Cardinals

Victims of a loved one’s death will feel physically drained.

I stumble along the hallway blindly to my room and collapse onto the bed eagerly, the sheets melding into the bed. My breathing is uneven and confusing, my lungs are moving faster and faster, puffs of carbon dioxide flying out in short little noises that would annoy the shit out of anyone.

Exhaustion isn’t even a thought, not even an existing word to me, as I stare at the ceiling, tracing patterns on it, making it look like a fucking cubistic Picasso painting in the blackness. The sheets are cool against my bare hot back, sending shivers down my spine, goose bumps up my arms. The image of him burns my retinas dangerously, and I growl out loud, arms thrashing around in the bed. Oh fuck no, not again. Please, please, not again. The hole opens up again anyways, and spreads even wider, causing pain to shoot through my veins slowly. It’s like venom, spreading from the heart to the veins, killing me slowly.

Tremors are sent through my body, and my mind is racing still. Play catch up, play catch up. His voice is somehow here, right in this room, echoing loudly off the paper-thin walls. And I can see his body, the skinny legs, wiry arms that had tiny biceps, the straight sandy blonde hair, the eyes – the fucking eyes. Sparkling, they’re sparkling, emotions that I don’t even know about bleeding from them like red tears.

Then I’m sitting at the desk, my wrist slamming onto the desk full-force, shaking the pens and notebooks; I watch them, my eyes glazed over with tears so they’re blurred as they fly up into the air a few centimeters and then fall down. The slamming is robotic-like, soothing, a nursery rhyme.

I can already see what isn’t there, a pretty purple mark staining my skin like grape wine, spreading in tendrils across my paper white skin canvas. I can see the look on my mother’s face already, the one that she will give me in the morning when I come down the steps, looking for the purpose of waking up in the first place. She will murmur something in Italian, click her tongue, and cook breakfast that I won’t eat.

Mikey was ten when I yelled at him for the first time. He was in my room, searching for something – what it was, I wasn’t sure of – and I happened to walk in on him. He jumped a mile into the air, and his the red-stained liquid that hid beneath his skin rushed to his face. His eyes shined with fear as I looked down at him in shock. My teeth clenched, and my fists curled up. “Out,” was all I said, and he had ran out the door before I could say another word.

Later on, when dad came home, he asked Mikey why he was so miserable, and Mikey told him softly, embarrassed still. When my dad heard, he just chuckled, and shook his head. It angered me, so I stood up, and slammed my fists on the table. “You little shit,” I shrieked at Mikey, pissed off, and frustrated.

He jumped, red Kool-Aid flying across the white table clothing, staining it like blood, like it had just been shot. My mom gasped, and my dad just stared at me, while I pushed my chair away, and stomped out the door.

When I got home that night, Dad grounded me and told me that if I ever said anything like that to my brother again, he would put his foot in my ass before I could even blink.

He didn’t know it, he had no idea, then, that he was the cause of it all. That his favouritism was the explanation for my downfall, if anything else. Besides what was already visible, the grief.

My blood quivers as the memory falls through my head, and I stumble down the stairs in the morning. Mom is sitting at the table drinking gin and soda, her eyes glazed over with something I’m unsure of.

Once, she was pretty. The prettiest mom you’d know. Now, to look at her, and if she wasn’t your mother, you might shudder. Her hair was long, in involuntary dreads, knotted together miserably. Her skin was sickly grey looking, along with her eyes, and her face was bony, pointy, blood had disappeared from it. Ugly ugly ugly ugly. The light had fallen from her eyes. Defeated. Just plain fucking defeated.

I shake my head and walk out of the room, taking the keys from the foyer table, and walking out the door.

Victim’s of a loved one’s death may feel the need to have sexual comfort.

A whore. That’s what my mother likes to call people who go out and partied every night, who drink themselves into a bottomless pit and then sleep with any breathing object in the room.

I call them People Looking For Comfort. People who have nowhere to go, no reality to grasp onto, nothing nothing nothing. Like space, the vacuum, emptiness. Their insides are disintegrated, shriveled, they don’t have normal heartbeats or anything. People Looking For Comfort are often the most misunderstood people in the world.

It was how I came across him. He was sitting in the corner of the room, a joint in his right hand, and a beer in his left, the sweet smoky smell clouding my nostrils and making my head spin. His eyes were skeletal, you could see right fucking through them, pain, desire, and anger, swirling together to make the naughty baby blue colour. There was something about them. Slowed me down.

They flashed me back. I could smell it all over again, the coppery smell, invading me all the sudden, making me stop and lean against the door, gasping for air and trying to fight it off, the sound of his voice, the pleading light in his eyes – that were just as skeletal as the boy’s sitting in front of me.

He had put the beer down, stood up taking a drag of the joint, and came over to me, put a hand on my shoulder, and just stared, until I finally looked into his eyes. The wave of nausea rolled over me, and disappeared as quickly as it had come.

“Gerard,” he stated, then, a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips. “The Boy With The Brother.” A name. That name. Like I was the fucking Mona Lisa, so well known that when my name was heard, out came the label with it. ‘Gerard. The Boy With The Brother.’ ‘Mona Lisa. The mysterious woman.’

Names and labels. I wanted to slap him then, but instead, I bitterly added, “And the father.”

“And the father. Well-known, wasn’t he? Best doctor out there.”

“Couldn’t save himself,” I muttered dryly. “Couldn’t operate on himself, though I’m sure he wished he could’ve.”

“Had a heart-attack,” he said matter-of-factly, like I hadn’t known this.

“Who are you, anyways?” I had asked, irritated, and so drunk out of my mind, the coppery smell still lingering.

“Bert,” he smiled, and the dance had begun.

Just two People Looking For Comfort.

Now, I’m tugging on his wrist, and he’s smiling at me, telling me with his eyes – his fucking eyes so skeletal, see through, to be patient and wait fifteen seconds while he gets some more from his dealer. When he’s done, he turns around and places a chaste kiss on my lips.

“Happy anniversary, babe,” he whispers, and then he leads me out to the car, and lights a hit up.

And suddenly, I can hear it, like the Birthday Song, except it’s to the tune of bloody murder, instead. Happy Anniversary to me, Happy Anniversary to me, Happy Anniversary to me-ee-ee, Happy Anniversary to me.

Except it’s my brother’s voice, dead and cold, and a shiver runs down my spine, as I grip onto the newly formed bruise on my wrist.

Fucking Anniversaries.