The Country Boy and The City Girl

Jason's POV

I felt numb to my core as the police officer's words echoed in my subconscious. My uncle was dead. Deceased. No longer breathing. A cold, empty body of nothing.

I felt bile raise up in my throat, feeling the need to throw up as I clutched my stomach in the backseat of the cop car. It didn't seem real. It didn't seem real. It couldn't be real. It couldn't. They must have made a mistake. I would get to the morgue and it would be another man laying lifeless there on the cold steel table. It couldn't be my uncle. No, he was probably safe and warm passed out in a bar somewhere. He can't be dead.

I was wrong.

I stared at the pale white sheet covering a broad man's form. "Brace yourself," the lady whispered with a twinge of condolence. She lifted the sheet and I fell to my knees. My uncle.

His face was whiter than the sheet that covered him only a moment ago and his eyes were open and empty, staring into nothingness. His entire body was swollen from the lake's water. I envisioned him jumping off the bridge, like the police explained, and hitting his head on a rock before drowning. I felt my core jerk out a sob as I cried out, weighted down by the world closing in around me.

"I'm very sorry for your loss...Do you have any idea why your uncle would do this?" the policeman asked gently with a hand upon my shoulder. Guilt smacked me in the face like a harsh icy hand.

"I killed him..." I whimpered. Another groan of despair escaped my throat as my hands covered my face.

The policeman kneeled in front of me. "Son...he jumped off that bridge. You didn't kill him. He killed himself..."

Stop talking, I thought. Just stop.

"He hurt me then came to me for forgiveness...and I told him I was done with him. I told him I was leaving...Now he's dead....Because of me..."I groaned mournfully. "I killed him." He was a mourning man. The loss of my parents had weighed him down like the blood in his veins was lead. He destroyed the one thing that destroyed him most...himself.

The policeman said something that was probably consoling, but it was all a blur to me now. Noises ran into each other, my vision failed, and all I could hear was the sound of my beating heart. A sound I would never hear from my uncle's chest again. I was so angry, so lost, and hated the part of me that was relieved. My uncle was a broken man and that didn't give him the excuse to harm me, but he was still himself inside, hurting and lost. He was only human. He had a breaking point.

He had reached it.

And I was about to reach mine.

I burst through the morgue exit and ran to the bridge he stood on just hours ago, no longer needing crutches with the hard shelled boot they gave me. He died. My uncle ended his life...While I was partying. How stupid it all seemed to me now. My mind reeled as I stood on the edge, the road around me deserted at this time of night. What little alcohol I had had still burned in my throat, telling me it was okay to jump. Telling me it wouldn't make a difference. I had no family to miss me. My best friend was a psychopath, but then again wasn't I right now? I leaned over the edge, holding on to the street lamp next to me.

"Jason!" a voice screamed. I turned around and remembered the one most important thing I had left. Daniella.

She had a jacket zipped up over her ripped dress to cover her exposed flesh. Her makeup was running and black streaks lined her face like prison bars. "Don't," she choked out. I felt my face get hot with anger. Even she didn't give me a speck of emotion. I was a void hollow shell of anger now.