Forget Me Not

Cane rested his head in the palm of his hands as the tears finally started to spill over. The scent of blood and scorched skin clouded his senses and the dancing lights of the sirens only perpetuated the nausea growing in the pit of his stomach. He was in too deep of a shock to be able to hear anything and he was slowly losing his fight to remain conscious. The first time he had lost it resulted in something he would never forget, but the second was the results of something he could never forget.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder and Cane looked up to see a paramedic mouthing words at him. Cane stared at the man blankly for a few minutes before the man realized that car crash' only survivor couldn't understand a single word being said to him. A hand was offered to help Cane off of the curb, but he didn't bother to take it. Cane felt like just rotting on the curb for the rest of his life.

The man pulled him up and practically carried him over to the ambulance. Cane turned his head to avoid the blinding flashes of light and saw two other ambulance technicians loading someone onto a stretcher and covering him with a sheet. All at once the chaotic noise of the situation hit him and caused his knees to buckle. Sobs wracked through his quivering form as he collapsed in the middle of the street.

"Come on, we'll get you something to calm you down," the paramedic said as he picked him up off the ground once again. As he sniffled in the ambulance, a blanket was wrapped around his shoulders and he was handed two little white pills which he swallowed dry. The paramedic stood there with an unopened bottle of water in his hand and a look on his face that said he was unsure of how to proceed. The poor, confused man's name tag read Isaac.

"T-thanks," Cane murmured as he leaned his head against the cool stretcher in front of him. Isaac sat down on the stretcher in front of him and tilted his head slightly to the right. The odd glare of the light from the ambulance room cast shadows on his face and Cane couldn't help but whimper. "I think I better be getting home now. I really just want to curl up next to my mom if you know what I mean..."

"Yeah, I get it. You just lost a really good friend, I'm betting..."

"He was my boyfriend..."

"What?"

"Rory was my boyfriend," Cane wailed as the tears started to flow again. They had been coming home from some club that Rory had insisted was "the best thing since sliced bread" and Cane had dressed up for the occasion. As the small amount of eyeliner he was wearing had mingled with his tears and smeared down his face. "Rory was my boyfriend..."

"Listen... if you ever need to talk..." Isaac began. His voice trailed off after those few words and he penned his phone number on to the sobbing boy's hand. Without another word, he left the ambulance to help move the corpse that was once Cane's boyfriend. A car arrived and Cane's mother crawled out of the driver's seat and fought her way through the crowd that had gathered around the scene and over to her wreck of a son.

Sliding her arm around her son's waist, Cane's mother helped him to the car and aided him into his seat. He curled up in a ball against the passenger door and shut his eyes for what he thought would only be a moment, but what turned out to be an entire week. Though part of the time he was awake, he never bothered to open his eyes until his mother knocked on his door exactly six days after the accident happened.

"Honey, we have to go to the funeral..."

Cane dressed mechanically, and without any form of emotion gracing his features. It wasn't until he was placing a small bunch of hand-picked blue flowers on the freshly churned soil that the gravity of the situation hit him fully. Rory was dead, and he wasn't ever going to cry out of his grave to comfort him.

Cane couldn't help it, he started to cry.

His mother once again brought him home so that he could slumber away his depression while curled up in warmth and familiarity. The blankets coiled tightly against every inch of his body and Cane started to sob again. His worst stage of grieving had finally come to claim him, so when the pale blue flowers started to arrive at his doorstep, he didn't notice until two weeks later when the stench of earthly decay started to overwhelm him.

Dead flowers were piled all over his front sidewalk; some fresher than others and Cane couldn't help but gag at the nauseating smell. The blue petals had started to fold in on themselves and were revealing nothing of their once vibrant beauty. Before Cane had time to think about what he was doing, he was leaning down and attempting to clean up the mess. Just as quickly, someone had him shoved back inside through his front door.

As loud as he may have been screaming, no one seemed to hear him as he pleaded for help. The man had him pinned with his stomach against the wall and Cane started weeping as he could feel his clothes being removed in haste.

"Please stop... my boyfriend will be angry!" Cane tried to say in order to get the perpetrator to stop. Instead the man laughed cruelly behind him and Cane whimpered as he heard a fly being unzipped. He could feel something warm and hard pressed snugly against his entrance, and his whimpers turned into screams of agony as the unknown assailant entered him rather roughly.

Crying as the man came inside him, Cane tried his best to stand on his wobbly knees but found himself crashing to the floor when the man pulled away. Another sadistic laugh echoed throughout the room before a sharp slam of the screen door signified that the offender had left. Cane did his best to stop the tears before crawling over to the phone that was hooked into the wall. Dialing the somewhat familiar number of the paramedic, Cane started to cry again before slamming the phone down on the hook.

He could hear the rapist's cell phone ringing outside.