an Otherworldly Pain

an Otherworldly Pain

Jonathan Bray was dead.

The horror was like a serpent winding through the rifts of hysteria. My fear lodged in my throat like a crying knot, ready to burst into a scream, a shudder---a sob. I didn't know what to do. Everything was slipping out of my grasp like soap, and spiraling out of control. Plummeting down the rabbit hole into a world without Jonathan Bray.

Outside the police station, no one stirred. The streets were empty besides the occasional movement of a feral cat, or a homeless man hidden in the safety of shadows. Streetlights illuminated Main Street like sleepy steel guides with lanterns in their hands, lighting the way home. They weren't showing me home, no, they were turned against me, cold and imposing, making me feel so alone and small against the towering buildings and sleeping structures. Alone.

I felt lost, like a child finally off the baby leash, and no one was coming to find me. Jonathan Bray was my lead, my star to follow, to be guided by. And now he was dead. My boyfriend was dead. How could this be happening to me?—to poor Jonathan! What had he done to deserve that?

And what had I done to deserve stumbling upon him?

The Grim Reaper's voice echoed through me like a hollow siren. “Three minutes dead: rigor mortis.” Three minutes. If only I had been three minutes faster, three minutes sooner, then maybe Jonathan wouldn't have a spot in the morgue. Maybe then I'd be in his bed right now, listening to his soft voice, feeling his tender touch, his soothing warmth. Just three minutes sooner. Just three.

Jonathan Bray was the closest person I've ever had. He was my light---my soul. He was everything to me, and God I would have given everything to have him back. He was the only one who understood me, understood my little squabbles about life, my indecisions, my fears. Only he understood. God, earlier that day he had kissed me, had told me he loved me in his rough cinnamon voice. He had curled his arms around mine and I fit so perfectly against him, like a lock and key, it was sickening. So perfectly sickening. If I had known that he'd...if I had know Jonathan would've...just one more time.

Is it wrong to want to kiss a dead person?

I just wanted to feel his lips again, to trace the contours of his neck and jaw no matter how cold he was. How stiff and set for death. God, just one more time. There was this rift, this hole opening up inside of me, getting bigger and bigger the longer I stood outside the station in the humid summer air. The longer I stood thinking about him, the bigger the rift got until the whole universe could fit inside, until I could no longer close it back up. I clutched my chest when it began to ache, and sat down on the police station's steps, tears burning like liquid fire in my eyes.

He's gone...He's gone.

“Come back,” I begged, and bit in a sob. He wasn't coming back. I knew. I knew he was never coming back. He was never going to tell me he loved me anymore. He would never laugh at my corny jokes or tuffle my air whenever he felt proud of me. He would never push me against the wall and lather my neck in kisses again, or sing to me in his soft cinnamon voice. His fingers would never brush against his guitar---God couldn't play better than he. He would never tell me he loved me again. Not ever. “Come back.”

The world had stopped spinning, and life had frozen.

Nothing was ever going to be good again. Ever.

“Hey, love, are you OK?”

Startled, I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked up. Vic stood over me, sober now, with worry etched into the creases of his mouth, the wrinkles on his forehead. Vic, the only person in the whole world who would ever miss me if I was gone too.

“Love?” He squatted down in front of me and put his hand comfortingly on my shoulder. “Everything'll be alright. I promise.”

The hole inside of me became a chasm, and the knot in my throat burst into shuddering sobs. He was wrong. Nothing would be all right ever again. With a cry, I pelted into his chest, my hands grasping tightly, clawing at his dirty white t-shirt. I buried my head into his chest and sobbed. Nothing would ever be all right again. Never. Every bone in my body cried and knew, and knew the hole would never mend. The chasm would be there forever. “I-I-I will n-never fall i-in l-l-love aga-again,” I sobbed.

“Yes you will.” He wrapped his arms around me and rubbed his hands in circles on my back. “Shhh,” he whispered, like sandpaper lightly scraping against dusted wood. “Yes you will.”

I don't remember how long I sobbed, but I remember sitting in Vic's warm embrace in the summer heat, the sky clear and full of precious stars, all shining down like frozen diamonds. Even they were frozen, watching, waiting for the world to begin spinning again. There wasn't a moon in the skies that night. It must've known that tonight the world would stop. That tonight was supposed to be dark and deary and full of sorrow.

“I'll never love again,” I whispered into his chest.

“Life goes on,” my best friend replied.

I don't remember getting into my car, or the drive home. All I remember is the chasm, the void. What would I do tomorrow? Would the sun even come up? At that moment, I never thought it would. I never thought anything would ever start up again. I never thought life would keep going without him.

I didn't know that my life wouldn't.

It was probably for the best that I didn't remember pulling into the garage, that I didn't remember trampling up the steps and retreating into my room. But I did remember ripping his pictures off the wall, I remembered burning them out back and wishing there was never a person named Jonathan Bray. Hatred and loathing and sorrow all collided in me. I hated him for leaving me. I pitied him for knowing me. I loathed him for loving me. It would have been better if I had never handed out my heart, if I had never rendered it defenseless to heartbreak and loss.

“I love you,” he always said. “I love you to the moon and back.”

But he didn't love me enough to keep the damn needle out of his veins. The vividness of the pictures, burning orange and red---like the cigarette against his lips---stayed with me for a long time after that. It was the image I aways found burned on the inside of my eyelids, the picture that always greeted me whenever I closed my eyes to sleep.

I remembered how the gaping hole inside of me rendered me thoughtless, listless, as if a part of me had been cut away, and the realization had hit that the other side was never coming back.

He was never coming back.

And as I curled into a ball in the middle of my bed, in my dark room with the blinds tightly closed, my kneels braced to my chest to keep myself from coming unglued, I hardly realized how hard it was to breath, or how thick my thoughts felt against the sides of my skull, like just-chewed bubblegum.

And barely---just as my eyes drifted shut---did I see the shadowed figure in blue jeans and a Bare Naked Ladies t-shirt sitting in the corner chair, waiting---patiently waiting---for everything to end.