Skateboards and Songbirds

Chapter Sixteen: Numb

In the end, it would have probably been his end. If it hadn't been for a little stray cat that had followed him again, which now wove between his legs, mewing at him for pets.

Kade felt a part of him fall apart that night, openly sobbing into the cat's fur as she rubbed against his chin.

"I don't know what to do." Kade whispered when he let everything wash out of him. "I was an inconvenience to the person I loved the most. And now he's gone. And I don't know how to function as a human anymore.
How does someone learn to live again when the person that showed them how to live is gone. The person that they started living for. Gone."

The cat didn't respond with any answers, but merely rubbed against Kade's scared hand, licking his wrist for more pets.

-you said forever and now I drive alone-

Kade wasn't sure what it was that drove him to scooping up the cat and to walk back to his house, curling up on the large bed, taking a small circle of space in comparison to the mattresses' size.

Maybe it was the emptiness, or the purring of the cat, that finally drove him to sleep once again.

Kade's dreams were of no relief except for physically.
In his dream that night, Kade was floating in water atop a surfboard, the darkness underneath him in the depths of the ocean like an infinite void.

A shape of a dark claw grabbed his foot, dragging him underwater into an inky blackness that consumed him, making him drown in everything that weighed on him.
It was all your fault.

You drove him away.

You can't get anyone to stay.

You'll never have anyone that will love you like that.

Stop daydreaming.

You think you're worth of someone like that?

Guilty.

You hurt him.

He hates you now.

Kade couldn't swim back to the surface, every word entering his mouth as he tried to breathe the water as though it were air.

He couldn't block it out.

There was a small golden light from the sunrise, but Kade's arms were suddenly made from led, dragging him only further under the surface.

Kade's eyes slowly rolled back into his head, not noticing something grab his wrist until a slight tug to the surface made his lungs cough up water.

The golden light was shaped as a person, caressing Kade's cheek, coaxing the water from his chest.

"What's going on?" Kade coughed, sitting upright to shake the water from his head.

When his eyes decided to focus again, Kade realized exactly who the person was shaped as.

Calico sat there in a warm glow, his pristine white clothes all dry except for where Kade had been sprawled on his lap, his head glowing as though the sun itself was his halo.

"You almost let yourself go again Kade." Calico's voice was disappointed, making Kade's guilt worsen.
"I'm still waiting for you you know." Even in dreamland, Calico had the audacity to remind him that.

"I don't know why you are- I'm not worth-" Kade started to argue until dream Calico pressed forwards, taking Kade's head into his hands, placing a mesmerizing kiss on his lips.

"To me, your smile is worth living for. Because if someone like you can still smile, then this thing we call life can't be so bad after all." Calico reminded Kade, who sat in stunned silence.