𝔉𝔦𝔯𝔢𝔣𝔩𝔶 𝔉𝔬𝔯𝔢𝔰𝔱

Chapter IV

A year went by.
Then another four months.
It was cold in my hometown. It was snowing. I loved snow. It made everything look neater and brighter, even when everything was not, even when everything was dark and scary and falling apart.
It's like the mask we wear everyday.
That's why I loved snow.
It was night.
The snow was shining under the moonlight.
Mom and dad said their goodbyes as they were heading out on a date for their anniversary.
I never replied.
We haven't talked much lately. Actually, ever since Teinshi left. They wouldn't understand anyway.
I convinced myself Teinshi left.
He could not be dead, 'cause if I accepted that reality I...
He was not dead.
I have nothing else.

I didn't eat, couldn't keep the food down. 
I read a bit. A stupid book about a man who withdraws from the world and decides to go living in a house by the sea, where he meets the love of his life again.
Lucky bastard.
Of course she doesn't love him, but it's alright I guess.
He didn't care she didn't love him. He just stands by and watches her, worships her, idealizes their relationship and then tries to persuade her and manipulates her into loving him and some other faux-romantic shit. Selfish prick.
I love that book.

I realized I changed a lot.
Ever since Teinshi left there's nothing to give meaning to my life.
I keep on going just because I owe my parents. I'm not scared of dying anymore, but I don't particularly like living either. Death still haunts my brain, but I try shutting it out because it reminds me of my lost big brother.  
Every night I dream of a woman and a lake. The lake is so bright, almost surreal, and it calls my name. What a stupid dream. I guess I'm just bored. I need more thrills.

It was midnight when I decided my parents weren't coming home any time soon and I was done waiting for them.
I walked to my room to go to bed.
I heard a knock on the door.
They must have forgotten their keys.
I opened the door and an officer smiled sadly at me.
I was confused, I asked him what was wrong. He asked if I was Lexi and Luke Thanatos' kid. I told him that I was indeed.
He looked on the ground, his eyes empty.
"Your parents have been involved in a car accident on the highway. Do you recognize any of these?"
He handed me the picture of a cellphone and a purse, along with many others, more disgusting and inhuman ones.
The phone screen was shattered to pieces and the originally white purse was now of a dense, dark red. Pieces of what once was a car were shattered everywhere. The road was like a river made of blood.
"They couldn't make it. I'm sorry, kid."
In that moment I saw it all, like a movie playing at the back of my brain.
Crash.
Wreck.
Scream.
Blood.
Smoke.
Dark.
He kept going on about the circumstances of the accident but I couldn't make out a word he said.
The walls of my mind were coming down.
My beautifully built mind castle was on fire.
That officer knocked at my door, dressed in politeness, my Trojan horse. And I let him in, and he burnt me whole.
Crash.
Fire.
Scream.
Blood.
Smoke.
But even through all that chaos, all I could think about was that I never said it back.
I never said goodbye.

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