fuck, I’m panicking.
I’m losing myself.
My chest rises and falls, achy and quick, stealing all the oxygen. I can’t breathe. I really can’t breathe.
Gripping my chest, wrapping my arms around myself, I try to settle, to keep myself planted, but the air coming and going feels toxic and unsafe, burdensome and desperate at the same time.
“I need you to breathe, Colton,” Cass whispers, trying to reassure me. But how can he possibly reassure me? He’s dead. He was dead. I was all alone. I died too.
“You—you—,” I pant. “D-died,” I sob. A too large gulp of air has me choking, sputtering. He’s finally holding me up, rubbing my back. Weakness overcomes my frame and I fall to the ground in a heap.
Cass holds me, falling with me. He wraps his arms around me as the sadness and abandonment takes over.
“You left m-me.” A shake overtakes my frame. From head to toe, I tremble from realization. My brother is here.
He’s right here.
“I’m so sorry, Col.” His voice breaks with that, he shakes with me. The mirroring sounds of sadness mingle, creating a new symphony of sorrow.
As his repeated circles on my back help me concentrate, my body gets the message. I take in a large breath. Then another. Each exhale shakes, loud and stuttered. Finally, as I force the breathing to hit a new rhythm, a symphony of loss.
“You were gone, I wanted to be gone too,” I cry, my words filled to the brim with all the pain I’ve stored. Even when I’d fall asleep sobbing, a razor in my palm, blood dripping on the blank canvas of my skin, I held back.
To experience the full force of my loss felt impossible. The beating against my skin, the slices, they represented what I couldn’t understand or explain when it came to my loss.
I felt empty, somehow the hurt made me feel less like a corpse and more human.
“I didn’t want you to be alone, Col,” he reassures, but it doesn’t help. They say there are seven stages of grief, but I don’t think I overcame the depression.
Yes, I accepted he was gone.
Yes, I realized life would go on.
But no, I didn’t move forward.
I allowed myself to become a mummified embodiment of what life won’t ever be. The rebirth of me was the death of innocence, nothing more.
They took from me and I decided to never be the conduit for them to abuse. Yet, he’s here. He’s alive.
“You never came back for me,” I whimper, realizing that he’s been alive and didn’t come for me. He didn’t fix it. He didn’t tell me it was okay. He didn’t reassure me that he’s okay. He didn’t protect me. He didn’t love me enough. He didn’t… ease my pain.
“I know,” he admits, rocking us both. The pain manifests itself in the form of anger. With him, with the guys, with this fucked up world and the people in it.
My anger with him isn’t because he’s alive, it’s because he wasn’t there for me. For the guys, it’s suspicion. Did they know all along?
“Who knew?” My words are half-strong, not as weak as I expected with the myriad of emotions tumbling out of me.
“I don’t think—”
Turning to him, I give us distance, if just to see his face and expressions, hoping he still can’t lie to me.
“Don’t give me that. I deserve to know who kept you from me, who knew, who did this.”
He shakes his head, his face falling. There’s so much to unpack in his expression, it’s almost burdensome. “Tell me.”
“Dad knew,” he finally says. He stands, running a hand through his long hair. Cass no longer looks like me. The only thing we have in common now is our eyes. Now, he’s ragged and distant. His body has changed and it’s weird to notice those things.
It’s weird that he’s here right now and not in the coffin I sobbed on top of, wanting to go with him to his forever home.
“Who else?” I prod, knowing Mortem can’t be the only key. Hearing him say Dad is an adjustment I’m not used to yet. He shakes his head slowly, the unwillingness to hurt me visceral. “It’s going to hurt me more to know later. Especially if it’s not coming from you.”
He nods, and I can tell he’s struggling with morality. “You don’t deserve to be hurt more.”
I let out a derisive laugh. “You think I could possibly break further? I died, Cass,” I spit, the disdain licking every word. It’s not entirely directed at him but the whole fucking world. They wondered why suicide rates have risen over the years. Even not accounting for social media, we’re not properly taught how to cope with how we feel. The fact that self-harm is a recognized outlet and common too, that says so much about how little parents and others know.
I mean what I said.
“When you died, the parts of me that hoped lost their heartbeat. I became a corpse inside of a shell. My heart might have a beat, my soul might still be attached, but the parts of me that mattered and thrived when you were here, they were lost.”