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Even though his memory felt shot to shit nowadays, David Kessler could remember one clear thought that had screamed out in his head out there on the moors, burning like a star as the creature’s teeth slashed through his skin: oh God, I don’t want to die. It was an impulse, an adrenaline artifact, and lying in his stony cold hospital bed now it made him feel awfully stupid. Surely being dead must beat this, right? Must beat vegetating away in a hospital ward, pumped so full of god-knows-what that it leaked into your dreams? Must beat those awful dreams? There was nothing to do but sleep, and yet sleeping was a considerably harder task to undertake. Still, as he lay on his back like an incapacitated turtle, staring wide eyed at the blank expanse of white ceiling, he felt wave after wave of exhaustion pass over him. He gave in: his eyes slowly swung shut, giving himself over to whatever hell his subconscious decided to subject him to. Memories cycled in a predictable pattern in his head, if only to give him something to hold onto as days came and went. They existed in fractured chunks and pieces, but at the very least they existed, and it made him feel like a real person.
“IV, please.”
“Three weeks?”
“You’ll have some dueling scars--”
“Never so weird.”
“--to boast of.”
“It wasn’t a lunatic.”
“What exactly did he call out?”
“He said
(jack)
“Ah yes, that would be
(jack!)
“The boy who was killed.”
(!!JACK!!)
His heart clenched tight, as if to say “Shit, that’s a good one! Let’s dream about Jack!” And before he could do anything about it he was thrust into the deep abyss of sleep and then there was nothing.
---
David had first met Jack Goodman in college, though nearly everyone else they knew was certain they must’ve been childhood friends. There was a good reason for that assumption; ever since their first class together they’d had this fantastic ability to riff off of one another, each joke or snide remark blending into the other like it had been rehearsed. Needless to say, they quickly became the bane of most professors’ existences. They studied together first, then they went to parties and got drunk together, and then they ate lunch together and so on until they were sharing an apartment. It all just felt right on some cosmic level, like they had been destined to meet. David thought that must have been the case, but never said it out loud: it was awfully embarrassing.
The Problem began while they were sharing the apartment. The Problem was as follows: Jack, being your garden variety horny college student, would bring girls home. Pretty often. David did too, sure, but at considerably less regular intervals, something that was also a little related to The Problem. They had a system for it: If David was at home and Jack came in with some girl, he’d give David this apologetic sort of look and cock his head to the side in a quick motion. David would quickly fuck out of there and off to the living room or someone else’s dorm. Something about it...irked him. He didn’t know what exactly, not at first, and it wasn’t unmanageable, so he ignored it. But that irk grew and grew, worming an unpleasant hole in his stomach. At first there seemed no reason for it, but once there was
(its not him you’re jealous of its the girls)
he had opened a real fucking can of worms and it frightened him. He was a young guy, he was stupid as hell, and he was frightened of that. Maybe it would have been fine if he and Jack were just classmates, or just got drunk together, but they were so close. They were friends . They shared an apartment for God’s sake! So David shut that can right back up and trapped all the worms inside, where they rotted away into nothingness. He couldn’t tell if anything had actually gone away or if he had just internalized it too deep to even recognize, and by that point he didn’t really care. It was gone, and that was the end of that , thank you very much.
(it sure as hell wasn’t and you’re gonna find out the hard way aren’t you david)
---
The dream was a mismatch of broken, disjointed
(memories)
images, and it came and went far too fast, and it stung somewhere too deep to know but plenty deep to feel. Par for the fucking course.
First came the planning of the trip, their epic backpacking adventure through Europe that the two were dead certain would heal their souls of the oppressive atmosphere of academia...or, at the very least, be a kickass story to tell. It unfolded now in the screwy cinema of David’s head: wrinkled and stained maps sprawled across ratty carpeting, strewn mugs of coffee and cans of beer, hands waving and pointing pencils and jokes and jokes and
(oh god)
Jack’s head in his lap, laughing his stupid, beautiful laugh.
“David, this’ll never work. Not in a million years.”
Indeed, the trip seemed like
(the kind of trip you’d take a lover on something real serious)
a monstrous task for two broke, unmotivated college juniors to undertake, but they weren’t too concerned about all that. It seemed like something that definitely could
(had)
to happen. Much like their initial friendship, it seemed propelled by some kind of fate, out of their hands and into the hands of someone -- something -- else. A stroke of luck in the form of a check from David’s grandmother cemented the whole thing: two plane tickets to Ireland and two REI backpacks later the two of them were all smiles and bon voyages.
“God, Jack, I could kiss you!”
(but i won’t i can’t don’t worry i WON’T)
Those two words were a bitter backbone to their college days, each called into question and swirling around in David's head like saltwater. Everything seemed, at once, a confirmation and a denial, impossible to analyze and just as impossible to ignore. A hand on a thigh when studying,
(can’t)
a particularly lucky twirl in a game of spin the bottle,
(won’t)
skinny dipping in the campus lake in the middle of the night
(CAN’T)
or a particularly odd fantasy one of David’s girlfriends had
(WON’T)
(is this normal? are these things friends do? how the hell am i supposed to live like this?)
And then there was that one night, that one fucking night in their apartment the dream layered an distorted into an oversaturated pulp. A rustling of sheets, each thinking the other had gone to sleep and each being wrong. From Jack’s side of the room, heavy breathing and the sound of blue jeans brushing down thighs, amplified in the silent space. The sound of skin on skin, a breath heavy with stretched taught restraint, and David
(can’t won’t can’t won’t can’t won’t)
curling his fists into his own bedsheets and keeping his face pressed pointedly into his pillow...
( don’t look david don’t look jesus christ be a normal person for once in your life and don’t fucking look)
...And then looking anyway, eyes wide and a hand over his mouth to cover a ragged breath of his own. Looking, looking , for maybe thirty seconds but thirty seconds was plenty, and then looking away as his heart thudded away manically in his chest. Waiting until the breathing from Jack’s side faded into the rhythm of sleep, and then dashing off to the bathroom to mirror the action in a considerably more private place.
The snippets of dialogue, half remembered conversations and contextless sound bites that pounded their firsts against David’s skull:
“God am I an idiot, David.”
(what’d you do this time jack)
“[...]’s real mad at me. You’ll never guess why.”
(why)
“You’re not gonna believe this, but we’re going at it, right? And what do I do, I accidentally call her David. Isn’t that fucked up? I don’t even know why I did it.”
(yeah that’s kind of fucked up)
“Guess I’m just a real tool, huh? A grade - A dumbass.”
(pretty much)
(but i love you)
(hey jack i actually have something to tell you)
(...)
(don’t be so hard on yourself.)
And then, in blissful coherent technicolor, the first real night of their trip, a dingy pub in middle-of-nowhere Ireland where David was certain an angel had tapped him on the shoulder and winked. Without enough money for a real room they slept in the bathtub on the second floor, the window creaking and the blustering night wind pouring in and their arms spilling over the side of the ancient clawed tub and
(OH GOD)
Jack laying prone on top of him in the sort of poor decision making only a decidedly drunk Jack would go through and an only slightly less drunk David would agree too.
(jesus i would have slept on the goddamn tile how am i supposed to stand this?)
But he didn’t say anything, just lay there with Jack on top of him and that all too familiar hand over his mouth. He excused it in his head
(i’m tired)
(i’m wasted)
(it’s easier this way)
(we’ll both stay warm)
But the truth was he let Jack sleep on top of him because he fucking wanted Jack to sleep on top of him, because he was lonely and pathetic and touch starved like nobody’s business. And that was just the way it was.
But then there was the writhing, the fucking writhing , and there was no way Jack was doing it on accident but it couldn’t have been on purpose because he was drunk, because he was straight and because he was his best friend. It was everything and nothing at the same time. There was pressure building like a barricade, that godforsaken right hand bitten down on by David’s chattering teeth as his whole being siphoned into his willpower.
There was that barricade breaking, the simultaneous relief and shame of that release, and there was the numb apology David gave through a mouthful of cotton.
(sorry. sorry. sorry.)
But there was no response, because Jack was fast asleep. David never ever told him what had happened, not for the rest of Jack’s life, which ended up being only three more days.
That shallow apology repeated as they trekked their ways through the moors of Northern England, as it started to rain,
(sorry)
as David tripped and Jack leaned down to help him up
(sorry)
and as the creature seemed to appear from nowhere and flung Jack to one side like a ragdoll, as it ripped into him and David ran away, because he didn’t know what else to fucking do.
(Sorry.)
And then there was Jack, sitting
(dead)
limp in the visitor’s chair net of his hospital bed, the forever empty and cold thing that seemed to fit him like a glove. His olive green raincoat was soaked grimy and dark with blood, and his neck and chest seemed as if they’d exploded outwards, a maw of gore and gristle. Angry red claw marks ran up his jaw and bordered his right eye like trails of lava from some ancient volcano. He sat with his limbs loose, his head lolled back, and he made no sound, just displayed the dismal circumstances of his death with no real shame. The creature had obliterated him; he had probably died almost instantly. This was the only comfort David could find in the whole spectacle.
(what the hell do i say to you jack? what on earth can i say?)
“...”
(i wish you would have kissed me. just to get it over with.)
“...”
(i’m sorry, jack.)
“...”
(i’m so scared. what happened to you? what’s going to happen to me?)
“...”
“...”
“...”
“Blue...moon...”
(what?)
“You...saw...me...standing...alone…”
And then Jack looked him right in the eye, with eyes that seemed so disgustingly alive in that corpse’s face, and he didn’t say anything else.
---
David Kessler woke up screaming, and it was the sort of thing nobody bothered about because he did it every morning. The nurse came in, not Alex, but the other one with that pitying smile of hers that made him sick.
“How are we feeling today, David?” she asked, and he didn’t answer her. She gave him his breakfast and left without a word. He looked at the food and his stomach flipped in displeasure, but he ignored it. The world seemed flatter than usual, more dull after the visceral intensity of the dream. Staring down numbly at the plastic seeming food on the tray, he shivered, as though someone had suddenly opened the door and came in the room. But he didn’t look up until he heard the voice.
“Can I have a piece of toast?”
David looked up to see, ladies and gentlemen, none other than Jack fucking Goodman, wide awake in the visitor’s chair next to his hospital bed, the once empty and cold thing that seemed to fit him like a glove. His olive green raincoat was soaked grimy and dark with blood, and his neck and chest seemed as if they’d exploded outwards, a maw of gore and gristle. Angry red claw marks ran up his jaw and bordered his right eye like trails of lava from some ancient volcano. And he spoke so goddamn casually, as though they were roommates again, as though he weren’t dead and David weren’t officially insane.
“Get the fuck outta here, Jack,” David croaked harshly, but then he started to cry, which kind of ruined it.