What Follows
10.0: Cracked Ribs

`sometimes we don’t want to heal because the pain is the last link to what we’ve lost`

Sometimes.

Sometimes.

I think we all have a chance against grief. A chance to conquer it and overcome its merciless claws that drag us down with it.

I also think that only ignoring it makes it conquerable as I stare at my room’s clock face; as I stare at the minutes and seconds that pass and no longer hold any meaning to me.

And it’s suddenly weird for someone who’s constantly running out of time, constantly late, constantly turned down, to abruptly have an abundance of it. Just non-ending seconds pouring and flooding into an uncertain abyss of nothingness.

Time to me is no longer measured in seconds but pulses of infinite, spiralling darkness. And maybe it’s because time stops after death. Or maybe because it's no longer the same.

Maybe the pulses to me are days to them.

And maybe I just need to stop looking at the clock and focus on the bowl of shit I’m about to get dunked into.

My joints feel like they've been encapsulated by concrete. Or maybe darkness has seeped into them and rotted them inside out. Maybe this means that my body is getting eaten away by the worms that were once a disgusting nightmare.

Ironically, those worms are the only thing giving me attention right now.

I’m not sure if I want to look around, if I want to remember the pain this room had swallowed in my worst days. I don’t want to remember the walls that held my shaking shoulders and heaving back. I don’t want to remember that mirror that witnessed the lowest pits of my life.

Yet, yet my eyes don’t comply with my wishes and take a complete scan of the room that seems untouched ever since my ‘abnormal’ death.

It almost touches me that no-one has put in the effort to remove my last touches. To peel my fingerprints and last breaths away from every surface. It seems that they’re okay with only letting dust move in and hug my last thoughts and words.

The balcony is wide open with the drapes lying dead and undisturbed by its sides. My legs carry me to it and I freeze in my spot when my eyes catch a shadow.

I roll my eyes at my hesitancy to move forward and face my fate. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? I mean, heavens, my best friend killed me and my only companion can’t bear having me around him; so, you tell me, what can be worse than this?

I hold my hands, no longer questioning my absence of feeling, and walk into the balcony with a deep, sad breath. I find Jacob leaning against the balcony’s edge, shirtless, in his school uniform pants, and a lit cigarette between his thumb and index finger of the hand he rests on his hips.

A gust of wind ruffles his golden crown of hair and gives his bare skin goosebumps as he raises his cigarette to his lips. I watch him with a new ache bubbling from the deepest part of me. I watch him and I miss him. I miss his playful smiles, his over-confidence and his random compliments.

I miss him and it guts me that I do. Because when I took my life away, I never thought I’d find myself dwelling on the people I’ve left behind. I never thought that they’d be anything but good bloody riddance.

I never thought I’d see them again as a bloody ghost.

“Jacobson!” A shrill voice makes Jacob and I flinch and turn around. He quickly throws away his cigarette before awkwardly resting his arms at his sides and neutralizing his pale face for Mom.

She appears at the balcony’s threshold, looking displeased, with her hands on her hips and a wet apron on her body. Her eyes run over her son's unsettled, sleep-deprived figure.

“I’ve been calling you,” She says uncertainly. “Where have you been?”

“I don’t know,” He tells her. “Hanging out with my dead sister?” He waves his arm around, meets her eyes and lifts his brows. “You’ve got a problem with that?”

Mom pushes back a few hair strands with shaky fingers. “You’ve been smoking, haven’t you?” She purses her lips and stares at him defeatedly.

Jacob opens his mouth, closes it, before changing his mind and speaking without hesitancy. “Maybe I’ve been looking for better ways to kill myself too,” He tells her and Mom might as well pass out. I might as well pass out.

“Jacob-” Mom splutters. “You have any idea about the magnitude of what you’re saying?”

“What did you come here for, Mom?”

“I came for you,” She says, not missing a beat. “I’ve noticed how you’ve distanced yourself from the rest of us. I want to make sure you’re okay.” She swallows hard. “I-I just think that we need each other most now.”

Jacob looks like he might laugh himself into two halves. “I most certainly don’t need any of you-”

"Jacob!”

“Just leave me alone,” He says tiredly, giving her his back.

“You do not turn your back on me!” She suddenly and desperately yells at him and he turns around.

“Oh yeah?” He frowns so deeply, it’s almost crazy how the creases between his forehead are just temporary. “You turned your back on her!” He yells out, and I wonder if it's possible to lose the feeling of something I don't feel. Mainly, my knees.

Mom freezes to speechlessness.

“Does that surprise you?!” He continues. “You knew that you must’ve been at least a reason why! You know-” He points at her with his index finger, his arm tensing. “And you’re acting like you don’t and it’s disgusting!”

Jacob looks so revolted with his face scrunched up and his ocean-blue eyes bulged out.

“You don’t understand,” She says faintly and Jacob couldn’t look any angrier.

“Well, explain!” He says, reaching forcefully into his pants’ pockets to withdraw four cigarettes and place them all in his mouth. And where’s my heart again? “Because nothing, nothing is a good enough reason for what you’ve done!” He pulls out his lighter and lights them all, almost professionally. “And nothing is a good enough reason to stay-”

“Jacob!" Mom shrieks, reaching out for the cigarettes dangling from his mouth, but he jerks away with an outstretched arm.

“I’ll explain!” She then cries out and the crazed look in Jacob’s eyes settles a little. “I-I just- please-” She begs him. “Throw out this poison!”

Jacob gives her a sidelong glance before throwing three cigarettes away and leaving one in his mouth. His eyes then well up and I cry for him. I cry and it hurts to wish that I was alive to comfort him.

He leans against the balcony’s edge and my eyes almost pop out at how dangerous his standing position is.

“It was two years after Aiden when I wanted a sibling for him. Two years of miscarriages and constant hurt. So I adopted her.” She gulps, stares at an unmoved Jacob and continues. “She was a year old. And I was ecstatic to have her in my family.”

Jacob grimaces at her choice of words and draws in from the cigarette.

“A year later, a miracle I hadn’t anticipated happened,” She says, her eyes glued to the ground. “I had you.”

Jacob might as well roll his eyes at his mother. “Well, where’s the explanation in that?” He demands and Mom urges him to wait.

“A few months after I’ve had you-” She looks away. “-I snapped. I got diagnosed with postpartum depression and anxiety. I was crazy.”

“So you took it out on her instead of your ‘own’ kids.” Jacob sneers. “Yeah?”

“Jake, please.”

He shakes his head. “I’m just confused.” He sniffs loudly, getting rid of his cigarette. “Why did you always treat her different? Why, Mom? Why did you make her feel unwelcome? Everyone could see that-”

“Jacob, I tried-”

“And you failed!” He points an accusatory finger at her. “The girl who’s not your daughter, who is- was my sister and best friend, killed herself because of you!”

Getting to know that Jacob considered me as his best friend is like taking an axe to my guts. I can’t not hate myself for it.

“Jacob it wasn’t easy,” She says, tears filling her eyes to the brim. “She marked a very dark period in my life.” She sniffs. “She- I know it wasn’t her fault.” Tears stain her cheeks. “But it wasn’t mine either.”

I watch her, dead and unmoving, excuse my years of pain with her year of pain. I watch her and there’s nothing to say.

“So it was my fault?” Jacob’s voice comes strong and loud. “After all, I was the one who gave you the damned depression!”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Jacob!" Mom exhales. “It was no-one’s fault. She just- she just-”

"Chose that?”

"No!” Mom cries. “She just gave me no chance to improve. I could’ve- I could’ve tried,” She says weakly. “I was trying. I just- I didn’t know I was failing.”

Jacob looks hard at her but doesn’t say a thing.

“I’m sorry it had to be that way.” She tells him with quivering lips and shaking hands.

“Well, yeah, it doesn’t matter if you’re sorry or not,” He says bitterly. “The dead won’t return.”

“Jacob, really, there was nothing I could’ve done for her,” Mom says and I grimace.

“No,” Jacob says instantly. “No, Mom. There’s a lot you could’ve done.” He whispers. “And least of all, you could’ve taught her how to be strong,” He says and I wish my soul could decimate and settle all over him to protect him from this big, bad world. “You could’ve taught her how to live when life wasn’t life and when people weren’t people. But instead-” He clenches his jaws, flares his nostrils and tries controlling his voice. "Instead, you let her fight her battles all alone when you knew that no-one was by her side.”

“You were there for her.” Mom chokes out, but Jacob shakes his head.

“I wasn’t her mother!” He says, keeping his voice as steady as possible. “I couldn’t have influenced her the same. And I seriously can’t believe I’m giving you, Mom, a speech about how to raise children!”

“Jacob,” Mom says gently and he looks up to meet her eyes that immediately tear up. “You’re just a boy-”

“And boys shouldn’t have to deal with such...pain.” He tells her, swiping his finger across his nose. Mom approaches him and he looks at her with so much agony.

“I’m so sorry,” She says.

“I don’t think you understand,” Jacob says. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to pretend that you’re sad over her. It was just guilt wearing you away.” His voice and my ribs crack.

Mom reaches for his hands and Jacob is no longer sure what to do. He’s not sure if he should lean further back over the balcony’s edge or hold Mom’s hands to safety.

“I love you, Jake,” Mom says, trying to catch Jacob’s unfocused, wandering blues.

He blinks at her, gulps and removes his hands from hers. “I need some space.” He tells her, looks down, licks his lower lip. “I’m going out with my friends. I won’t be back before midnight.”

And just like that, with pain bruising my brother and disbelief glued onto my mother’s face, Jacob rushes out of my balcony that immediately turns so cold. I stare at Mom because there’s nothing else to stare at except for her and the busy streets that my balcony overlooks.

And I’m not sure if it’s her or the streets I should be looking at. I’m not sure if I should be feeding my pain or dumping it over the oblivious people hustling about in the streets below. And I wonder- I wonder if that’s why I sometimes used to feel quite melancholic.

I wonder if there are other wandering, desperate spirits, shedding their pain and regret over the living. I wonder if the living feels it.

I gulp down my ‘heart’ into its place, trying not to think about how much of an awful sister I am. And it's impossible how my eyes find nothing to do but swim in the ocean of regret for not being there for him.

And I think of ways to somehow change this, to hold time in my hands and tilt it all the way back to beak its back and fix what got broken. I think and think and think of unholy, impossible things until darkness inhales me back.

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