Into the Dark {l.h. + a.i.} || lashton || BoyxBoy

| t e n t h |

| t e n t h |

•••

"My ghost, where'd you go?
I can't find you in the body sleeping next to me.
My ghost, where'd you go?
What happened to the soul that you used to be?"
-Halsey, 'Ghost'

•••

Luke gripped my hand in his. He wasn't warm, like an alive person would be, but he wasn't cold, like a not-alive person. His fingers were cool and smooth in my grip, a kind of devastatingly neutral feeling that reminded me constantly that he was an angel and I was a fucked up dead kid.

"Open your eyes, Ashton." Luke said after a moment, loosening our clasped hands and pulling away. I opening them and looked around, and all of a sudden I was drowning in a terrible tidal wave of déjà vu. I was in my house, standing just inside my front door, and I was looking into my kitchen. Golden afternoon light filtered through the front window, and the clock on the wall read 4:30. Upon first inspection, everything was in order in the quiet kitchen, but then I looked, and immediately it became clear to me that something was very wrong.

My mom was a person who reveled in order and routine and the notion that there was a place for everything, and everything had it's place. So the fact that none of the chairs at the kitchen table were pushed in meant something was very wrong. There were dishes in the sink--dirty dishes--the land line was thrown carelessly on the counter, and two cabinets under the sink were open, where we kept our cleaning products. So was the one above the refrigerator, were we kept the pills.

And God, I could see it all.

My mom, walking into the bathroom just after I'd died. Her seeing me, running to the kitchen to call the police, rummaging through the medicine to try to find what I'd taken. The police getting there, the ambulances taking me away to the hospital while she frantically got in her car and picked up Lauren and Harry and raced to the hospital.

And then. Then the worst part.

Then the part  when she came home. The part where she walked into the kitchen, and looked around, walked to the bathroom but wasn't quite able to go in. I could see her in my mind, her eyes turned flat from crying, unable to look anything but devastated and betrayed. I saw my mother in my mind's eye as she shuffled back to the kitchen in a loose way, like all her bones were letting go of each other because they were too tired to hold on any longer. I saw her slowly lower herself to her knees, saw her open the cabinets and pull out rubber gloves and towels and bleach, and saw her carry the load of it to the bathroom, where the door was still ajar.

I saw her stop, and I saw the towels and the gloves fall from her hands, and I saw her silhouette, a small woman with her hair frizzed out clutching a bottle of bleach in her right hand. I saw her unscrew the top of the bleach, glaring at the floor of the bathroom.

And I saw her pour the whole bottle onto the floor.

Pure bleach is a little thicker than water, if you didn't know, so I watched as it flowed across the unmarked floor of the tiny bathroom, and I watched as my mother crumpled to her knees in the pool of bleach, sobbing and scrubbing away all my death that hadn't even had the curtesy to leave a single mark behind. No blood, no anything. Not a single thing to show for what had happened.

And she cried and cried, the fumes drifting around her, making her dizzy, but she couldn't move, and her knees were burning but she couldn't get up, and her hands were blistering but she couldn't stop trying to wash it all away, bleach away her pain.

And

and

and

God.