Even ten minutes after I hung up the phone to the guy who was just as horrified as I was at the tragedy that had befallen my best friend who could have done so much more with his life but instead opted for suicide, I was still in shock by it, floating through the delirium of numbness towards an event that should flip off every switch in rationality in my brain but hasn't done so until now, and I'm not really sure which one is worse.
On one hand, there's the sensation of not being able to recall anything that transpired in the past or what is transpiring now, in the real world and not the world that I have constructed entirely to drift through numbness where every fact about it is useless to what is really happening, and it's a bit frustrating, or at least it would be if I were capable of possessing emotions in that blank state of nothingness, because my only knowledge is that of futile affairs when I need to be focusing on reality, but reality is untouchable in that state, a tantalizing heaven far away from my grasp unless something potent like death aids me in my struggles, but it is not the time for death, and thus I continue in the void of existence and emptiness gearing concurrently through my presence in whatever this sheeted world is.
On the other hand, being fully aware of the hell that is marching through my existence when I couldn't spot them on the horizon just a moment ago is perhaps equally as terrible, though I have been unsuccessful in measuring the scale. In this realm, anxiety is choosing to strike each of my organs, one by one so as to revel in their demise and, as a result, my own demise, yet it still sustains me to study how I function when I should no longer be alive but somehow am, by an inexplicable freak of nature performed by people who wish the worst for me. When I am caught in this web of franticness, it feels as though there are a million things to be done, accompanied by the stress induced by the sharp truth that there is actually nothing that I can do whilst I blither about how I need to accomplish something impossible, accomplish something that will never fulfill me, accomplish something that will be eternally molested by my thirsting desire to control theories that cannot be controlled or are rather unwilling to be controlled by off kilter metaphysicists who will manipulate everything over which they can slide their grubby, bullshitting hands. I am suspended in an urge to act on something, but I have no idea what that something is and if it's even attainable, yet I still continue to try to act on it like I'm an expert.
I need to stop pretending, and I need to stop comparing two different types of hell that cannot be compared with their massive disparity, and I need to stop isolating myself to the point where I cannot receive help for things that other people would bring in a whole team of specialists to solve, and no I'm not looking for a psychiatrist or some heavy drugs to pass the time — I've heard methamphetamines are nice, though. I just need someone onto whom I can spill my secrets (reserving the closest ones, of course), someone onto whom I can lean for balance when I am tumbling, someone onto whom I can bestow my faithful trust so that I can finally dig myself out of the pit of helplessness in which I have been living for the past twenty-three years.
Edie Parker is the perfect person for that, even if she has become wary of me since I moved in with Lucien and betrayed her confidence in me somewhat, but despite that, I can understand that she wouldn't be joyous to know that Lucien had died right before our future conversation, and she would offer her wholehearted condolences, which I crave more than ever.
I already felt as though I was alone once Lucien dropped into his personal hell and neglected mine when I thought he was strong enough to discard his own and slot availability to help me, but now there's no chance that Lucien could be strong when he's dead and took the easy way out from a hard existence, though there's always the possibility that Lucien always maintained that hell of his and was simply more adept at hiding or (or didn't know it was so prominent until it began to speak to him), and, as harsh as it is to say it, Lucien was always a deceiving man, so he may have deceived himself, too. He certainly deceived me, and now he's dead, so I'm on the hunt for comfort, a comfort that can be found in the warm setting of Edie Parker and Jack Kerouac's home.
All throughout the trip to their house, I am as hectic as ever, having slipped out of the tormenting state of nothingness and into the equally as tormenting state of perpetual anxiety about things that cannot be resolved, because death is permanent, and Lucien knew this, so he opted to escape through it, and that's why I'm so desperate for Edie Parker's assistance, as I predicted what Lucien was going to do ever since he jumped into the murky depths of the void, and I thought that would soften the blow, but oh how I was wrong. Oh how I have suffered in such a short span because of the boy I thought would always be here because he felt so self important as to do so. Oh how I tumbled from that assurance. Oh how I need help more than ever.
When I arrive on the cleanly swept front porch of Jack and Edie's house, my lungs have been plundered for their oxygen, and there they sit, gasping for something to sustain it. I double over for a few moments to collect myself, and then I proceed with that feeling of uncertainty still fitted snugly to my stomach. In my state of urgency, I almost ring the doorbell, but, remembering Edie's peculiar pet peeve of that action, redirect my fist to the door and punch it multiple times like I'll be punching my pillow when the anger stage of grief finally kicks in.
Not sensing the gravity of the situation, Edie takes her time wandering towards the door, and when she opens it, it is obvious that she is completely unaware that anything could be happening, though my sole presence at her home (especially since I look so disheveled) warns her otherwise. The cardigan strung around her body is tightened by the cold of the morning, and with this action I notice that it's only around an hour and thirty minutes into the day, when people shouldn't be awake, but Edie is, and I suppose I should've considered her sleeping schedule, but I was too panicked, and she's awake anyway.
"Allen?" Edie asks, unsure that I'm really here and if a sinister robber or creation of the dark is being disguised as me through shadowy means.
Before I explain anything, I need to get out of the cold, because the news I'm about to share will chill me even more. "C-can I come inside?"
Edie pauses for a moment, her train of thought interrupted by a request she wasn't expecting, but she eventually comes to her senses and ushers me inside, saying, "Of course," as her hand hovers over my back until I plop into the couch's relaxing fabric, a comfort I crave in this time of nervousness.
"So, Allen, would you like to explain to me why you just randomly showed up at my house at one thirty in the morning?" Edie's a bit too harsh for my fragmented soul right now, but that will all change when the sympathetic side of her heart crawls out from a veneer to prevent manipulation and listens to my claim.
A sigh drips sluggishly out of my throat, delaying my speech for as long as it can, and when it is finished I am forced to speak. "I know you aren't really affiliated with him, and I don't even think you ever liked him, but you're the only one I could tell, and...and...Lucien's dead." My voice bends and snaps at the final verdict, but it's a miracle that I could even expel the words at all.
I did my best, and now Edie is doing her best to try and sort through what the hell I'm talking about, the abrupt nature of this all. "What...w-what does that mean?"
It's not that difficult to comprehend in theory, but with grief comes a distortion that settles over one's mind for the longest of times, tricking them into thinking that their loved one will be back, but every time they come home and every time they call their favorite cell phone number and every time they think about planning a trip to somewhere they've always wanted to go with a companion, no one is there for them, but at least there's some hope before the sickening drop.
I understand this phenomenon now, even if Lucien was the first person with whom I've experienced that phenomenon, so I guide Edie through it. "He was hit by a car about a half hour ago, and he's being taken to the morgue."
"Have you seen him?"
"No, and I'm still debating whether or not I want to, but that's beside the point." My foot scuttles against the intricate carpet that Edie bought at a fair and hasn't relinquished since, just as a way to occupy myself while I spew out secrets about Lucien's life and now his death. "The real point is that Lucien decided to jump in front of that car, even if I wasn't there to see it for myself. It was suicide, Edie. It was."
"Why would he do that? He seemed to happy both when we talked on the phone and when he came over for dinner."
Even Edie is astonished, which proves how much Lucien rattled everyone's world when he fucking stepped in front of a car because that's how he thought he could solve all of his problems, but you don't solve problems by erasing them completely. No matter how hard you try to pretend that something doesn't exist, there will still be tangles in it as it bobs through time and existence.
"I honestly have no idea why the cause of his depression prompted him towards this route so quickly, but what I do know is that his old friend returned, an old friend that abused him when they were both sixteen, and his arrival back into Lucien's life took a serious toll on him."
This is when Edie breaks down, her motherly instincts extending to be a mother to everyone, now especially my dead friend named Lucien Carr who deserved so much more than he was given. Tears clip fiercely at the edges of her eyes, and her hands maneuver over her mouth to trap the sobs endeavoring to flow free. "Oh God, I'm so sorry."
And we just hug it out until my best friend's death is dulled.
~~~~~
A/N: ugh the desperation whyhteufkc
nominalism: concepts are not objective and only exist as names
~Dakotalon