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Watching Tyler die is the worst thing Josh has ever experienced. It’s an obvious statement, but quantifying such a harsh, tsunami tide of a feeling feels… well, wrong.
In seventh grade science, Josh sat next to Tyler, and learned that tsunamis are caused by a violent upheaval in the foundations of the ocean. He learned that there are two main types of tsunami; the giant, Hollywood-ready wave, and the quieter tide that isn’t so dramatic, but floods in without ceasing, until it wipes out everything in its path.
When they’re both fifteen, Thailand is hit with one of the biggest tsunamis in history. Right now, Josh feels a lot like Thailand, but instead of 5,395 deaths, there has only been one. Instead of 2,817 missing, there are only two.
Josh never stopped to wonder what reporting himself missing would feel like. He doubts he could’ve imagined anything as awful as this.
-+-
The memorial is a simple affair, with daisies scattered across the paths of Tyler’s favorite public garden, and a moment of silence under his favorite tree; the one he always leaned against to write.
The funeral, however, is a different story. There’s too many strangers, all talking like they know him, all offering empty condolences. Josh drops a kiss on Tyler’s cold, waxy forehead and whispers his goodbyes, apologies, confessions. He leaves the service with tears rolling down his face, but he doesn’t wipe them away. He’s so tired of trying to seem strong. Let them see him cry. Let him cry.
-+-
Josh doesn’t mean to find the bookstore. He’s still wearing his tear-stained tux, high-top sneakers tied with black ribbon.
It doesn’t look like much. Hell, it doesn’t look like anything, appearing more gutted and abandoned than occupied and loved. Tyler would’ve loved the bitter irony of that. Josh doesn’t appreciate the sense of kinship.
When he crosses the threshold, he isn’t even sure it’s a bookstore. The windows are opaque with dust and the smell of nursing home carpet hits him nearly as hard as the clang of the bell.
“What do you need, boy?” A creaking voice warbles from the back of the shop, soon accompanied by a squat, wrinkled goblin of a man. “People don’t come here without needing something.”
Josh is taken aback by the man and his bluntness. “i. I don’t know, sir.”
“Anything. Anything in the world, and you can’t think of a single thing you need?” the shopkeeper’s grey caterpillar eyebrows wriggle judgmentally.
“My best friend. He died three days ago and I miss him like burning, like someone reached in my chest and ripped out anything that mattered.”
The man nods sagely. “You’ll be wanting to know about necromancy, boy. You’ll be needing help, but I’ll provide. It’s a shame to lose one so young.”
Josh lets the man lead him to the back of the shop, hardly daring to hope.
The moth-eaten tomes he unearths are bound in snakeskin leather, durable and smooth.
Josh watches anxiously as the shopkeeper pours over the yellowed hand-written pages.
“You be back here tomorrow with something he made, something he broke, and to you what matters most.” The nursery-esque rhyme drops from the man’s canyoned lips with hardly any inflection.
“You mean I can get him back?” Josh asks, feeling the sun come back for the first time since it set without Tyler to see it.
The man sighs. “For a price, you may.”
Josh leaves with a smile on his face.
-+-
That night, Josh wakes from a nightmare, reliving Tyler’s death, only to find Tyler’s side of the bed empty. Not a dream, then. Tyler’s gone.
Josh doesn’t cry. He paws through their apartment, their history. Tyler’s favorite hoodie, floral robe, his first EP, a picture of Josh’s first drum kit, side-by-side their first grade yearbook pictures and the ones from graduation, a post-it note from Tyler, that simply reads, “you are loved”.
And maybe he lied. Maybe he is crying.
-+-
The next day, he brings Tyler’s EP, the first thing he built from the ground up, blood, sweat, tears, and feelings. Something he made.
He sets a cracked, badly reassembled crystal vase next to it. Tyler had knocked it over the first time they kissed, his face bright red, broken syllables stumbling from his lips. Josh had laughed, pulling him back in to feel Tyler’s blush against his lips. Something he broke.
And finally, the framed pictures of them, start to finish, their greatest success. Survival. To you what matters most.
The old man smiles, grimly. “Now I need soil from his resting place, a vial of your blood, and the edge of a cloud.”
Josh gapes at him. A cloud? How the hell is he supposed to get that?
“What are you waiting for,” the man asks wryly. “Go.”
He does.
-+-
Josh returns an hour later, solo cup of soil in one hand, vial of blood in the other, neon pink Band-Aid pressed against his forearm.
The shopkeeper regards him carefully. “And the cloud?”
Josh huffs out a frustrated breath. “How do I catch a cloud?”
“You have to figure it out yourself, boy. Can’t help you.” Josh swear that the elderly man is laughing under those bushy brows, behind the face-consuming beard.
Josh slams his way out of the shop, suppressing the scream that rises in his chest. So close. So fucking close.
-+-
He wakes at midnight, on the dot, sitting ramrod straight in their his bed. His breath fans out from his mouth in shallow pants, icy air turning it cloudy as they meet.
Cloudy.
He knows how to capture a cloud.
-+-
The next day he arrives in the early morning, frost still turning the grass to glass beneath his feet.
He presents the jar of exhalations to the shopkeeper, pride ruling his features.
The old man nods approvingly. “The moon rises red tomorrow. Be ready.”
He is. He really is.
-+-
The ritual is blessedly simple. The shopkeeper mutters in Latin, burns incense. He even lights candles, despite the blood red moonlight diffusing over the town.
Josh digs. Soil turning to mud under his nails, as the shopkeeper burns the photos, crushes Tyler’s EP and the vase, releases Josh’s breath into the scarlet air, and, finally, extinguishes the flames with Josh’s vial.
The shovel strikes wood a moment later. Josh drops to his knees, prying open the top half of the coffin, and there.
There’s Tyler, stone cold and still.
Josh sinks against the side of the grave, feels dirt crumble into his hair, his clothes.
He hears a shuddering breath. No his, his lungs don’t quite work, disappointment sitting heavy on his ribcage like death itself.
Josh leans forward, praying to everything he’s ever heard of and…
Tyler’s eyes flutter open. Tyler’s beautiful, beautiful, brown eyes. He sits up slowly, testing his muscles. Finally his eyes focus on Josh, leaning down towards him with bated breath.
With the side of his mouth quirking in a smile, Tyler says, “Man, I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.”
And if his bones were all intact, Josh thinks he might break some with the force of his hug.
“Christ, Josh, you brought me back?” Tyler’s laughing, happy tears streaming down both of their faces.
Josh pulls back, gesturing out of the grave, “he helped me; I wouldn’t’ve managed it without him.”
But the shopkeeper isn’t there, and Josh suspects that if he went back, the shop would be gone too.
“How are we going to explain me being undead, bro?”
Josh pulls him back in, laughing again. “We’ll figure it out later. You’re back and that’s all that matters.”
And he slots his mouth over Tyler’s, tasting soil, sleep, and something wrong- bitter and artificial.
Breaking the kiss, Tyler grins. “So does this make me a zombie? You totally don’t have to worry, though, I love you more than I love brains.”
-fin-