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I. The Bridge Where He Jumped
DECEMBER 23rd, 2019 – 1:25 AM
The idea that formed in Tweek Tweak’s head—that he should throw himself off a bridge—was not one that he had planned for. It had actually started as nothing more than the desire to go on a nighttime walk.
And then, while walking, he had realized that he’d forgotten to grab a coat on his way out. This realization triggered a minor jolt of anxiety, because the temperature this late into December had dipped into the single digits, and that meant that without a jacket, he might catch a cold, or the flu, or worse—that he might get hypothermia. Or maybe he would go into shock right there in the middle of the sidewalk, and die on the spot. And nobody would even notice it until someone woke up the next morning to find a boy, blue-skinned and dead, on the pavement right next to the trash bins that they forgot to take back in.
At first, this entire scenario mortified him.
But then he wondered if that would be so bad after all.
It might be a shocker to his parents. Nobody wants to lose their son. Especially not two days before Christmas, when they’ve already gone through the trouble of buying and wrapping his presents.
His mother was a meticulous lady, though. She probably still had all the receipts from everything she’d bought, and would probably appreciate that he had chosen to do this before he’d opened up any of the packages. It would make the return process a lot easier.
And then there was the whole thing with Craig.
Craig. Who even names their kid something awful like that? Tweek’s classmates always used to make fun of his name—but could you imaging going through the excruciating pain and labor of carrying a child for nine months, only to end up naming it Craig when it popped out? That name was dryer than a saltine cracker. It had about as much spice to it as white bread.
In any case, Tweek liked Craig, even if he didn’t particularly like Craig’s name. Tweek liked Craig enough to feel bad about inconveniencing him.
They had talked two nights ago, for three hours over Snapchat, about maybe living together sometime in the foreseeable future. They’d get a nice apartment in Lochbuie, and Craig would put together the Ikea bedframe while Tweek found a sunny spot to hang some potted plants. Tweek’s dad would donate his old French press to them (he’d ramble on about how he needed an excuse to get a new one anyways), and Tweek would make Craig’s coffee every morning just how he liked it, with two spoons of sugar and generous pour of half-‘n-half, before he went off to work.
If Tweek died, that would be a real wrench in their plans.
As he stopped to rest at a cobblestone bridge overlooking a river, Tweek even worried for a moment that if he died, Craig might also decide to commit suicide. And then Craig’s sister would be so distraught that she’d try to commit suicide. And the loss of both of their children would drive Mr. Tucker to madness, and he’d go crazy and kill his wife before shooting himself in the mouth with his shotgun. All because of something that Tweek did.
Just the thought made Tweek feel sick. He braced himself on the bridge’s metal railing before throwing up over the side.
He only heaved for a moment. His anxiety had taken a real nosedive over the past few months, and now vomiting seemed as commonplace as sneezing.
Then, he took out his phone and texted Craig. His thumbs were cold, and they moved slow and clumsy as he typed out a message.
Tweek: Would you be okay if something really awful happened to me and I died?
Tweek: I don’t mean okay as in you wouldn’t be upset.
Tweek: I mean okay as in you wouldn’t hurt yourself or anything.
Tweek: Do you understand what I mean when I say you’d be okay?
It was only a moment or two before Craig responded. Craig had always been prompt. Maybe it was because he was just that considerate. Maybe it was because he was so attached to his phone, that he was always on it anyways whenever Tweek decided to text him. It was nice either way. Long waits between messages made Tweek nervous. He hated talking on the phone, but he hated texting more. Unless it was Craig. He never hated texting Craig.
Craig: you’re not going to die. relax.
Craig: are you watching a movie or something because i can come over and hang out if you want.
Tweek: No I’m not watching a movie. Just tell me that you would be okay if I died. Please?
Craig: i would be upset if you died.
Tweek: But you’d be okay right?
Craig: i guess so.
Tweek: Thanks Craig. I love you.
Craig: no problem. anyways i don’t know what’s going on, but i promise nobody’s trying to murder you, and you didn’t accidentally pour antifreeze into your drink instead of juice, and you don’t secretly have a viral infection that is going to make you stroke out in your sleep.
Tweek almost wanted to tell Craig the truth about why he asked in the first place, but then Craig would try to talk him down. And it was a scary thing to realize, but Tweek didn’t want to be talked down.
He pocketed his phone again, and stared down over the bridge. The river beneath him was black, and fast-flowing, and it reflected all the million shards of moonlight beaming down into it. It looked less like a river, and more like a piece of the universe.
It made Tweek think about how Craig would ramble on about outer space. Tweek would zone him out sometimes, when he talked about quarks or black matter or axial tilts. But occasionally, he would chat dreamily about the constellations he liked, and Tweek would listen like his life depended on it.
A lot of constellations were based on myths. Heroes who had done something right by the gods—right enough to be turned into stardust and live forever in the sky.
Tweek looked at the sky. He focused on a star. It wasn’t the brightest one, nor was there anything really spectacular about it. But Tweek liked it. If he got to be turned into a star, that’s the one he’d want to be.
He never took his eyes off of it. Not even as he crawled over the cobblestone bridge’s rail, and plunged backwards into the river below.
II. The Room He Woke Up In
DECEMBER 23rd, 2019 – 8:24 AM
Death proved to be short business for Tweek.
Cracking open his eyes, he first marveled at how warm he was. And then at how dry. There was no soreness in his body anywhere, and his ribs moved fluidly to expand and contract as he breathed in and out again.
The breathing is what shocked him. Because as far as Tweek knew, dead people didn’t breathe.
He didn’t have much time to think about it, though. Because at that moment, the door creaked open, and Craig walked in.
Something in his expression felt wrong. It was too sensitive, too old, for it to belong on Craig’s face. Tweek had only ever before witnessed Craig’s large collection of sneers and grimaces. The looks of exasperation that he gave when Tweek ranted on about yet another paranoia-induced snowball theory. The occasional tenderness in his eyes when he kissed the top of Tweek’s head, or called him “honey”.
This looked different. This looked like grief.
“Tweek,” Craig whispered. He swallowed hard, and then broke out into a smile. “You’re alive.”
Tweek nodded.
Craig walked forward. He nearly collapsed next to the bed. He pressed his fingers to Tweek’s chin, and ran them down his sharp jawline.
“This is fucking amazing,” Craig whispered.
Tweek didn’t say a word. He was too caught up in the wrongness of it all. How had he survived? Why was he here? He asked this aloud, and his eyes burned into Craig’s as he searched for the answer.
“I pulled you out of the river,” Craig said after a moment of pause.
“Did you save me?”
Another silence. Then, “Yeah. I did. Just in time.”
“How? You were at home when I jumped, I—I texted you and you said-,”
“Don’t think too hard about it,” Craig said, cutting him off. “You’re here. That’s all that fucking matters.”
Tweek tendered a glance into Craig’s eyes. They looked so old and tired, and Tweek couldn’t help but wonder, did I do that?
Craig sighed, deep and heavy. “Why?” he asked.
“Why what? You can’t just ask ‘why’ and not finish the sentence,” Tweek said.
“Why’d you…jump?”
“I don’t know. I was frustrated,” Tweek said, knowing fully that it wasn’t always easy opening up to Craig. Craig was a fixer. He saw trouble-talk as a cry for help, always. Tweek had always been the more openly erratic of the two, but Craig had his own neurosis. Principally, one that responded poorly to unfinished business. Tweek worried that telling Craig too much would inspire him to act.
And really, the problem at its core was that there was nothing to act upon. Nobody had hurt Tweek. Not even himself. There was nothing to fix, and nothing to finish, and that incompleteness alone would aggravate Craig more than enough.
Surprisingly, however, Craig didn’t push him. And so Tweek found it safe enough to continue on his own.
“Everything was okay,” Tweek said. “I guess it just felt like a good stopping point.”
“Like how movies end,” Craig murmured.
“What?”
“You know, movies end right after the main character gets his happily ever after. And then there’s nothing after that, because the story has reached a point where everything is finally good.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess it’s like that.”
“I was really fucking worried, Tweek,” Craig sighed.
“I’m sorry,” Tweek said. “But were you okay? I asked before I jumped. I asked if you’d be okay if I died.”
Craig bit his lip and stared off, past Tweek and through the window. “I was okay,” he said finally.
It felt like an exhale to hear him say it out loud. Tweek nodded and closed his eyes, and he felt something warm surround him. Craig’s arms. He felt Craig’s entire body shaking, then, and it took him a moment to fully register what was happening. Craig was crying.
“I wish I had taken that fucking text more seriously,” Craig said between gasps of air. “That stupid fucking text, I-,”
“It’s okay, Craig,” Tweek said. “You were right. I wasn’t going to die.”
Craig nodded, taking in a swift gulp of air. “Yeah. I know. Can I lay down next to you?”
Tweek shook his head. “I might be sick and contagious.”
“You’re not,” Craig insisted.
“But what if I-,”
Without waiting for another word, Craig hopped in the bed and pressed his chest to Tweek’s back. They both laid like that for a few minutes. Every so often, Craig would grip Tweek’s body harder, as if he were a balloon string slipping out of Craig’s hands.
“Hey,” Craig said. It was one of the last things Tweek heard before he fell asleep.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just…I love you.”
“You love me.” Tweek smiled, almost amused. “You’ve never said that before.”
Craig pulled him closer. “Well, it’s about time I did.”
III. The Christmas After They Found Him
DECEMBER 25th, 2019 – 8:00 AM
Funerals were one hell of a way to spend Christmas morning. But the Tweak family insisted on having a service for their son while the body was still warm.
Craig glanced around at the sea of black that had flooded the dimly lit room. It seemed a general rule of thumb that the smaller a town was, the bigger the attendance that could be expected for a funeral. This was because everybody knew everyone. And not only were people more likely than not to have been personally involved with the unlucky dead—if they didn’t show up, their absence would be likely be noted and judged by the rest of the small town populous.
The small-town gossip mill was also a vapid one. People Craig had never seen in his entire life came up to him and gave him pats on the back. Talked to him about their own stories, losing somebody they loved.
Craig had even been mentioned in the eulogy. For the first time in his life, it seemed like everybody in the room knew his name and wanted to talk to him.
Yet he hated the attention more than almost anything. He didn’t want condolences. He wanted to enjoy Christmas with his stupid fucking family. He wanted Tweek to be alive.
He deleted the texts that they had sent the night before. The ones where Tweek asked him if he’d be okay in the case of Tweek dying. They made him feel guilty. But it almost felt worse without them.
If only he had taken those texts seriously. If only he had called. If only he had known what Tweek had meant when he sent them. If only, if only, if only.
The feeling of an elbow nudging his ribs jolted him back into the present.
“You’re not going to off yourself too, are you?” Craig’s sister asked.
“Fuck you, Tricia.”
“Fuck you, too. I’m just trying to check up on you.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” Craig shot back. “What about you?”
He tried to be sincere in his concern, but the sentiment came off as forced anyways.
“I’m fine, too.”
“Are you sure?”
“What, are you some kind of freak or something? I said I was fine. God, Craig.”
There was the expectation within the Tucker household to avoid the showing or sharing of emotion. Especially in regards to Craig and his sister. But Tricia had grown up with Tweek just as Craig had. Tweek used to sit down with her and they’d talk for hours while Craig was at football practice. Tweek had always prompted both siblings to feel their feelings. They’d have to do that for one another now, no matter how hard it seemed.
Another mourner walked up to Craig from out of nowhere. He patted Craig on the back and muttered something about how “strong” he was. Then, as quickly as he came, he left.
“It’s not fair that people keep coming up to you,” Tricia finally said in a huff. “I cared about Tweek, too.”
Craig fought down the urge to snap at her. “I know,” he said. Taking in a shaky breath, he asked, “Do you think Dad’ll be upset if we stay for the burial?”
“Who cares? Fuck him,” Tricia said. “We’re going to the burial.”
“Okay.” Craig nodded.
Another silence. And then, Tricia spoke up again. “You know, Robbie in my class told me that when people die all of a sudden like Tweek did—sometimes they have a moment of closure with somebody that they love.”
“Is that true?” Craig asked.
“Probably not. But it would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
Craig closed his eyes. Imagined one last moment with Tweek. Hugging him from behind, digging his nose into straw-blond hair. Feeling warm. The heating in the funeral home was puttering out of strength, and Craig could feel the frost in his toes. He didn’t know if he’d ever feel warm again.
Tossing an arm around the back of Tricia’s foldout chair, Craig nodded. “Yeah. It would be.”
IV. The Hospital He Slept In
MARCH 18th, 2079 – 4:23 PM
Both Tucker siblings had taken a turn for the worst over the past winter. The only difference between their ailments was that Tricia had gotten better, and that Craig hadn’t.
He’d been in and out of the emergency room for days now, and had finally been admitted into hospice. Tricia had fought him on the matter, but Craig had made up his mind. He was old. He was dying. And he didn’t need to put his sister or his husband through the excruciating pain of watching him fight the inevitable.
He had met Rod during his undergraduate years. They had both taken the same creative writing course.
Now, he watched in contentment as Rod sat across the room by the big window and wrote poetry in a Moleskine journal that Craig had picked up for him as a last-minute stocking-stuffer.
“Are you ever going to read me whatever crap you’re writing all the time in that damn journal?” Craig asked. The hoarseness of his own voice shocked him. In his head, he still sounded thirty-three.
“One day,” Rod promised, the beginnings of a smile on his lips.
“One day. One fucking day,” Craig scoffed. “I’m dying, Rod. I don’t have a fucking day.”
“Then I’ll just read it out loud at your wake.”
“Come on. I bought you the damn thing. That should give me at least some rights to it.”
“You’re an old coot,” Rod whistled. Laughing to himself, he added, “Yeah, you’re Thomas Tucker’s son, all right.”
“Don’t you dare call me that.”
Rod tucked his ballpoint pen into his journal and closed it shut. Pulling the hospital blinds closed, he ambled over to Craig’s bedside. “Four-thirty. You ought to take a nap, my love.”
There was a notable anxiety beneath the constant warmth in Rod’s voice. Craig knew that it was because naps were a risk. Anytime he closed his eyes, it was a risk. A risk that he wouldn’t open them back up again.
But he was so tired. And a nap would probably hold him over until dinnertime, when he’d wake up to the sound of Rod joking around with the nurse (a young guy, maybe thirty, with the kind of smile that would’ve made Craig’s heart stop, for lack of a better phrase).
“Order me a burger for dinner. I want one more before I kick it,” Craig said.
This was a running joke. He’d been asking for burgers since his admittance to the room, since they were the only thing in the hospital dining hall consistently worth eating.
“I will, I will. Now get to sleep.”
Craig nodded. He didn’t know why in the moment, but he found himself staring up at Rod and taking in all of the aged beauty in his calm face. A moment of panic washed over Craig—what if this was the last time that he’d see it? What if this was the last time that he’d hear the soft care in his husband’s voice?
“Read me to sleep,” Craig demanded suddenly.
“You’re regressing, my love.”
“Just do it. Please?”
Rod sighed, though his exasperation was only staged, and retreated to the window to grab his journal. Opening it up, he flipped to a random page. And he started reading.
Craig had never understood poetry. Much less did he understand Rod’s. Rod wrote poems like abstract artists painted pictures. Not a single one of them ever made sense. But Craig knew that they were good, because even though he couldn’t understand them, they made him feel sad and full anyways.
Rod’s metaphors drifted in and out as Craig’s consciousness began to ebb.
“I love you,” Craig whispered quietly, right before he fell asleep.
Rod didn’t hear it. He didn’t need to.
V. The Room He Remembered
DECEMBER 23rd, 2019 – 8:20 AM
There were many things that were wrong about the circumstances of Craig’s waking up. First was the lack of pain. His joints felt smooth and loose, and his body was full of energy. There was no ache in his chest, nor a scratch in his throat. Second was his surroundings. Instead of his hospice room, he found himself in the familiar halls of his childhood home. Third was the fact that he should not have woken up at all.
Craig glanced down at his body, finding himself not in his hospital gown—but in a blue hoodie and a pair of black jeans that were ripped at the knees.
He wondered for a moment if this was the afterlife.
But that didn’t feel like the right thing to call whatever it was he was experiencing. This felt more like a transitional location. A liminal zone.
Craig walked forward, amazed that for the first time in ten years—he was not confined to the aid of a cane or a walker. The first room on the left he recognized instantly as his, and the warm yellow light shining through the half-cracked door begged him to walk inside.
His heart stopped the moment he saw it—Tweek Tweak, laying on his bed. Craig took in a long, shaky breath.
“Tweek,” he whispered. He swallowed hard, and then broke out into a smile. “You’re alive.”
Craig’s knees felt like they were about to give out. He walked forward, nearly collapsing next to the bed. Tweek looked just as he’d remembered him—a cherubic face blessed with clear pale skin and brown doe-like eyes. A hazard of messy yellow hair. A bottom lip perpetually trapped beneath Tweek’s teeth.
There was the instant fear of touching the beautiful memory in front of him—but Craig needed to know. He needed to know that this was real, and that it was happening. He pressed his fingers to Tweek’s chin and ran them down his sharp jawline.
“This is fucking amazing,” Craig whispered.
“How?” Tweek asked, his voice choked. “How did I survive? Why am I here?”
He looked worried—Tweek had always looked worried. But this worry looked different.
It was then that Craig realized it: Tweek didn’t know that he was dead. That they were both dead. That they were trapped in the kind of purgatory that had glow-sticker stars pressed to the ceilings.
After a moment of deliberation, Craig responded, “I pulled you out of the river.”
“Did you save me?”
Lying to Tweek didn’t feel good, but it did feel right. There was an intervention occurring right now, by a force benevolent enough to provide the illusion of four walls and a warm bed. Craig would do his best to honor that gift.
“Yeah, I did,” he said finally. “Just in time.”
Tweek’s face twisted painfully. “How? You were at home when I jumped, I—I texted you and you said-,”
Memories of the texts cut into Craig’s side like a knife. “Don’t think too hard about it,” he cut Tweek off. “You’re here. That’s all that fucking matters.” There was a sad look in Tweek’s eyes—almost like he was sorry for something. Craig sighed, deep and heavy. “Why?” he asked.
“Why what? You can’t just ask ‘why’ and not finish the sentence.”
Craig swallowed a lump in his throat. “Why’d you…jump?”
Tweek paused for a moment. Then he glanced away. “I don’t know. I was frustrated.”
Years ago, Craig would have pushed him for more. Even now, his body ached with the need to understand fully what had caused Tweek to cause him so much pain. But age had changed him—made him kinder to the gray areas of the vast unknown.
Rod had tried to commit suicide, too, before he’d even met Craig. Unlike Tweek, though, he had failed. Craig remembered pestering him for days, wondering in a fit of rage why he’d ever try to do such a selfish, awful thing, and did he even think about the people who cared about him?
“You don’t need to know why, Craig,” Rod had snapped. It was the first and only time he’d ever raised his voice. “I don’t need someone to understand. I need someone who forgives me even though he doesn't understand.”
And so, Craig didn’t push Tweek to say anything else.
Tweek talked on his own. “Everything was okay,” Tweek said. “I guess it just felt like a good stopping point.”
“Like how movies end,” Craig murmured.
“What?”
“You know, movies end right after the main character gets his happily ever after. And then there’s nothing after that, because the story ahs reached a point where everything is finally good.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess it’s like that.”
Rod had written a poem about death and movies. It was one of the only ones that he’d ever written accessibly enough for Craig to understand it.
And it was odder than anything to think of his last love so persistently even with his first love laid out before him. But Rod had loved Craig for so much longer. He had loved Craig with all of the years that Tweek had chosen to miss out on.
Craig wondered if he would have loved Tweek for that long, given the chance. The thought ached. If he could’ve had his way, he would have lived two parallel lives—one with Tweek and one with Rod.
But this was the life he’d received. And this was the boy who had introduced that life to its first real taste of pain.
“I was really fucking worried, Tweek,” Craig said.
“I’m sorry,” Tweek said. “But were you okay? I asked before I jumped. I asked if you’d be okay if I died.”
Craig thought about it for a moment, staring off past Tweek and through the empty oblivion of his bedroom window. If Tweek just turned around, he’d see the truth.
Tweek’s death had destroyed Craig’s life. It had pushed him to his limits. It had created a dent in his chest that, even with so many years of love from his husband, never quite filled back up correctly.
But Craig had been alright. Craig had survived. Craig had re-learned the process of laughing, and smiling, and dancing, and kissing, and staring up in awe of the stars. Craig had lived, fully.
“I was okay,” he said.
Craig wrapped his arms around Tweek, feeling the bony ridges in his spine as he tucked his head beneath Tweek’s chin. And then his breath started to shake. Salty tears left his eyes. Pangs of guilt hollowed out a cavity in his lungs until it hurt to breathe.
“I wish I had taken that fucking text more seriously,” Craig said between gasps of air. “That stupid fucking text, I-,”
“It’s okay, Craig,” Tweek said. “You were right. I wasn’t going to die.”
It hurt to swallow, but Craig forced himself to do it. “Yeah. I know. Can I lay down next to you?”
Tweek shook his head. “I might be sick and contagious.”
“You’re not.” Craig shook his head.
“But what if I-,”
Craig didn’t give Tweek a chance to finish. He hopped over Tweek and into bed, wrapping his arms around Tweek’s front and spooning him. There was a comfortable familiarity to it. Rod had always been a bit big and bulky—and Craig couldn’t ever wedge his arm under him when they spooned because it would go numb within a minute. Tweek’s skinny frame slotted against him perfectly.
Craig started to feel the weight of his body lift. It was as though the universe was telling him that his time was up—for real this time. Even though he couldn’t see it, he knew that this pocket of the world that had been created for him was starting to dissolve back into the nothingness.
There was no use in grieving his waning time. Even if he had all the time left in the universe, he’d spend it here.
He gripped Tweek’s body harder. It had been forever since he had felt warm like this. He wanted to savor it.
“Hey,” Craig said. There was only one last thing he needed to say. One final bit of closure that he needed to have.
“What’s wrong?” Tweek asked. His voice was distant, as though he were falling in and out of sleep.
“Nothing’s wrong. I just…I love you.”
A weight fell of his chest as the words left his mouth. He had been afraid of loving for as long as he could remember. He was afraid of loving like his parents had loved—so fast and hard that they had rushed into it without realizing that their love was doomed to burn out. He was afraid of loving vulnerably.
He had loved Tweek, but he had never admitted to it to him. He wondered if that was his purpose here—to offer Tweek the closure of knowing he had been loved.
That theory vanished instantly as soon as Tweek spoke again.
“You love me. You’ve never said that before,” Tweek said, in a tone that meant, I knew.
And then, all at once, relief poured into Craig’s chest—filling the dent that had been left there by Tweek’s death. He could see the edges of his room fading into the blackness, faster and faster until it climbed to the foot of his bed.
He pulled Tweek closer and enjoyed the feeling of Tweek’s back against his nose for the last time as the waves of nothingness lapped at both of their ankles.
“Well, it’s about time I did,” he said, closing his eyes.
And in the absence of everything, it was warm.
VI. The Smile On His Face
MARCH 18th, 2079 – 7:46 PM
Craig and Rod had argued on multiple occasions about the possibility of an afterlife.
Craig, being raised as a Catholic, insisted that there was one—although he had no real care for the concept of Hell. Rod, whose family had been too absent in his life to ever impart upon him the slightest scrap of religion, had always leaned closer to the idea of reincarnation.
Admittedly, to cling to an idealistic portrait afterlife like Heaven was vastly out-of-character for someone like Craig. Rod had pointed that contradiction out several times.
But Craig stood fast to his beliefs.
Craig never confessed to it out loud, but Rod suspected that he had chosen to believe in heaven because he needed to believe in the chance of seeing Tweek one last time. Craig always did say that the boy was a saint.
Rod has his personal doubts, but he never saw it necessary to voice them. If it helped Craig live his life to the fullest, knowing he’d have a chance to repent later—all the better for him.
Except now, Rod was beginning to have second thoughts.
When Craig’s heart monitor had flatlined, Rod at first thought it was a prank. He thought this, because Craig’s lips had been twisted upwards when he’d frantically looked over at the hospital bed. But then he’d seen that his husband’s pulsometer was still connected fast to his index finger.
And instantly, Rod knew that there must be an afterlife. There was no doubt about it.
Craig had never smiled in his sleep before.