As We Burn

Twenty-One.

Crispen sits silently, his pale hands holding his face. A few golden curls pour out from in between his inked and ringed fingers, glowing bronze in the firelight. I wait patiently until he finally pulls his hands away and reaches for his sparkling glass of Prosecco. He tosses the remainder of the liquid down his throat, and then sets the empty glass back down on the table. He gets up and moves to the chair across from me, facing me. I'm hit by a wave of déja-vu as I recall the first night we sat like this together months ago, when Crispen first opened up to me about his past. It's jarring to realize how much has changed in those few months, how Crispen's impenetrable facade is now cracking with emotion, and how eager I feel to keep a smile carved into it. He isn't the same man who sat there before, and neither am I. We've both been permanently altered by the other's existence. A sculpture of two men embraced in a passionate kiss I once came across in my high school Art History class flashes before me. La Fraternité des Peuples by Jules Dalou. No matter what he tells me, I feel as though our connection is reminiscent of that sculpture; permanent, everlasting. Set in stone. This is how I'm able to stay calm in this moment, because I know deep down that no matter what he tells me, it won't change the way I feel about him. I don't know if anything could.

"When everything with my father happened, it really fucked me up," he begins. The mention of his father increases my heart rate. "My body felt like an empty shell, too heavy to even lift off of my mattress. I remember the excruciating pain I endured just from procrastinating going to the bathroom, how dry my mouth was because I couldn't find a sliver of motivation to get a glass of water. The mind is a tragically powerful fucking thing, I guess. But the worst part wasn't even the physical symptoms of my...downfall. It was the memory loss; my mother would have to repeat what I did days before, and sometimes I would forget about my father's incident altogether - I'd feel hopeful, for a few seconds, until reality would come crashing down just to pull me further under."

Crispen shakes his head and pauses for a moment, staring off as if he's reliving the past beneath his cobalt irises. I can feel my own eyes stinging at the mere thought of Crispen in such a debilitating state. His story is familiar; I remember my mother in a similar comatose before she eventually found solace in alcohol. I didn't blame her, but the opposite effect happened to me. Elliot distanced himself, and I took charge.

It takes all of my willpower not to hold Crispen's face in between my hands and promise him that he will never have to feel that way ever again. Even from here, I can hear his shaky breathing. His right leg bounces up and down anxiously.

"Anyway, sometimes I would confuse my dreams - well, night terrors - with reality. I'd dream of my father coming at me, drunk or high like he usually was, and wake up with bruises all over me. It wasn't until the nurse reminded me that my father was dead that I realized it was all my twisted imagination," Crispen explains.

"The nurse?" I interrupt. I regret it the moment Crispen's face falls down into his lap.

"When I wasn't getting any better, my mom took me to a facility," he tells me quietly. Something Cass told me at the pumpkin patch echoes in my mind; We tried everything, therapy, medication, mental health facilities. Shit, I forgot.

"Crispen, there's absolutely no shame in getting help. You'd go to the hospital if you broke a leg, wouldn't you?"

"Yeah, I guess so," he says, sitting back up a little.

His eyes remain downcast as he fiddles with the chain around his neck. I only now notice his nails are painted sparkly black.

"The point of this whole story is that when the farmhouse down the road was burned down, I woke up with this memory of myself holding a flare in my hand. Except the flame, it was purple," he tells me, his brow furrowed in confusion. A cold chill runs down my back as I recall the purple-handled flare I saw in the evidence room back at the police station. "And I couldn't remember how I cut my hand, only that you fixed it up for me."