Before It's Voiced

Realism

I used to waste my time dreaming of being alive.

Now, I only waste it dreaming of him.

The last sentences he's written hangs hauntingly on the page, daring him to continue, daring him to write out THE END.

Daring him to say there's an ending at all.

But it's a rough draft, he tells himself one quiet morning. Patrick had fallen asleep with washable marker scribbled across his body— an attempt to recreate Pete's tattoos. It had been an interesting activity, Patrick drawing intricate shapes on his own arms as Pete held his breath and lightly pressed the tip of a dark blue marker to the place above Patrick's tail, tracing out his most infamous tattoo. Patrick's tail is just a tail and he hadn't understood the strange blush on Pete's cheeks when he asked him to draw above it. Pete hadn't known how to explain how intimate it would have been if Patrick were a human.

Patrick hadn't told him a story that night but Pete memorized every sound from his lips all the same. For all his tragedy, Patrick's laughter always fills the room with the light of an exploding star.

Not, he thinks, that Pete plans on writing any of that. One more word on his page? One more page in his book? One less sentence left between him and the siren.

Pete bites his lip as dawn creeps in through the cracks of doorways and curtains, spilling into the room with a steady slowness. Slower than it has before but quicker than Pete's been writing these past few days. The light crawls across the floor, stretching like a cat preparing for a nap. Pete watches, breath caught in his throat, as it finally comes to rest on the dresser beside his bed— a place he hasn't slept in since the beginning of the month.

The bed, though, is not what draws him forward.

He'd shut his phone off upon arriving and he'd told everyone to leave him alone. His agent, though, must be losing her mind. To not hear any updates or plans? Pete knows she'll fly down here herself to drag the book from his hands.

Unless he tells her he's done. Unless he tells her he's on the verge of something wonderful and can't afford to leave. Unless he begs and pleads and tells her that he's found something to protect, something to care for, something that might be killed should he leave.

Another season, another year, maybe the rest of his life. Pete's mind buzzes with the mermonsters' interest as he opens the dresser drawer, imagining all the excuses he'll give when his agent demands he return at the end of summer as he promised he'd do. He connects his phone to a charger and waits for it to turn on. Impatience in his stomach bubbles, not unlike the rising voices of the mermonsters when they hear the sharp bells signaling his phone's been turned on.

What are you doing what are you doing what are you doing what—

Pete ignores them and unlocks the phone. He presses his contacts without thinking, already searching for his agent's name.

But then notifications light up his screen— one right after the other. Missed calls from friends and acquaintances, texts in all-caps from his agent. Nothing of consequence, nothing he'd feel bad for deleting.

Except for the text from his mother. Sent the night before with a handful of missed calls connected to it, her text is as straight to the point as she'd always been.

Call me, it says, causing Pete's heart to drop. Something's happened.

~

Pete doesn't sleep that day, mermonsters granting him no peace from their questions and false concerns. His pacing and heavy breaths have alerted them to the anxieties rolling around his skin like drops of water. By the time Patrick awakes with telltale splashes, Pete's mouth and pens have long dried out, the phone still warm from the hours of conversation he'd had with his mom.