Josh Dun x Reader

1

~17 September, 1997~

Your POV

His hand latches onto mine, squeezing tightly, as my dad begins his eulogy.

It's strange having someone close to you die. Especially if they're family.

When you hear about someone dying on the news, you don't react that much. You'll feel sorry for the family and move on. It's not like you ever knew the person.

But when your best friend's parents wake you up at three in the morning to tell you your mother has just passed away, it's different.

You try to wake yourself up, thinking it's all a dream, and deny it all you can. Then the realization hits you, that it's not a dream, and that she's really dead. All you want to do is scream until your lungs can't take it anymore and your throat burns and just be with her again.

Now, as I sit in the front row of the church, my best friend Tyler by my side to comfort me, my mother's body in a coffin in front of everyone, I feel emotionless.

As tears slide down my father's cheeks, I rest my head on Tyler's shoulder and shut my eyes. I try to block out the sound of sniffling noses around me, Dad's shaky voice and all thoughts of Mum, and try to focus on Tyler's steady breaths.

If we weren't in the church, surrounded by mourning friends and family, and at the most important and worst occasion in my life, I'd ask him to sing to me.

Whenever I'm sad, angry, need to calm down, having a bad day or just craving his voice, I'll ask him to sing to me and tap along on an imaginary drums set.

But for now I just use his quiet breaths as music to distract me from reality. It seems to work, until my dad finishes his speech and we all have to leave.

Mum never believed in burials. She always said that she didn't want a tombstone among the many other dead in a place where it's impossible to find. She always said she didn't want something gloomy as a way for people to remember she was once a person, which is all a grave is. She said she didn't want worms to eat her after many years and turn her peaceful body into a worm-riddled monster.

She wanted to be cremated and have her ashes spread in the river, where she would camp out with her family and fish all day long while having her favourite records play softly behind her so she could still hear the birds chirping.

It's a beautiful spot for a beautiful woman.

I hold on tight to Tyler, my arms wrapped around his waist, as the hearse takes her away.

It's then when the tears come. And they don't stop until we get to the venue for the funeral party.

~The next week~

"She doesn't need therapy," I hear my dad suddenly snap at who I'm assuming are, or were, Mum's two best friends.

Tyler and I exchange looks, then scuttle to my bedroom door, opening it slightly, to hear the conversation at the bottom of the stairs.

"I know you don't want her to go, but this isn't normal behaviour for an eight-year-old girl!" Emily, one of the two, replies. "Normal children her age would have been wailing through that whole funeral. They'd be still crying now."

"The only times we've seen her cry where when we told her Y/M/N died and after the funeral," the other, Mitch, Emily's husband, backs her up.

"That doesn't mean anything."

"Y/N is depressed!" Emily shouts at him. "Most kids her age still have no idea what that is."

"I said she's not going to therapy! Now, get out!"

I whimper in shock as the front door slams shut and I hear my dad begin to curse.

The door shuts and a hand wraps around my arm, pulling me up from my crouching position and away from the door.

"You don't need to listen to that." Tyler's voice is full of hurt, anger and sorrow. He sits me down on my bed and turns on the stereo. He turns up the volume until the commotion downstairs can be heard no longer.

That day, I sang. You know how in war movies people sing to distract themselves from what's going on around them?

That's what I did. To distract myself from the fact that my mum was gone. To distract myself from the fact that Dad was becoming a raging monster. To distract myself from the fact that this world is cruel, and it would always be like that.

Maybe that's why Tyler sings.

If only Adam and Eve didn't eat that damn apple. Life would be so much greater. There'd be no suffering, no worries, nothing to cry and scream and feel depressed over. Life would be peaceful.

But they did, and this was the punishment for all of us.