Chapter Text
i.
See I was dead when I woke up this morning
I'll be dead before the day is done
- Seven Devils, Florence + The Machine
Eat soggy cereal for breakfast.
Drag himself to the bus stop.
Hang out behind the school with the others until a teacher shoos them all back inside.
Drag themselves to Henrietta's house.
Drag themselves to the Village Inn when motherly smothering becomes unbearable.
Drag himself home.
Warm up days-old leftovers for dinner.
Stare at the ceiling as music plays until the claws of sleep finally take hold.
Rinse, repeat, ad infinitum.
Until:
He shifts, shivers.
cold cold cold, too dark and
alone
and cold, cold
Wake up.
Wake. Up.
His dingy, grey ceiling, covered in posters and glow in the dark plastic stars and planets have gone missing, replaced with bright morning sunlight.
His brain provides the dull punchline to an even duller joke: Someone has stolen our tent, Watson.
Bedroom, home, the whole trailer park has been stolen and replaced with trees, lanky and bare save a glistening carpet of snow on their branches.
He should be blinking back the sunlight, turning away from it until his eyes adjust. Leaving the offensive fact that it simply exists aside, it doesn't bother him in the slightest.
Now is as good a time as any to push himself out bed, or whatever bed substitute he is currently laying on, he decides. He glances to the side. A thin layer of snow in every direction, snuggling up against tree trunks and rocks. It's going to be an early winter this year. It had been (cold, so cold) unusually brisk lately, with snow flurries every day. He isn't cold now. Not particularly warm, but nowhere near as cold as he should be after sleeping on the ground. Perhaps it is the blanket of leaves piled atop him from head to toe. Crisp, dead leaves in all the colors of an intense sunset. Not a single shade of brown to be seen.
He presses his hands into the snow as he begins to sit up. It's firm and tightly packed, and does not give way beneath his hands. A squirrel scampers out from under a bush, leaving tiny paw prints in its wake. Light, powdery snow scatters like dust motes beneath its feet. He won't stop to consider what it means.
He jerks himself upright into a sitting position, and though the leaves had covered him up to his neck at least, not a single one is jostled with the motion. No spill of detritus to his sides, no crinkling noises as leaves brush against leaves, against snow or twigs or pebbles. Just a quiet breeze far above his head. His lips press together into a thin line and he picks an imaginary piece of lint off his shirt. Straightens out wrinkles that don't exist. His clothes are far too impeccable for having been slept in outside.
It's been a strange dream, he thinks, but it's time for it to end. He'll pick up a pack of multivitamins on his next snack run at the drug store, and perhaps his subconscious won't need to yell at him for a perceived Vitamin D deficiency. That's all it is. Just his brain telling him to get out in the sun more. He's disappointed in the organ for coming up with such a... conventional ...message, but he chalks it up to his slightly odder than usual sleeping habits as of late. That's all.
He wants to wait out the rest of the dream right where he is, but as minutes creep by in what feels like real-time, not quick, fluid dream-time, he feels a lump forming in his throat. He's never felt more awake. Time to get up and move.
Standing up suddenly feels like a major accomplishment. The leaves do not move around him, do not twitch, do not even slide off his body in one mass lump. He simply moves through them as if they weren't there. As if he weren't there.
He clenches and unclenches his fists before shoving them into his pockets. They come back with a smoke and a lighter, and the feel of them between his fingers is enough to put his mind at ease. For a moment.
"Quit being a fucking pussy, Pete," he mutters, unwilling to raise his voice out here. It is somehow very wrong.
He has to look. He doesn't know why, but he is compelled to, just as strongly as he does not want to.
Perhaps stronger, as he settles on getting it over with and looking. He drags his feet as he turns in place, casting his gaze downwards.
He maintains a perfect poker face as he stares down at his own half-buried corpse, stares down into its open, blank eyes.
He shoves a hastily lit cigarette between his lips and inhales to keep from screaming.
He'll pretend it worked later.