#dylanpara1

The smoking was going to catch up to him eventually, that's what everyone had said to him when he had one right after the other, like he was breathing in fresh air. But at least it would be a death by nature, something that had taken a hold of him, rather than what he had done so long ago with a razor and an empty room, a drunken father in the next room. It had started with a cough that wouldn't go away, a continuous pain that only grew and worsened as time moved on. He began to feel lightheaded, pain in his chest and back, an ache in his bones. He'd cough up blood, at random, in the middle of a exorcism.

When his work began harder to do, when it became an actual struggle, and he failed here or there, he decided it was best to just go check out a doctor. He hadn't expected what they told him, lung cancer of all things. At first he had just stood there when that nurse and the doctor told them, just staring at the pristine hospital flooring until he gave a faint nod. It felt like death was an old friend he hadn't seen in a long time, and so overwhelmed with the thought of seeing him again, he couldn't speak. A part of him wanted to cuss and yell, especially at the doctors for just standing there so stupidly, but at his father, at his mother, at his brother who never had a chance to live. Maybe, he thinks, he was doomed from the start. 

His father blamed him for his mother's death, and his brother. It was unfair to blame a young child, but his father did it anyway. Blaming someone, after all, took away some of the pain. At least this way he had someone to hate. Elijah always thought it was because he was born from the death of two people that he could see and hear things others couldn't, it was the easiest way to explain it. And while others claimed it to be a gift, it had only caused him more pain, until eventually he couldn't take it anymore.

He saw Hell, he saw what he'd be suffering for the few minutes that he was dead until he was shocked back into breathing, pumping blood into his veins and flushing his system of any drugs he may have consumed. Killing demons, he had imagined, would cleanse his soul. He was getting rid of the filth of the world, wasn't that what God would've liked? But it seemed God did not care about someone as small as him, no matter if he tried. His reasons were selfish, after all. And because God did not care, it would explain why each day there was something new to ruin Elijah's day, like cancer. Like cancer. 

Did God hate him, he wondered, because he had given up on life? Why should he care, if he did nothing to ease Elijah's pain? It was Elijah's life, it was his life, why did God get to decide whether he kept going or not? If Elijah wanted to end it, he should be able to, shouldn't it?

There was a nurse that kept coming at him, the one with long dark hair and honey coloured chocolate eyes. She kept pestering him, until he snapped at her and ordered her out of the room, angry enough that even the doctor had to pull her away. It was so pathetic the way he curled up into himself after, hands in his hair and just letting himself cry. He was tired and sore all over, he was exhausted with this life, with the fighting. And like a man placing a bet on something so precious, he decided to just take the chance and let the cancer overwhelm him, and if he died and hell's fires greeted him, then at least he could comfort himself with the knowledge that he had tried to do something about. 

He came back every now and then for some medicine. He didn't want proper treatments, but medicine could at least prolong it until he got some shit in order, like visit his alcoholic father who threw a beer bottle at him the minute he walked through the door, or keep that nurse (who he knew now was named 'Dylan.' Who the hell names their girl after a boy?) from stalking him as she came to do. 

She was determined, he had to give her that, but he didn't see why she cared so much, and so with each phone call she punched in, he got angrier. Why did she have to care so bloody much? He swore every corner he turned, she was there smiling and waving, running after him until he turned away and stormed off. 

Today was no different either. The sun was nearly going down and the cars of the town sped by fast, like bullets, their lights blinding him. His head ached and his vision blurred, as one car honked so loudly it surprised him into a coughing fit, and when he stopped to grab at his throat, he felt someone slam into his back enough to cause him to lean forward and grab onto a pole for support. When he turned to look at whomever it was that ran into him, he froze and then glared.

"Are you stalking me?" The words rip out violently, and he tears himself away from her. He hardly notices that he has to hold the pole to keep himself upright. "Look, I don't want to do any treatments, I really don't—and... And isn't it illegal to be doing this?"