Small White

Bram's face is blank as he stares out of the window at the snow, mouth slightly slack and hands limp in his lap. He's barely aware of his aunt's presence across the table, and the sound of classical music humming in the background.

One-hundred-two, one-hundred-three, one-hundred-four—

He counts the snowflakes in a stony-faced daze. Bram feels cold doing this, but he embraces the very sensation that makes a shiver rack through his body, all the way from his curled toes to his throbbing temple. It makes the hairs on his arms prick up and his cheeks tingle.

It's nice to feel, he thinks. This past week has been numb, as the feeling had seeped from his fingertips after the funeral.

He thinks back to the first time he went to the dentist. A needle so sharp it makes his throat close up and his body stiffen, piercing into his skin, injecting what felt like poison. Eyes screwed shut, so curious, but too bloody terrified to peep only for a moment. It had numbed him. It was a scary thing, not being able to feel. He didn't know if he was bleeding or dying. He didn't know.

It's the dentist all over again. But now, his mum isn't here to hold his hand through it all, assuring him that it'll all be over soon.

“Bram, hon, I'm just worried about you,” the weary ginger woman across the table trails off, her eyes glazed and brimming with tears. “I know how you must feel; it's been hard on all of us. But you're starting to scare me.”

Bram feels his throat constrict, and he wants to speak. You don't know how it feels. Don't think for a second that you do. However, he glues his lips together, eyes fixated on the entrancing white flurries.

One-hundred-five, one-hundred-six, one-hundred-seven—

“So, I've taken it upon myself to get you a therapist.”

Blank brown eyes, muddied and dark and swirling with anything but positive feelings, narrow by a hair's breadth. Lost count.

“They can help you, Bram,” his aunt twists her hands together anxiously and looks at her precious nephew with eyes bleeding pathetic hope, “you can get better—”

He lost count; there's nothing to distract him now. He no longer feels cold, but hot. Bram feels a molten feeling build up in his belly, slither into his throat and poke at the back of his clenched teeth, begging to be released so it can wreak havoc. He's shaking; angry. Angry at his auntie. His stupid auntie—she cares, yes, but she's stupid. He doesn't need a therapist. He's fine.

If anybody needs a therapist, it's his auntie.

The rest of his face is dull, but his eyes are wild and all but melting the snow.

However, Bram halts in his mental tantrum, upon on a sudden movement in the steady snowfall. It is a pasty white butterfly, perched on one the coral vein-like branches of his auntie's favorite Japanese maple. fluttering its translucent wings ever so slightly, shaking the snow from them.

A strange feeling swells within him, replacing the red-hot anger with a sense of recognition and longing, and warmth. His heart races and lets out a shaky breath. It suddenly takes off, leaving a dust of frost behind it, and soon Bram loses the uncannily camouflaged insect.

The feeling is gone; he shivers, once again cold.

Bram huffs, turning to his aunt. She's staring at him with big blue eyes that would've been pretty if they weren't red and swollen by tears. He didn't want to look at her. Aunt Charlotte looked so much his mum.

She hopes he'll smile that handsome little smile. He'll say “okay auntie, don't worry, I'll be better.” And she'll be better, too, because if her sister's child can get better—she can, too. Bram is just shaken. Inside, he's crying as well. He is, he is.

He is!

“Mum is dead, Auntie. No therapist is going to change that.” It comes out as a whisper, but it isn't soft by any means. It's harsh, bitter-tasting on the tongue; a slap in the face from reality. There's a silence as the statement echoes in both of their minds.

Mum is dead, mum is dead, mum is dead . . .

She breaks and Bram continues to count the snowflakes. He wraps his thin hoodie further around him, rejecting the cold now. He doesn't want to feel right now.

Mum . . . is dead.

“I'm going to turn up the heater.” Auntie's cracked sob resounds through the kitchen as Bram disappears with the padding of feet.