Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

One-Shot, One Kill - Prompt One

Prompt: Romance; must include the death of a loved one or its aftermath.

He wakes up at five in the morning with a knot of pain in his chest, and that's how he knows it's going to be one of those days again. In bed, he sinks into the mattress, old springs bowing to the will of his heavy blood. It's too hot and he's sweating under blankets but the air is too cold and he's shivering all the while. He feels sticky, gross. Wrong. He feels inside out. Pulled and popped that way. And beside him, fingers curling around the corner of a pillow with no imprint of another pressed into it, he feels nothing, for there is no one there, and there never will be. Not again. It's a brief and fleeting statement in his mind, but it's there now. And it spirals. It always, always spirals.

It spirals to the left, switches course to the right, flies back up, and then descends again. It takes him to the distinctness of how much of a human shell he is. Then it drags him to the memory of a boy with brown eyes and long limbs, the laughing exuberance of his movements, his actions, his need for something more that he wasn't getting. It pulls him up, into what it felt like to be traced by those soft hands, and to be kissed tenderly by those soft lips, and to be laughed against, pressed against, held. It pulls him up into the simple intertwining of hands and the squeezing of pumped blood to fingers with melting snowflakes on them and the beauty of a smile he won't ever see again. It drags him down, then. No more careful touches and lovely admiring and comfortable silence and most of all, no more warmth. It's hot, but not warm. Gone is he and he was warmth, so there is none left.

The fact that he lays there thinking of these things in great detail is reason enough to believe that it's going to be one of those days again.

The world turns into a hazy thought. He's not sure when he started to cry, or when the sun started to flush the sickly yellow of morning through the blinds, or when he whispered "fuck" to himself because of the runny snot in his nose that wouldn't let him breathe like normal. But it all happened. Everything happens and passes him by and he loses track of time now, dazed, because there is not a single purpose in keeping track when there's not a single purpose to get out of bed, other than to stop wallowing in sweat and to take a piss so he's not wallowing in that on top of cold, drenched sheets. Even now, though, he holds his bladder, and refuses to get up, and instead exhausts himself back to sleep for another seven hours even though he's already slept for six.

When he awakens, he has no choice. So he sits up, willing his brain away, and zeroes in on pissing. That's all. If he can just piss, maybe he won't feel like getting back in bed. That's sometimes how it goes, he thinks as his bare feet patter into the bathroom. But that's also sometimes how it doesn't go. One thing at a time, though.

One thing at a time, and yet he hears three knocks on the bathroom door.

"Trevor? You up, bud?"

"Shit," he whispers. Quickly, he reaches over and locks the door, because he knows if he doesn't, his mother will just barge in, and that is absolutely not how he wants to start the day even though it's long started without him.

"Yes," Trevor replies wearily, hesitant to turn on the faucet only because he doesn't want the noise. It's so loud. She's so loud. Everything's so goddamn loud and he's almost glad he's not in the apartment anymore because those punk ass kids never stopped blasting their music but then he thinks of the apartment and he throws the knobs towards him so the water can burst, thick and hot, against his hands.

His mother's voice comes through the wood muffled, but clear. He can imagine her wringing her hands in her long skirt or popping the knuckle on her ring finger like she does when she talks. "Okay, well, I've still got your breakfast in the microwave, so when you're done, come out and eat, alright? You've got the volunteer thing today and I need to know you've eaten before it starts."