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When Finney Blake was kidnapped, and the entire town was searching for him relentlessly, he was smart enough to figure out more than one thing.
The first was the fact, nauseating; but true fact, that he could listen and contact with people from beyond, dead people, in direct and dry words.
His second deduction was the realization that the boy he had been weeping and crying himself to sleep for was similarly kidnapped and also cruelly murdered, isolated in the same musty, deplorable walls that now locked Finney in, dooming him to possibly the same blunt bloody end to come like a horror movie, the kind that makes you cry because you think "They were so close! It's so unfair!".
It turned out that perhaps the only thing that held the boy to maintain his sane posture and not fall limp in the face of throbbing desperation were the phone calls made by the other prey of the kidnapper.
The advice and even the angry screams in the form of claims that were transmitted from the other side of the dead line, were things that slapped the child with a wave of common sense, awakening him from his mental trance between life and death, from the subconscious he was setting himself in.
And he felt locked up, but not in the way that a prisoner would feel, because he knows that he has not committed any sin justifiable enough to call the fact that he is imprisoned against his will as well deserved, but of the way a plastic doll would feel, pretty and prepared, being the object of attention by people who would pick up its box, compliment it and put it back, or children, who would play with that doll.
He felt that way, a doll waiting to be opened up to be played with.
And that is exactly what was keeping him up at night, lying on that filthy mattress in that cold basement, feeling like it is his obligation to stay alert, a paralyzing fear that runs through his body from head to toe, like a seismic alert, that it would warn him when the earthquake is about to happen, giving whips of adrenaline every time he tries to close his eyes.
But Finney does not want to sleep, he is afraid of what will happen if he falls asleep, and at the same time he is also afraid of what will happen if he does not.
Such is his boredom in that place, that sometimes he will find himself remembering golden moments that happened when he still had his kind of freedom, and he plays them like a movie, he even sees himself sitting in a movie theater seat, looking at a giant screen as photos and videos are reproduced, in an attempt to form a home movie.
Most of those memories are hoarded by the smiling-eyed teenager, ironic considering they didn't know each other for much of a while.
But he likes to soar in that sweet sunset.
In the one which he met Bruce Yamada, on the baseball field playing against his school team, saying those warm words to him and giving him a dreamily sincere look that struck him with the feeling of innocent love, that kind of feeling that makes you think that you are stepping on the clouds instead of the sidewalk, which adds a pink and romantic filter to everything, that same type of love that makes you imagine a whole life with that person.
It could be the lack of appreciation he received throughout his life manifesting itself in the form of sentimentality, and if so, Finney did not care, he cares more about feeling his heart pumping frantically, the heat rising all over his face, the adrenaline rushing through his veins and the butterflies in the stomach.
Oh, butterflies, if he had to define the other boy with an animal or insect, it would be a butterfly, fluttering everywhere, maybe that's why he felt them fighting inside him, tingling in a sweet way.
But too late, because those butterflies die anyway, and wither away or killed and eaten by the spiders, which are making nests in his abdomen, laying eggs of terror and depression, and the sweet movie ends that way, giving way to a melancholy film.
Finney cannot, and does not want to, stop the tears rolling down his face, bitter salty sea drops that show how sunken his heart is, drowned in the painful waters of a heartbreaking.
Even if he was physically injured somewhere in his body, pain from within, that which is sentimental, stings even worse. And he well knows there is not much you can do for a wound you can not put a band-aid on.
His heart aches, and it shrinks carelessly, there is nothing that can calm that systematic burning that runs through his chest, even when he holds a telephone cable against the neck of his tormentor, who is no longer breathing and has stopped moving erratically fighting against the same pitiful end that he has been bestowing on all those children without stain or error in them.
Then again, he feels that hot fluid plummet, wetting the face of the nauseating dead man that Finney continues to choke in anger. Cascades of feelings fall in that crying, feelings such as anger, fury, heartbreak and pain, so much pain that it clouds his vision and numbs his body.
He feels like fainting, unmotivated he gets up from the ground and pushes the older man so that he falls to the side, he is unperturbed by the dry noise that the corpse makes once it collides violently on the concrete.
And he goes to the wall next to the mattress, puts the damaged phone in its respective place, shaking the knees of his pants, stands in deathly silence, looks at the two bodies that are lying on the floor and feels sorry for that man who tried to help him, unaware of that his brother would be the very devil in paint.
He does not know where to go, and Finney finds it funny, because it reminds him of those colorful birds whose only purpose is to sing, and when they finally find freedom, if they don't die first, they don't know what to do with it. Since those animals have managed to successfully get out of the physical cage, but they are still locked in that other psychological cage.
So he wonders, could he make it out of the mental cage now that he's free of the physical one? Would his life be the same as before? What would his father think of all this? And Gwendolyn? Would she be disappointed to learn that her older brother wasn't strong enough to avoid being another victim?
Suddenly the phone rings, the boy opens his eyes in surprise as he hears the squeaks coming out of the electronic device. It's impossible, he thinks, that phone should be more than inaccessible! How can it work when he filled it with dirt, and used it as a weapon to lash out at an adult, swinging it like a baseball bat until possibly the wiring inside it had come apart.
The phone beeps once more, and the sound feels much louder than before, it rings again and again, with a rhythm that a normal phone could not keep up with. Before the twelfth noise Finney attends to it, and fearfully places it in his ear.
— "... Finney..." —.
Suddenly and for the second time in less than an hour, he feels his eyes explode like a broken dam. Because the one who speaks to him is Bruce and that is the voice of Bruce, his beloved Bruce.
— "B...Bruce! Is that you, Bruce?" —.
—"Fin...ney. You're free now, Finney. We saw it all, I'm so proud of you." —. The smile could be felt through his words, but still he couldn't contain his fear. —
— "Bru-bruce... I, Bruce don't know what to do! Tell me what to do! I'm screwed up!" —. He sobbed in panic, with his one free hand tearing the hair from his head. He listened as the noise belonging to the other end of the phone slowly cut off. —
— "Hey Finney, would you like to know something?" —. The living boy only answered with a sigh, which Bruce took as an affirmative answer. — "Even if at this very moment, you feel like you don't know where to go, who to trust or what to think about. Very soon you will be able to do it. Healing takes time, you know that, right? You don't have to hurry, that just will make it worse." —.
— "I understand." —.
— "When we met. In that field, from the first moment I met eyes with you, I knew, that you were an incredibly strong person. And I'm not talking about physical strength, but about the inner one, the strength of your heart. Even if you looked like you were about to pass out, you kept going, giving it your all. That was probably what made me fall in love with you, Finney Blake." —
— "...Bruce?" —.
— "Yes, Finn?" —.
— "You had a crush on me?" —.
— Suddenly, a tired laugh filled the ears of Finney Blake, a melody that he thought he would never be able to hear again, that made Finney tear up, he knew now that this was the last time he would speak to Bruce, that this was the final goodbye between them. —
— "Of course I did, who wouldn't? You're a beautifully angelic person, Finney. That you survived just proves my theory that you're a living miracle…" —.
— "I wish I knew... I wish I knew you wanted me, Bruce... I liked you, and I think I will never ever love someone the way I love you." —. He wiped his face of tears, still able to deduce what would happen next and that was what hurt him more than anything. —
— "I have to go, Finn. I shouldn't have even picked up this phone in the first place... But you know? I wish we could have been together. I wished with all my heart." —. He was smart enough to be quick and notice the connotations of pain in the other boy's voice, in Bruce's. —
— "I know, I wish we could have been. I wished too." —. He uttered this time, with a hoarse voice. —
— "Goodbye Finney Blake, I love you." —.
— "Goodbye, Bruce Yamada, I love you too." —.
— When he had already heard the beep on the other end of the call, and put the landline in its place, somehow, at that moment, Finney felt that he had the strength to continue fighting for life. —
— He then felt accompanied, and realized, it was because Bruce was by his side, supporting him, even if it wasn't physically, the ghost boy would, waiting for him until they meet again in the paradise. —
— And Finney felt free from the two places that locked him in, the physical and psychological cages, they could not longer imprisoned him anymore, now he was able to draw a shaky but quit sigh, because that was what he is now. —
— A free someone, finally. —