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It was dark.
Dark, and impossibly cold.
The sky was a thin veil of deep, deep grey, the air like sheets of ice clinging around his body. An odd smell permeated the place, similar to the scent of meat burnt to a char. With every breath he took, the scent wound its way through his nostrils, burning down deep into his lungs.
Brian frowned.
Where am I?
He looked around, finding his environment to be completely unfamiliar. Everywhere he turned seemed to be the same, a monotone landscape of various shades of grey and blacks. The ground was pure white. In the distance, trees, stripped down to the bark, stood, tall and long-dead.
Is this Hell?
A slight breeze blew through, and he wrapped his arms around himself, shivering. It hit his bare skin and wrapped all around him, as if he were being plunged into a wintertime’s lake. Brian looked down at himself, furrowing his eyebrows down at his body. It was pale white, nearly blending into the ground beneath him, and so much thinner than he’d remembered. Bones jutted out from under taut skin. He was naked, not for a reason he could recall. Eyes darting around, he saw no signs of his clothing, not even a tattered bit of shirt.
What’s going on?
The silence of his surroundings was almost suffocating. It seemed to weigh upon his shoulders, wrapping thin tendrils around his legs, his torso, his neck. He could hardly even hear his own breathing. Not even his heartbeat.
A strange shiver, not caused by the cold, ran down his spine at that thought. No indeed, he could not hear his heart.
One shaky hand moved upwards, and his fingers, which were icy and stiff, pressed to his chest.
He waited.
And he felt nothing.
Perhaps this really is Hell?
Odd. Brian had never quite imagined Hell to be quite so barren. But he’d never had a great idea of it in the first place, did he? It had always been such a foreign concept to him, Heaven and Hell. He never much liked to think about it, really. Both felt so very fantastical, so very… detached from everything he knew about the world.
Brian looked around again, rubbing his hands up and down his arms.
If this was Hell, then somehow, he’d managed to die after it froze over.
Nothing seemed to be happening with him just standing there. He wasn’t sure where he was or why, but there had to be some kind of rhyme or reason to this, no?
He hoped there was, anyway.
Taking in a deep breath, Brian took a step forward.
His foot pressed down into the ground with a small crunch, pure white melting around his body heat. His toes were quickly buried in the thick layer of snow on the ground, and as he took another step forward, his entire foot then disappeared into the whiteness. It was terribly cold, but the chill of the snow felt almost hot against the skin of his feet, sensations clashing together like waves crashing onto the shore.
He walked further.
As he walked, the snow only grew deeper, his feet sinking more into the ground with every step until his calves were fully submerged in the icy white powder. It was an awkward trudge, and his legs were soon soaked to the bone. He could almost feel the blood in his veins freeze over as he trekked onwards.
Still, he kept on walking.
The landscape did not seem to be ending anytime soon, the white, grey, and black stretching on for as far as Brian could see. It seemed he was alone, from everything he’d seen of the place.
I wonder why I’m here…
He wondered if perhaps he’d killed himself. It wasn’t as if he’d never thought about killing himself in the past. Was this a punishment? Was he to spend the rest of eternity alone in this silent realm of biting cold snow and endless grey?
It wasn’t the worst fate, he supposed.
I don’t remember killing myself.
As the snow came up to his knees, Brian stopped in his tracks. A part of him wanted to sit down, a part of him did not. The fear of freezing in place should he sit down was enough to keep him standing, despite his exhaustion.
Brian blinked.
Then he looked around again.
The environment around him was different, now. He was standing by a frozen lake, the ice inky-black in colour. Dead trees of black and white surrounded him, blocking off much of the light from the area. When he looked up, a thick slice of sky was still visible to him. It was still grey and starless, with streaks of black and white dotting the otherwise blank expanse. It was almost like a sunset, though there was no sun to behold.
Brian ran his hands along his arms again and looked over to the ground. The trail his footsteps had made in the snow was gone now. He made an attempt to lift his leg up out of the knee-high snow, but the weight of the snow held him down. He frowned, jerking up harder, but to no avail. Brian grit his teeth as he tried over and over again to pull out of the snow, only finding himself sinking down further, until even his knees were engulfed. Soon enough, after a very desperate attempt to pull himself away, he lost his balance, and fell forward.
He barely managed to catch himself on the slippery ice of the frozen black lake in front of him, his hands scrambling for purchase. His breathing was heavy, and he dropped his head down, finding his energy almost completely sapped.
Brian stared down at the pure black lake for a long while, the wind blowing silently around him. He was sure his heart would have been beating like a wartime drummer boy if he could have felt it in his chest. It was unfortunate that he could not, though. He’d have given anything to hear his heartbeat. Or…well, anything. Anything besides the thick silence that surrounded him.
He stared at the reflection of himself on the glassy, inky ice. He looked quite a bit different than he remembered. It was the same face fundamentally, of course. The features were there. The same eyes, the same nose, the same mouth.
He didn’t recall when he’d ever looked so very tired, though. Tired, or beaten down, or just plain sad. One hand moved to trace the lines of his face in his reflection. They were so much deeper than he remembered.
I wonder what’s happened to me…
Perhaps it was simply proof that he really had killed himself.
A rustling sound made his eyes shoot up in an instant.
From the other side of the lake, two wide, watchful yellow eyes stared back at him. A flicking tail. A sleek, slender body. Two vigilant, perked ears, listening for any other sound in the silence.
A small black cat stood atop the snow, seemingly unaffected by the deep chill of the wind or the sinking effects of the ground. It looked at him curiously, tilting its head to the side, as if trying to understand what he was.
Brian stared at it for a second.
So, I’m not alone?
He pushed himself up on his hands, fingernails clawing down into the ice for a bit of anchorage as he did so. The effort proved a bit useless, as the ice was smooth and wet, but he balanced himself on the heels of his hands and stared at the cat again.
The cat flicked its tail again, then stood up and walked away, leaving no tracks in the snow.
Brian, for whatever reason, felt a rush of panic go through him as the cat disappeared from his sight. The idea of being alone once again seemed more scary a thought than anything at the moment.
As if he hadn’t struggled in the slightest just a minute before, Brian pulled his feet out of the snow and scrambled to his feet.
He began to step across the frozen expanse of lake, eyes fixed ahead of him, towards the thicket of dead trees the wide-eyed feline had disappeared into. His feet were bone dry and oddly hot as he walked across the ice. Brian refused to take notice of it, though. He kept his focus straight ahead, ignoring the searing pain in his feet that suddenly arose with every step he took. His legs hurt, as if they’d been slashed to bits by glass, but he ignored it. He was determined, desperate, completely latched to his goal. By god, he would succeed, because if this was Hell, he wasn’t going to spend eternity in it alone.
Brian took another step, and the ice cracked open.
He plunged down in an instant.
The water was colder than any other substance he had encountered here. So cold it felt like fire against his skin. He gasped and choked as he flailed long limbs, trying to stay afloat. The water only pulled him down further, as if alive. This water, if he could call it water, spilled into his throat, surrounding him on every side.
Brian curled into himself as he plummeted downwards, not understanding any of this.
The water didn’t feel like water. It felt thicker than that, almost the same consistency as blood. It smelled as such, too. It was metallic, metallic and bitter. Brian couldn’t even say what the taste was like. It was an assault on the senses, every single one of them.
He clenched his eyes shut, as if doing this might have brought him somewhere else. It had worked before.
When he opened his eyes again, the same thick lake of black greeted him.
He turned, still thrashing and moving around wildly, now feeling the absolute chill of the liquid around him freezing the blood in his veins. Like a blade piercing his lungs. He couldn’t tell if his vision was going out or not. It was so dark.
Brian stopped thrashing as two yellow eyes opened from the void, glowing like embers in a dying fire. He froze in place, suddenly finding the water (water?) to be thick as tar and his limbs to be stiff as stone.
When he blinked again, the eyes were closer.
He blinked again. Closer.
Once more.
Then, they were right in front of his own, slitted pupils wide and round in the darkness, yellow light flickering from the depths of the iris. They seemed to bore deep into his eyes, leaving him frozen and entranced.
Brian, unable to move, unable to breathe, was once again hurled into darkness as the eyes before him fell shut.
As the darkness swelled and surrounded him like clouds floating over the sun, his head spun from the lack of oxygen, and the silent world spun around him, the screeching darkness taking him by the throat and holding him for all it was worth.
He knew he was going to die. He saw the darkness ahead, and was sure that not long now, there would be that light that the books always spoke of. He heard nothing, the silence beckoning him to accept it and die at least a somewhat dignified death.
Brian clenched his eyes shut.
When he opened them again, he stood once again in the snow.
His body was completely dry, prompting Brian first to believe this was all some horrid illusion, but his hair hung at his shoulders, dripping the thick, black substance across his shoulders and down his chest. It left a stained trail across his skin and did not come off when he attempted to rub it away.
A spark of panic shot through his veins as he lifted his leg to take another step.
Cuts, all across his legs. They ran deep on his inner thighs, and oozed out rivulets of blood down his skin, all the way to the pure white of the snow at his feet, which grew more and more crimson by the second.
With another glance given, he saw his wrists and forearms had been slashed as well, the same deep red trickling out from his arms at an unsteady pace.
Brian licked his lips, trying to quell the rising feeling of dread that slowly twisted itself around every part of him. He tried wiping away the blood that stained his arms, succeeding only to smear it across his forearms, and then gave up.
The dead trees he once saw in the distance now surrounded him, looming above his head, the dry, spindly branches crackling as a harsh breeze blew through them, which cut through the silence of the air. The sound was almost like a cry, a mournful, hollow shriek into the empty world that gave an eerie echo around them.
Brian ignored the weeping call of the dead trees, a shiver running down his spine as he took a tentative step forward.
It didn’t take long for the trees to cry out again, the wind blowing in even harder than before. He wrapped his arms around himself, feeling his knees buckle down. He sank down into the snow again as he did so, burying his ankles into the thick blanket of snow.
He stood there, all muscles in his body protesting against his every movement. A tear pricked the corner of his eye, and he let out a stifled sob as he fell down to his knees, the blood from his legs pooling in the snow, the liquid that soaked in his curls dripping down as well, creating a ghastly mix of black, white, and red in the snow.
The wind blew in again, the trees screamed again, and he buried his face down in his hands, breathing heaving breaths into them. Brian sat there for many seconds.
A strange sensation brushed up against his back. It sent a trembling quiver up his spine.
Brian whipped his head around, falling back into the snow, and a familiar black cat was quick to jump onto his chest. It peered down at him with wide, curious eyes, its pupils all but thin lines in the deep abysses of bright yellow. The sleekness of its fur was unmarred by the area around it, which was still as inky black as the night sky.
He reached a hand out to pet the soft fur on the top of its head, finding the cat so much warmer than he expected.
“Hello,” he whispered, voice nothing but a hardly existent rasp, “what are you doing here?”
The cat offered no response, settling down on Brian chest with its eyes still trained on his. Brian ran his fingers through the short, sleek tufts of hair on the cat’s head again.
“You have a name, little guy?”
The cat blinked, exhaling out a small, cold puff of breath. It hit Brian’s nose. Brian frowned, his fingers stopping at the base of the cat’s neck, then hitched himself up onto his elbow.
Its bed now roused and shaken, the cat stood up and jumped off Brian, scurrying away.
“Hey..!” Brian shouted, not for any particular reason, as he scrambled up to his feet. “Don’t go!” He whipped his head around, trying to find where it went. “What is this place?!” His shouts echoed through the landscape, losing itself to the harsh wind that blew in once again, creating the loud rustling of branches that wailed into the darkness.
The cat was already disappearing into the trees by the time he’d caught his eyes on it again. He saw only the tip of a long, sleek, black tail.
Brian was quick to follow. Not bothering to think of or care about the pain that screeched through his lacerated limbs, he burst through the thickets of bushes and bundles of trees, eyes still flicking about to find the cat, which still seemed utterly masked in the shadows.
The wind blew, harsh and howling, at his naked back, and the sound nearly covered the rustling of branches from several yards away. He didn’t hesitate to run at it, pushing the branches and dead leaves out of his face and crying out in pain as the sharp edges brushed against his legs and into the bloody wounds that covered them. Even through it all, he continued to follow, the desperate loneliness clawing at him more than any spiny, weeping, dead branch could.
Brian’s eyes were focused on the ground- at the cat, which was still moving through the trees, and was so sleek, so warm, so alive -but he hardly noticed when he’d begun sinking into the snow again. He was ankle-deep by the time he was out of the woods, still after the cat, who padded lightly atop the ground.
Blood still dribbling down his legs and arms, his muscles burning, and his heart twisting and writhing in his chest, he kept moving on, his chest heaving and his wild eyes staring after the cat, who seemed to grow further and further from him each time he blinked.
When the cat drew out of sight, a strange rush of adrenaline coursed through him, and Brian sprinted after it, the beseeching protests of his weary legs no longer even a shred of a thought in his mind.
Brian fell forward onto his hands and knees, landing face-first into the snow.
The cat climbed up a hill, one so tall that Brian could not make out the top of it from here. It was steep, and his arm had shot through the snow when he fell, burrowing it up to his shoulder. The cat’s tail flicked about, held high above his head, as it made its way up the hill.
Brian blinked, a cold sigh escaping his cracked, dry lips.
He closed his eyes, laying his head down against the snow, and let out a choked sob.
The world was spinning around him, his brain spinning inside his own head. He put his one free hand down onto the ground, and it plunged down into it, leaving both arms trapped in the snow.
He sobbed into the snow, his head hung low, and struggled with all the might of his tired, bloodied legs to pick him up, finding no success in it after many seconds. Brian cried out again, louder this time, when one foot slipped on the surface of the snow.
The landscape was silent around him as he cried. Utter noiselessness.
“..Hello?”
A voice came. It was faded, distant. Distorted.
But one that he’d have recognised anywhere.
“Hello? Is there someone out there?”
Brian’s head shot up, eyes searching wildly for the voice. The cat had long since trotted off by now, leaving the hill empty and pure white.
He waited for a second, trying to discern if perhaps he’d gone mad or not.
“Hello?”
It was all the incentive he needed.
Brian yanked his hands free, staggering up to his feet, and began to run.
His bruised, sore feet created wild, erratic patterns through the neatly laid snow as he trudged up the hill, following the voice, not caring about the bloody wounds on his arms anymore. The winter chill wrapped around his heart, his gasps for breath choking and hoarse in his throat.
The wind continued to blow at his back, whistling and whining in his ears. He ignored it- ignored the snow flying into his face and pelting his bare chest with every frenzied step he took. The snow seemed to pull him in deeper as he drew up the hill. Before he realised, it had reached his knees.
“Are you out there?” The distorted voice called again, echoing through the land.
The wind grew stronger, whipping around him in every direction, but never ceased to keep ushering him forwards.
In the distance, at the top of the hill, a figure stood, alone and blurred by the wind. It stood stock still, turned away from him. A bright, yellow crescent moon hung in the sky behind it.
A cry of desperation leaving his lips, Brian broke into a sprint.
He clambered up to the top, the snow now nearly at his thighs before he pulled his legs out and reached out to grasp the figure’s shoulders.
“Freddie-!” He gasped, fingers sinking down into the shoulders of his dear friend, spinning him around. He grasped the man’s cheeks, which felt impossibly warm and soft under his touch. “Freddie?! Are you-”
“...Brian?” Freddie uttered, his voice soft under the harsh howling of the wind. His eyes were glassy, a faint light cast over them by the moon ahead. “ Brian? Is that really…?” He paused, pressing his lips together and frowning.
With a quick glance downwards, it was easy to surmise that Freddie was also nude- though he didn’t bear the same cuts along his arms and thighs as Brian did. Rather, he instead simply looked thin, and terribly pale.
“Freddie, are you okay?!” Brian rasped, not bothering to wipe the tears that were now spilling from his eyes. He was too scared to let Freddie go. If he did, what would happen? Would Freddie run away as well? Or would he disappear? “Freddie, what is this place?!”
Freddie was silent. The sad, confused look in his glazed-over eyes grew and grew by the second.
“Freddie?” Brian said again, weakly.
“Brian…” Freddie lifted his hand up to touch Brian’s wrist, wrapping his fingers around his arm. “Why are you here? What are you doing here, Brian?”
“I don’t-”
“You shouldn’t be here, Brian.”
“What? Freddie, I don’t-”
Freddie pressed a finger to Brian’s lips, a set look on his face. “No, Brian, you shouldn’t be here. And you won’t be here for long.”
“Freddie-”
“You won’t be. Trust me. And I’m so glad you won’t be.”
“I don’t…I don’t understand. What is this place?”
A soft sigh left Freddie’s lips. He didn’t answer, and turned away from him, sitting down on the ground. He faced the moon, which was a brighter and closer moon than Brian had ever seen before. The thin crescent hung in the air, the light emanating from it a magnificent yellow that shone down on the white of the ground and the near-translucent pallor of Freddie’s skin. Freddie held his knees close to his chest, rocking back and forth on the ground. The wind never ceased its howling in Brian’s ears.
“Freddie?”
“Come sit down with me, darling.” Freddie didn’t turn to look at him as he said this, instead choosing to reach out beside him and touching Brian’s foot. “You can tell me about the stars.”
“Freddie?” Brian’s voice was merely a whisper, now.
Freddie said nothing.
Brian stared down at Freddie, then looked over to the brilliant crescent moon. Around it, which Brian hadn’t noticed before, were a million tiny dots of light in the deep grey of the sky, which had once been nothing but a vast expanse of dull blankness.
With a short inhalation, Brian sat down next to Freddie, pulling his legs close to his chest and resting his chin down on his knees.
“Tell me about the stars, Brian.” Freddie said, eyes still glassy and fixed on the moon. “Tell me everything you know.”
“...I don’t know much about the stars here, Freddie. They’re different from the ones at home.”
Freddie was silent for a second. “...Then how about the moon? That’s not too different, is it?”
“...I don’t know. I don’t know.”
The sounds of the wind picked up, once again. In it, Brian thought he could hear something strange. Something very faint, something that he thought might have been a trick of his head, at first.
“What’s that?” Brian said, cocking his head at the sounds.
“...No idea.” Freddie’s fingers dug deep down into the snow.
When the wind slowed down again, the noise faded away.
“I’ve missed you, Brian.”
“Hm?”
“I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you. And the others. It’s been so lonely without you all.”
“Why? How long have you been here, Fred?”
Freddie pressed his fingers deeper down into the snow, then lifted his hand up, taking a bit of it with him. His eyes followed soft, light movements of the ice crystals as they fell from his hand to the ground. “Don’t know.”
The wind picked up, as did the sounds. It was repetitive, high-pitched. It sounded familiar, but Brian couldn’t place it. He furrowed his eyebrows together, looking over at Freddie- who seemed far too calm for a situation like this -for an explanation. Freddie’s face remained that far-too-calm for his liking, his expression with nothing but a tinge of melancholy to colour it.
Brian opened his mouth to speak when he heard the wind dying down again, but Freddie interrupted him before a word could even come out. He inched closer to Brian, wrapping a slender arm around his waist, and then dropped his head down onto his shoulder.
“I’m glad you’re here, Brian. But I’ll feel so much better once you’re gone.”
“Fred- Freddie, I don’t understand. ”
“You shouldn’t.”
“What do you mean? Freddie, I don’t get what you’re talking about-! Please, stop doing this to me and just tell me what’s going on!”
Freddie only sighed and closed his eyes. “I don’t want you to understand, Brian. That’s the whole point. You shouldn’t understand, because you shouldn’t be here.”
“But- But why should you be here?! I don’t get this! I don’t-”
“Brian.” Freddie, without opening his eyes, raised a hand to Brian’s cheek, and cupped his fingers around it. “Stop it. Please. Don’t ruin this for me. Just talk to me. Tell me about the stars. Tell me anything. Just be here. Please.”
The wind began to howl once again. Not just howl, screech. The whistling was a shrill scream in Brian’s ears. It brought the snow up around them, white flakes circling their heads. And the repetitive, high-pitched beeping never stopped, only growing louder as time went by and Brian’s confusion grew.
Freddie licked his lips and shut his eyes tighter, not saying a word. He held Brian closer, head still resting on his shoulder. He seemed utterly resigned to this all.
The wind picked up pace, the beeping grew in volume, and Freddie just held him tighter and tighter.
“Freddie, please-”
“We’ll meet again, Brian. I promise. But not anytime soon.”
“Freddie?!”
The snow blew around his eyes, whirling and whirling about his head until the world was nothing but a blank canvas. Brian could no longer feel the pressure of Freddie’s arm around him, or anything, for that matter. He couldn’t feel the ground beneath him or the coldness of the snow covering his body. There were no more hot breaths against his neck, or frigid, wet snow melting around the heat of his feet.
Brian shut his eyes.
When he opened them again, whiteness still greeted him.
Whiteness, but in shapes.
Distinct shapes.
He blinked again, and suddenly, he could make out the entire room. He could make out the furniture, the people on said furniture, and the machinery by his bedside. Blurred, yes, but with another blink, it was clear.
Brian attempted to get up, to try and make sense of this situation with a clear head, but he found his wrists tied down. A quick attempt at moving his legs proved the same thing.
The heart monitor above his head beeped at a steady pace. There was a bustling of doctors and nurses throughout the room, their talking overlapping and filling his ears. His bandaged arms were stiff and aching, as were his legs, which he could only assume were covered in mounds of bandage as well.
Frost covered the tiny window, pure white flakes of snow falling outside and piling up in the corners. If he squinted just hard enough, he could make out the thumbnail-thin slice of yellow moon, that hung distantly in the deep grey of the November sky.
Brian could imagine it already: Anita weeping in the waiting room, Roger at her side, not far off from bursting into tears himself. John simply sitting and staring at the ground, expression carved in stone. His kids wouldn’t be there, no, never his kids. It’d be far too horrible for them to have to take. Freddie wouldn’t be there, either.
Because Freddie was dead.
Freddie was dead, but not Brian.
“We’ll meet again, Brian. I promise. But not anytime soon.”
Closing his eyes, Brian sank down into the hospital bed. He looked over to the window once again, and the flurry of snow that he could see through it. The moonlight shone down to the world, into the hospital room. Around the moon were a million dots of light.
“Tell me about the stars, darling. Tell me about the moon. Tell me everything you know.”
The words echoed in Brian’s head, over and over, like the whistles and whispers of the wind in an empty, foggy land.
“Tell me about the stars.”
Brian would. One day, soon enough, he knew he would. In that silent, snowy land, Brian would get to tell him all about the stars.
Soon enough, but not now.