#desiderrium

  It was an unholy sound. The crackle of fire, or maybe it was his bones snapping. Fire coiling around him, the explosion of it all. The dragon gone, and his body limp. Still & motionless while the world around him is chaos. Yet,  everything else blurred, and no sound reached her ears. Every motion slowed but her steps towards him. His corpse.

Broken. Bloodied. Empty.

 And at first she felt nothing.

 Not the heat surrounding her. Not the wind coiling around her. Not a thing.

 Her knees did not buckle, and her chest did not heave as she knelt next to his body. Her hands were gentle as they touched his cheek, brushing stray hairs from his face. Her arms slowly moved to pull him close, careful as if he'd push her away still. Expectant of his resistance. But none came. Perhaps that should have been the breaking point. But she's lived this, before. Over and over and over. The vision replaying in her head. Part of her is screaming to wake up. To just wake up.

 But this isn't her vision. This isn't a dream.

 As the police arrive, asking questions she has no answer to. As they take him away from her, she only watches. Some part of her twitches as if she should be holding onto him, screaming no. But she goes through the motions of it all. And she still felt nothing. She didn't cry. But she didn't laugh or smile at anything either. She looked past people, as if expecting him to be standing there with his smug smile. A prank. Something he knew would break her. She looked through people, because she wasn't really there. She was still in that field, still watching it over. And over. And over.

 When they asked her if she wanted his body wrapped, covered up before she could say goodbye. She didn't really say anything. She wanted to laugh. Like it was a joke still some stupid prank he was pulling. But, looking at his paled skin, the way his features carved DEAD into her mind, made her still.  Hands tracing the curve of his cheek, taking in every little detail. Memorizing every thing. Comparing and contrasting his living memory to this ghost of her son. She did not weep. Her chest did not heave. Her face didn't twist with pain or grief.

  She could see him, for a moment, standing there with a smile on his face. One he saved for when he knew he had hurt her. One he wore only a few times. & his words echoed:

      “Give it five minutes and some body shots.”

 Back then, in that moment, it had stung deep and left a mark in her chest. The words she spoke after that, in pain and in resistance to him left her lips, softly. A whisper against his cold skin, “I won't ever fucking forget my son, Kavinsky.”

   It had been days — or weeks, she couldn't remember — since the incident. She stood, watching workers fill the grave. She knew her friends, her family, weren't too far away. She could feel their eyes on her, watching just in case she faltered. As she stared at his name, the ironic way he died on the day he lived, all of it carved into stone; she couldn't stop from hearing him, seeing him beside her. Smug smile on his face. The look of I told you so loudly pointed in her direction. The reminder that she'd failed him, failed to save him. Failed to give him a new life. That she'd lost him, despite everything she did and tried.

  It was the same expression she saw when she thought of how she hadn't cried yet. It was the same ghost she saw when she ran to his room to see if he was still alive, only to find everything untouched.

 Yet, so badly, did she look at him with a smile of her own. One more glimpse of his face, smiling and not gone. Alive and living. So badly did she want to pull him close and hope that it was all a dream, only to have her fingers brush across nothing. For him to vanish.

  So she stood, staring at his grave. Staring at her loss embedded in stone.

  It was an unholy sound, to her. Wailing sounds echoing off the walls. The cacophony of screams in her house. Her own screams. For she had finally broken.

  It wasn't the emptiness of her home. Nor the silence of it. Not the dreams she had, or the confirmation repeatedly that he was gone. It was simply when she grabbed the wrong keys.

  Hands clutched the keys to her chest as her knees buckled. She fell with ease, limp almost as if the weight of it all had finally crushed her. Her chest heaved as a scream left her lungs empty, craving air more than she had ever in her life. Everything ached & felt like it was breaking under this weight. Alone in her house. Her empty & so still house. She broke finally.

  Fingers traced the logo of his Mitsubishi on the key. Her mind flaring with memories of the white car, the one sitting in her drive way that was now covered in leaves and dust.

  Her hand resting on the stick shift, eyes looking at the road ahead. Foot moving in accordance to properly shift the gear. A smile on her face, smug as she looked over to him, “That's how it should sound when you change gears.” 

        “You should have gotten more sprinkles, seems like a rip off,” her voice echoes, body leaned up against his car. A smile on her face, again, as she looks up to him sitting on the hood. Ice cream towering in his hand. 

                               Standing on the top of his car, she felt the horror rush into her veins. Nothing could have been fast enough. Every regret she had pounding in her head as she could only watch. Horror and breaking. The explosion of fire engulfing him & his limp body rolling off the car.

 The present snapped back as the metal dug into her hand too much. She couldn't stop crying, she couldn't breathe. It was ugly and raw. Her screams, wailing, falling upon only emptiness. Falling only on her own ears.

  She crumbled in a whirlwind of pain, grief, guilt, and loneliness. In loss. And she couldn't stop it. There was no stopping the crushing weight of it all. Not even the happiest of memories with him could negate that she could make no more with him there.

  Revas didn't know how she got here, didn't remember really. It was a blur of how she found his sea of white cars with knife decals. Sitting on the one she drove in, she simply looked at them all. The grass overgrown. Some paint peeling & losing its color. The dust and leaves gathered on the windshields and roofs. A ghost of him, still lingering here.

  She wondered if anyone else would find this place. If someone in the future would find it, and wonder how they all got here. If someone would remove it all and build a stupid apartment building. A mental note to buy the land later so no one could remove this. Remove the memories of him.