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Phil never expected to find his youngest son laying between the flowers of his dead wife with his arms and legs broken and his eyes closed forever. He never expected to find Tommy without a heartbeat, dead as the hemlocks in the garden.
At first, he did not think it was real. How could he? Tommy was always supposed to be fine. That's just how he was. Tommy was bright like the sun and death was something the moon dealt with. (But the moon is always pared with the stars and aren't the stars suns as well?)
Then Phil looked at Tommy and saw him, really saw him laying there in the grass. He saw the bones popping out, the blood mixing with the shade of gold of his hair and his fingertips and lips turned an ugly shade of blue.
Phil saw him and felt nothing but horror.
(And something about that made him feel uneasy. Shouldn't he feel sad too? Shouldn't he feel this Tommy-shaped hole in his heart gaping and crying out for it to be filled? Shouldn't there be something else too?
It's denial, Phil thought, it's just the shock making him feel wrong.)
Tommy's eyes were closed as if sleeping but he wasn't. He wasn't sleeping. Otherwise he wouldn't be laying here so broken and blue. He would still have a heartbeat after Phil crouched down next to his son's corpse and put two fingers one the pulse point on his wrist. Instead there was nothing. No ba-boom ba-boom of his heart. No catch of a breath or a stutter in his chest. No desperate gasp of air. Nothing at all.
Phil got up so very slowly and walked back into the house, away from Tommy. Away from the garden coated with a layer of death, death, death.
He opened the door and closed it once he was inside and for a few moments he stood there, breathing. So desperately gasping for air like Tommy should be doing, but he wasn't doing any of that. He wasn't doing anything because he was dead. Fuck, what was Phil supposed to do?
He breathed in.
He breathed out.
His hands were shaking.
"Phil?" and he hadn't even noticed Techno sitting at the kitchen counter on one of the chairs not matching the rest of the house with a book on his lap and a cup of coffee in front of him. It made him wonder what else he had not noticed. Phil wondered what secrets Tommy had hidden from him. What made him wind up dead? What-
The screeching from a chair echoed across the kitchen as Techno got off of his chair effectively ending his spiral of thoughts. His hand landed on Phil's shoulder after he stepped up to him and Phil wanted to bursts out into tears and sob. (He couldn't. He was father. He had to stay strong.)
"Phil? Are you okay? What's going on?"
And how in the world was Phil supposed to tell his son- that expected him to say everything was fine because he was a father and that was his job- that his little brother was dead in the garden? How in the world was he supposed to share this life shattering news with his son that did not deserve the death of his brother? They deserved better than Tommy because how dare he die and leave them all to deal with his mess. How dare he-
He was glad nobody could read his mind. Phil had enough good sense to know that what he was thinking was mean and wrong and his son was dead. How dare he think such a thing?
(He couldn't find it in himself to lie to himself. Phil had meant every word he thought and he hated it more than anything.)
So he said "Where's my phone?" instead because he could not bear to say anything else.
And Techno looked at him and looked, looked, looked with so much worry that Phil's heart broke just a bit more.
"I think it's on the kitchen counter."
With not a second wasted he went to the kitchen and looked around for a split second until he spotted his phone. He grabbed it with shaking hands and hesitated.
What were they going to think of him when he told him his son had died at some point while he had been sleeping and he had not noticed? What were they going to think of him? 'What a bad father you are', he imagined them saying but Phil reminded himself that surely they dealt with stuff like this every day and it was impossible that this was the worst thing they had ever heard of.
He went to type in the number, 999, (Slowly, painfully. Why couldn't he just do it?) and let it ring once before putting it to his ear. It was only after that one ring somebody picked up.
"999, What's your emergency?"
Feet shuffled over the kitchen tiles and when Phil turned to the sound he saw Techno, still so confused and so worried but now with some sense of fear because why in the world would Phil need the emergency services? What was going on? Phil turned around. He could not bear it.
"Hello", he said with his eyes closed. Perhaps he could pretend it was one big nightmare and soon he would wake up with all his sons alive and well.
"My name is Phil Minecraft and I found my youngest son's corpse in my garden."
But it was real and he could not pretend it wasn't anymore.
Wilbur had a very big imagination.
He was a writer, a writer of songs, but a writer nonetheless. The stories were used as a red thread throughout the song, it connected and built the song and made it better and he needed imagination for it. Luckily, he had been gifted just that. Wilbur had been gifted with the ability to keep the imagination of his childhood. Born with a silver tongue he was and he had kept it ever since.
He was also a massive over thinker and pared with his big imagination, every possible scenario had passed through his brain and been considered.
Yet, when he turned the corner to get home after band practice, he had not expected the many police cars and officers swarming his house. Because his family was so innocent in everything they did. Sure, Techno talked about taking down the government a bit much but Wilbur knows he doesn't actually mean it. At least he thinks he does.
Wilbur stopped walking. What was going on? Why was the police here? He was so confused.
Just then two people emerged from the house pushing a stretcher bed with...a person. There was a blanket carefully covering whoever this person was. Didn't that usually mean that they were dead? No, no, no. They were coming from his house so maybe Techno or Phil were...? No. They were not. They simply could not be.
His feet started moving before he realised it and before he knew it, he had dropped his guitar and was running, running, running.
He easily passed their defences and it took a couple of seconds for the officers to realise what had happened but by then it was already too late. Wilbur ran like his life depended on it. (Maybe it did. It really depended on the person laying underneath the blanket.)
So he ran and the person pushing the stretcher bed froze. How were these people so bad at their jobs? Had they not learned what to do in situations like these? Wilbur was only one person and yet he had penetrated their defences as if it were nothing. (One person who was desperate. It’s easy to forget how wild desperation makes you.)
He didn’t hesitate when he pulled the blanket down, enough to reveal the face.
oh
oh
And, well, Wilbur hadn’t even thought about Tommy. The thought of his little brother had completely left his mind, floating away unnoticed. He couldn’t even lie to himself about it even though he wishes he could.
But here Tommy was, in all his dead glory, with a skin so pale he could rival freshly fallen snow. Here Tommy was, fucking dead and there was no doubt about it because Tommy, no matter the injury, would never be this still.
Oh Tommy.
It was a tragedy but that appeared to be all there was to it.
The blanket was abruptly ripped from his hands and thrown over Tommy’s face. (His pale, dead face.) Two arms grabbed Wilbur from behind and dragged him away from Tommy. The arms wore sleeves of blue and Wilbur realised the officers must’ve caught up to him.
“Let me go!”, he screamed, “Don’t fucking touch me!”
“Sir, I need you to calm down.” But how could he do that when they wouldn’t let him go no matter how hard he struggled against the strong arms restraining him.. Wilbur trashed around but whoever was holding him was way much stronger than him.
(Desperation makes wild.)
”No-No, let me go! That’s Tommy! That’s my little brother! Please, that’s my brother!”
The arms around him loosened just a bit and then immediately tightened again.
“Was there another?”, the officer whispered but they were right behind Wilbur, he could hear it. It was as if they were right next to his ears, probably because they were. Again he wondered how they could be so bad at their job. Maybe it were just these officers or maybe it was something every police officer was. Wilbur didn’t have enough experience with the police to really know for certain.
"The man didn't really say anything and the son didn't know what was going on." Phil and Techno. They're talking about them. Wilbur had to know what was happening with them, what was happening in general.
"I live here," he gasped, still with an arm around his neck, "I have a key. I can go inside."
A moments pause, then the arm loosened around him and let him go. Briefly he closed his eyes, breathing for just a moment. Then he straightened up and walked towards the front door without looking back. The two officers continued to follow him.
Of course the key fit int the lock perfectly, it had been made for it. One of the police officers sighed, whether of relief or agitation Wilbur didn't know.
The hallway was dimly lit and it felt wrong somehow. There were voices talking in the kitchen and footsteps behind him.
When Wilbur entered the kitchen he saw Phil and Techno sitting at the kitchen counter with another officer sitting in front of them. They were all looking at him when he entered. For a while, no one said anything.
"Wilbur," Techno said and Wilbur burst out into tears.
He doesn't know why just the sound of Techno's voice made him break down like that but there was something about people you trust that makes it so easy to fall apart. Wilbur looked at Techno, trusted him and cried. And Techno understood, he always understood, so he got up and hugged Wilbur as if he needed it just as much. The two officers took a step back, the officer sitting at the table watched them while Wilbur cried (Techno was crying too but he would deny it for the rest of his life) and Phil was staring in front of him saying nothing. He had nothing to say.
"I saw him," Wilbur eventually managed to croak out in Techno's shoulder. They all knew who him was. Techno did not freeze, although he didn't seem to be very comfortable anymore. Wilbur understood. He probably knew what happened by now, knew all about the death of their little brother.
"I saw him and he was dead. Why was he dead?" he cried and he cried and he cried. It was all he could do. Quickly, it became hard to remember why he was crying in the first place, he just knew he had to.
The officer at the table cleared his throat. "Your father found his body in the garden this morning, right under the window of his room. Further investigation is still going but we suspect it was a, uhm, suicide. I'm sorry."
Wilbur realised that the officer wasn't sorry at all. It was like a movie. A character dies and you feel sad the character is dead but you think it will never happen to you. Someone dies and you move on. Movies are fake, life is real. It seems easy like that.
He said nothing, he continued crying in Techno's shoulder. There was a wet patch in his shirt now. Neither of them seemed to care.
At some point, the two officers that had followed Wilbur left and not long after, the other officer followed. Wilbur kept crying.
(It was never supposed to be a suicide, of course, but they would never know that.)
A guitar lay forgotten on the pavement. Wilbur never got it back.
It was weird to think that his little brother killed himself.
The last couple of years Techno hadn't really talked to Tommy a whole lot but it was comforting to know that he was around.
Now he wasn't.
It was weird because Tommy had been the kind of kid you didn't really need to look after, the one that was always fine on his own and now he was the one that had killed himself.
It was all so weird.
So, so weird.
Wilbur was crying in his shoulder and Phil didn't want to talk, so Techno had been the one to tell the police everything he knew of his brother. The brother he knew almost nothing about because brothers never know each other well. He said as much as he could and found that it wasn't an awful lot.
Techno had been the one to say his goodbyes to the officers and sigh. He guided Wilbur to his bed and, after arriving in the kitchen again, did the same with Phil. It was only 11 am but they would not be able the function otherwise.
He went to the living room, sat down and began reading, something about astronomy and dying stars. (He tried to but his mind would constantly drift to his poor, little brother. Hopefully it had been a quick death. Quick and painless.)
Tommy had been quite like a dying star, Techno thought. Bright and burning. Dead before anyone noticed. How long had Tommy been dead? Techno wondered about this and then he wondered some more. It was something he did a lot he realised. Now he wished it wasn't one of his habits.
There was some shuffling in the kitchen. Techno looked up and in the brightly lit kitchen- when did the light go on?- stood Wilbur. He watched as his brother took a glass from the cupboards and filled with tab water. Slowly the glass was lifted to his lips but before any water reached his throat, Wilbur put the glass back on the table. It looked untouched.
Wilbur looked up then and met Techno's gaze. He quietly switched off the lights and made his way towards the couch. No sound was made as he sat down. The quiet breaths were the only thing hanging in the air.
For a moment, nothing had to be said. It was just Wilbur and Techno quietly sitting on the couch while a glass of water was losing its coldness on the kitchen counter. For a moment the world went quiet. Then the moment ended.
"What did he look like?"
And Techno hadn't known why, of all questions, he had asked that one. A thousand questions were swirling around in his brain yet he had asked the one he was the least curious about.
It was the only one Wilbur could answer.
"I can't explain it," Wilbur sighed and he pulled his legs towards his chest making himself look small, "He just looked dead, you know."
"I don't."
Wilbur didn't say anything. Techno was suddenly very aware of how soft the couch was. He could hear the bad rapmusic the neighbours were playing and the buzzing of the one old lamp in the living room. The world wasn’t quiet anymore.
"That's good. That's really good."
And that was that.
The house never was the same after that yet nothing really changed either.
Phil isolated himself because he hadn’t noticed his son was dying, not because he was dead. Wilbur kept crying because he could not believe his brother had just died, not because he was dead.
Techno was the one that knew that in a heart filled to the brim with guilt, there was no room for sadness.
There were only three people remaining but it had always felt just the same.