(What should I name this... This is the thing that had four other parts and some drawings, by the way.)
The three walked for many miles. Who knew where their goal waited. Adam tossed an apple core to the ground, the flesh ripped off of all but the boning of the sour fruit.
"I'm bored," he announced, in a less than grand tone compared to the energy he'd maintained all day.
After gaining no response, Adam grew irritated and snapped at the other two lagging behind him. Though he barely spared a glance over his shoulder. "Hey! I'm speaking, idiots! Honestly, you two are too good at shutting up. It makes you damn well boring company."
Abram paid Adam no mind where maybe normally he'd have rolled his eyes or let his shoulder sag lower. He was fixed on Abel, who walked tense with his hand gripping his cane a little tighter and the other almost ripping at his sleeve fabric. No other words were exchanged, and if they had been, Abel did not hear them.
The old man walked through the crowded and loud streets with rushed steps. He was late for a therapy appointment once more, damn his dying body for making his alarm so quiet in the mornings.
His mind was a whirlwind of complication; he wanted to get help, but he also couldn't help but feel reluctant to continue paying the man treating him. It didn't help. If anything, the man in a coat across from him only added more long, medical words for him to ponder late at night.
He'd hoped at least that the confusing language would distract him from what usually haunted his dreams, but it'd be foolish to assume those ghosts would ever leave him. No, they never would, no matter how he pleaded.
Today, he told the man how he'd been so panicked the night before that he tripped and hurt himself in the dark of his home, bruising an already weary hip.
The man gave no proper words of solace to him and instead handed him a cane.
Adam finally turned to Abel. "Hellooo! Are you dead in there, or has old age finally made you lose your shit?" Abram moved to touch Abel's shoulder but quickly changed his mind, and his hand fell back to his side.
The dark of his house was especially loud tonight. Pure silence allowed his head to explode with screams and invisible claws to find their way to his limbs as he tried to rest. They pulled and stretched his arms and legs and laughed when he cried out in fear.
He kept trying and trying. But nothing ever got better. He never seemed to heal from something he couldn't explain to the outside world.
His hands still trembled whenever he tried to grasp hold of food or drink, and he still heard their jeers in his ears till his eyes turned black underneath.
"No more," he pleaded. With no answer to his call. Until it was her.
Adam snapped his fingers in front of Abel's face, trying to get his attention. "Ugh, he's gone senile. What deadweight." Abram didn't scoff, though he deeply considered it. "He looks creepy like this..."
Adam gave a short laugh. "You think everything is creepy. It's what makes you so entertaining." Abram's brow furrowed in frustration. "You keep holding spiders up to my face!!"
Through Adam's laughing, Abel's hand twitched on his cane.
Nothing changed. Nothing could ever change. Not if he continued to wait and fear as ghosts ripped him apart from the inside out.
"You can't forget or forgive, so why continue to tolerate it?"
She was right. Why continue to take the pain inside of his head and heart when surely, most definitely, something else was open to him.
He pushed off his bed in his pitch black room and grabbed the cane at his side, forever forced and stabled to his side. He stared down at his limbs, stretched and distorted thanks to those specters.
He hit his cane against his leg, feeling hands flinch and shriek at him for hurting them again. And he did it again. And again. And again. Again. Again...
He heard and felt his bones break, the skin turning purple and red and ripped at the seams. But even through the pain, it felt like freedom. So he continued, moving to his arms and his other leg.
Somehow, he ended up in front of a mirror. He could see them now, those horrible ghosts who pulled at his face. It's not a problem. This was the final stretch. Surely. It must be. It has to be.
He drove the end of his cane into his skull and ripped. There was a loud tear and crunch before silence. Total, peaceful silence.
And a mangled old man laying on the floor, listening to a voice warmer than the sun itself and softer than the grass he remembered from memories long, long ago.
Abel blinked, his breath catching and shaking a moment as he returned to the realm ahead. Adam was cackling loudly, holding up a small, harmless insect to a very unhappy Abram. Abram yelped and refused to touch the centipede, stumbling until he was hiding behind Abel.
So childish, yet so new. A good kind of new.
Something in his mind felt lighter with their incessant racket, as irritating as could be. It kept his own mind quite quiet.
"Let's keep moving. We'll probably find shelter soon." He finally said.
Abram and Adam both paused and stared at him with wide eyes before looking at eachother, then back.
"You're.. smiling?" Abram wondered.
"Can't tell if I like it or not." Adam shrugged. "But I guess it makes you look less old, so go for it, Abe!"
Abel's smile twitched. "Never call me that again..."
Adam laughed. "There's our guy!"