Mirage (ON HOLD for revision)

Chapter 26: To Ashes

After class, just before they parted ways outside the door, Matt stopped in his tracks and talked to Cedric.

“You should join the play,” Matt said.

Cedric was at a loss for a moment, and then remembered what he said that morning as they waited for the sun to rise.

“Why?” Cedric asked curiously.

“Because it takes a lot of courage to start over?” Matt replied, sounding more like a question than an answer. After all, he wasn’t that sure himself. “And you might not have that option again. You don’t have to go back to do so, just drop by and play once in a while, I guess?”

Without waiting for a response, Matt walked on, leaving Cedric pondering what he just said.

“Makes sense,” Julius noted.

“I know.”

In fact, he has always known which is exactly why he had to run away. It was so easy, so tempting to go back and pretend the things between didn’t happen at all. But he didn’t want to deny what he has become, how he has become. Most of all, he didn’t want to retake the scenes just to make the same mistakes and suffer the same pain.

And that was hoe he ended up standing outside their house that evening, looking up at the light in his room, open for some reason. He hesitated for a second before turning the knob, and walked in, blinded for a moment by the lights inside the house.

It was too quiet, Cedric thought, feeling silly for having come. He was just about to turn back, relieved that there was no one there, when Shirley caught him on her way out of the storage room.

“Ceddie.”

It piles up.

Cedric froze and leaned on the door frame, unsure what to say or do. It has been so long since he was last called that by his sister, so long that Cedric remembered exactly when, way back when she was still an older sister and he was her younger brother, two conspiring devils against the mother who never got mad.

“Ceddie.”

She called out again, more desperate this time.

“I hear you.”

There was no word of apology, no mention of the past. It was a do-over after all, and do-overs don’t work unless you completely let go of the past. He looked at the old man, and the old man looked at him.

“Come here.”

Why, Cedric thought as he shambled forward, like a puppet whose strings were being pulled, except he was well aware of how tightly he clung to that string until his own hands bled. Why, Cedric thought, thinking back, wondering what even went wrong in the first place.

It piles up.

The baby died.

Surprised that he forgot, shocked by remembering, crippled by the memories surging back, reminding him why death appealed to him so desperately in the first place. Why he was so obsessed with the possibility of Matt killing Mari.

He was the same.

It piles up.

By the time he stood right in front of his old man, Leah reached the foot of the stairs.

The baby died, suffocated by Cedric’s old teddy bear, the one Cedric put beside his little brother so he wouldn’t be too scared, sleeping all by himself in the crib. And so he remembered.

It wasn’t really anyone’s fault, just as much as it was everyone’s fault. And yet the silence grew.

Leah reached out and ruffled Cedric’s hair.

“It’s ok,” she said, “we already packed his things.”

Leah suffered a nervous breakdown, constantly inflicting pain on herself whenever no one was around, even when there were people around. And one day she just upped and left. It was fine for a while, several months, and when it turned into years everyone accepted that she was never coming back. Things just fell apart.

Cedric caught the look on the old man’s face, the guilt and regret and everything else in between. After all, they really were the same; praying for destruction, but too afraid to bring it upon themselves.

It piles up log after log, crumbling cinder after cinder, until nothing but embers remain, clouding the memories with smoke, the mind’s traitorous attempt at self-preservation. And it will sizzle, until you go on your knees and blow the ashes away.

Cedric came to school the next day, wanting to tell Matt everything, if only to have someone else remember in case he forgets again. But Matt wasn’t there anymore.