Tomorrow Is Never Clear

Zacky’s POV.

I’m engaged to a zombie. I’m not even being funny; I haven’t heard more than one syllable at a time from Layla since after Rachel’s funeral. The scariest thing is that she looks like a zombie too. Her eyes are distant and almost glazed over. Her skin is sallow on her face, sunken and pale. Even her hair has lost its usual volume. I just want my fiancé back.

“Hey, Layla, how does take out sound? I’m gonna order pizza.” I called from the kitchen where I was currently feeding Ichabod.

“Sure.” The empty, emotionless voice rang out from the lounge. I can’t handle these monosyllables any more but I don’t want to say anything to her. The only way she’ll get help is when she realises she needs it.

My phone began ringing just as I’d picked it up.

“Hello?”

“I have a fiancé with a questionable sanity, post traumatic stress and who has been asleep for ... thirty one hours and seventeen minutes. How’s Layla doing?” Brian sounded a little stressed out. I took this opportunity to sneak out the back door so Layla wouldn’t eves drop.

“I want to take her to a doctor or someone but I don’t want to at the same time because she needs to realise there’s something wrong with her. Sleeping?!” Just yesterday Brian had been saying Sophie was officially an insomniac.

“Yeah, like a baby. She wakes up occasionally to go to the loo or for a drink of water, but I don’t think she’s all there, you know? You need to talk to Layla otherwise its not going to get any better. Has she given you her engagement ring back too?”

“I know, I’m not gonna put it off any longer. Ring? No, why? How’re the others doing?”

“Matt reckons Pippa’s taking it okay ... she’s just always in the kitchen cooking. I went over when Sophie was at the hospital yesterday and it’s like baked goods heaven. There’s muffins and cookies and pasta dishes and fruit salads everywhere. I ended up coming home with half their fridges contents because Matt won’t eat it all, and Sophie isn’t cooking so we needed something other than take out.”

“I might go round there later; even I’m bored of pizza and Chinese now.”

“In light of it all, the foods pretty good. Danni’s eating for a family of four apparently. Christ told me she’s always eating at the moment; comfort eating. She knows she needs to stop but it’s like she can’t ... its kinda scary. And Jenn ... she’s not eating, anything. She’s passed out a few times but won’t listen to Jimmy when he tries to get her to eat.”

“Jesus ... isn’t there anything we can do to help them?”

“Not that I can think of. I thought that ‘band practice’ would have helped but obviously not. I need to show you guys the mountain of sheet music Sophie has written when she was meant to be sleeping.”

“Sheet music eh? I didn’t know Sophie wrote music, or lyrics.”

“Neither did I, but this is seriously good stuff, very deep. One of the songs is about me and probably explains why she gave me the ring back.”

“And am I going to be let into this or are you gonna leave me hanging?”

“ It’s just like I said, she got back from the hospital, which I didn’t know she was going to for her benefit, explained to me what she’d been told and how she was almost certain she was going crazy. She just took the ring off and said she loved me and that she didn’t want to hurt me so it was better ‘this way’ and went to bed. These songs, there’s one about Rachel, one about their friends and this one about me. You’d have to hear it to understand; her lyrics aren’t made to be poetic without music.”

“CD worthy?”

“Oh yeah. I think we should steal some of it personally. Oh, hey, I hear movement from upstairs. Talk later!” The line went dead and I was left once again with the silence of my fiancé to contend with.

This is just great. Pure Poison are grief ridden lunatics at the moment and only one of them has actually tried to help themselves. I shook my head in despair, walking back inside to go and have a long chat with Layla.

“Oooft!” I succeeded in walking into something as I turned around.

“Sorry, Zack.” Layla whispered, looking up at me shyly.

“You spoke! Shit, I didn’t mean to say that.”

“It’s fine.” She cracked a small smile. “Do you think we can go to that beach side cafe for tea? I’m fed up of take away, and it was Rachel’s favourite.” Her voice broke slightly on Rachel’s name, but this was serious progress.

“Yes!” I sounded a little too enthusiastic. “Um, let me just grab a jacket and Ichabod’s lead and we can go. Are you okay?”

“I’m really not. But ... I want to talk about her, and remember her as much as possible. I don’t want to cry anymore.” She admitted, fiddling with her fingers.

I tried to stop myself from gleaming in case I gave her the wrong impression, so settled for kissing the top of her head.