08-02-2016, 03:23 PM
For the record, he never felt dead.
He remembers dying well enough, but in the same, dulled way that we have come to remember pain – there is no sharpness to the memory. He remembers the dry, almost twig-like sound of his bones breaking, remembers the air swirling with screams. But he can’t recall the pain, though it must have hurt, surely.
But truth is, he went quickly, it hadn’t taken long before his mangled body had given out.
Then, nothing.
He almost wishes he could recall it, but there’s nothing. Like a movie with a spliced scene, he remembers falling to the ground and then he remembers waking up in the meadow, whole but alone. He feels almost guilty, that he can’t recall the pain, that he can’t at least come with some knowledge of what lies beyond.
Truth is, he thinks he does matter – if not now, then someday – but it’s not an issue he needs to push with her body against his.
“Okay,” he says. It will matter. Someday, it will matter.
Right now, though, only she matters. Only they matter.
“I love you, too.”
That matters. And he says it so simply, like it hadn’t been a thing deep and treacherous within him, like it hadn’t been something he maybe died for. Instead, it’s casual, easy, as if they’re normal, as if they weren’t born with glass in their bones and doom in their hearts, as if there was a chance for them, for this.
contagion
be careful making wishes in the dark