Work Text:
Willem leaned against the cool metal in the elevator of Richard’s building, sighing in exhaustion. He had just returned from a play run in downtown Brooklyn. It had gone very well, so despite the tired ache in his body he was satisfied. He promised Jude he would see him after the run, so he made his way to Greene street as soon as the play was over, turning down invitations to after-parties and drinks. It had been a while since he’d seen him, their schedules seemed to be perpetually opposites.
As the elevator climbed the stories, he patted the scarf around his neck. His lucky charm, he mused to himself. How had he lived without it? How had he gone so many years without its presence in his life?
He recalled, fondly, the day he had bought the scarf. He had been walking through a mall shop in Queens, when there he’d seen it, resting around a plastic mannequin. Its beauty was beyond compare. His legs seemed to move on their own as he walked towards it. He slowly removed it from the mannequin, holding it out in his hands. When he’d asked the salesperson what material the scarf was, they only grunted in response and ignored him for the rest of his shopping trip. But did he really care what material it was? No. He needed that scarf, whether it was cotton or polyester or anything else.
The first few days he’d worn that scarf were nothing special, other than the fact he loved the way he looked in it. The confidence boost was intoxicating and he couldn’t help but admire himself in every mirror he passed, preening and posing as the scarf lay wrapped around his neck and shoulders.
But as the days went by, his life began to change. Women would faint around him whenever he wore that scarf, dropping to the floor in droves as he walked backstage. The men would turn their heads away, and he was sure he could hear them sob as they did. Jealous that they were not in possession of that scarf, he was sure. It was so powerful, that five makeup artists had quit, all of them citing that they “couldn’t be around that scarf” as their reason for departure. They could hardly control themselves because of it, its aura overwhelming.. Eventually he managed to find a makeup artist willing to work with him, an older woman with a perpetually stuffed nose who paid no mind to the scarf. Her loss, he thought. She must’ve been blind as well.
The scarf was his protector. Once he had been walking the streets of the Bronx late at night, when a masked man came up to him, brandishing a knife and yelling at him to hand over his wallet. As the man came closer to him, he suddenly jolted, his eyes darting towards the scarf, before he let out a wretched cry and ran off.
He never took it off. He slept with it more often than he’d slept with his last girlfriend. He wasn’t a real man without it. It was his entire lifesource. His soul.
The elevator soon reached the fourth floor and when he entered the apartment, he could see the light in the kitchen was on, the sounds of something frying in a pan and the sink tap turned on.
“Jude!” He called out, shucking off his shoes.
“Willem!” Jude came out of the kitchen, smiling as he wiped his hands on a towel, “How was the play?” He wrinkled his nose, “What’s that smell?” He said, quieter and confused.
“It went well, I think,” Willem replied, smiling back as he walked towards Jude and enveloped him in a hug, winding his arms tight around him.
“Willem? Why does your scarf sme-” Jude stopped, suddenly interrupted by a fit of coughs, pulling away from Willem as he did and turning his face into his elbow.
“What’s wrong?” Willem asked, “Are you coming down with something?”
But Jude didn’t reply, his coughs turning into hacks as he doubled over, his body heaving with the strain of it. Willem bent down and took Jude’s chin in his hand, tilting his head upwards. Jude’s face had gone completely red, tears prickling in his eyes and settling on his lashes.
His hands grabbed onto Jude’s arms, pulling him upwards to face Willem. “Jude? Jude!” Willem panicked, as Jude coughed and spluttered. Jude hands came up to claw at his shirt, at his scarf, grasping desperately onto the fabric.
“Why—why is it wet?” He hacked, his hacks straining into wheezes.
“Jude, what’s going on?” Willem frantically yelled.
“Willem…” He croaked, “Your scarf—” His hands pulled away from Willem, going towards his own throat as he scrabbled at it, nails digging into the tender flesh where Willem could see faint green veins begin to pop out. Jude’s eyes began to roll upwards, bulging out of their sockets, rimmed with blood red veins at their edges. His lips had turned an ashen shade of blue-tinted purple. They parted and clenched together as he gasped desperately.
“Jude, say something!” But Jude didn’t respond, only making choked gurgling noises as he desperately tried to get air into his lungs. Willem frantically looked around the room, trying to figure out what he should do. In his arms, Jude’s wheezing became squeaky and rattled, his teeth grit as drool leaked from his mouth. Tears streamed down his dusky, blue cheeks.
Willem could only watch, futile, as with one last croaked noise, Jude suddenly went limp in Willem’s arms. His body convulsed, his stiff limbs twitching and jerking until he stopped moving at all, becoming heavy in Willem’s hold. Willem frantically put his ear up against Jude’s chest, the sharp outlines of his ribs prodding into his cheek.
There was nothing. No pulse.
“No, No…” Willem whispered, pulling his face away from Jude’s chest to look at his face, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, his mouth agape, his once-bronzed skin pale. He was gone. His best friend was gone. Willem gently set Jude down on the ground. What had been the words Jude tried to say to him, as the air left his lungs? The scarf? Willem felt cold as he then realized. The scarf. The scarf had been Jude’s demise. It had suffocated him. But how?
He was suddenly, for the first time in his life, disgusted by the scarf. He looked down at it, and all of its beauty seemed to fade in an instant, and he saw what a mangled, horrific thing it was. The fabric was tattered, ripped in all sorts of places flayed at the edges where there was once a beautiful hem. Stuck to the fabric like pieces of lint were flakes of dead skin and dirt and hair. And it was damp. Damp and grimy with sweat and grease and body oils. It was completely soaked through, its colour had changed drastically from what it once had been.
He slowly pulled the scarf off his neck, the wet fabric sliding against his skin, droplets of sweat falling onto his pants and Jude’s face. “Oh, God,” He whispered, throwing the scarf across the room where it landed with a loud, wet thud, “What have I done?”
As he grieved his loss and let the guilt wash over him, he heard a wet, sloppy sound from across the room. He lifted his head and looked over to where he had thrown the scarf, and his eyes widened in horror as the scarf seemed to be coming towards him. Had the scarf become so perforated with his skin, his breath, his life, that it had become alive itself? The scarf splotched against the wooden floors, inching its way towards Willem, leaving behind a strange-coloured trail in its journey.
As the scarf eventually reached him, it began to climb the side of his body. It slowly winded itself around his neck and shoulders, resting moistly against him, settling into what Willem now realized was its place. His neck, his shoulders. They belonged to the scarf. He belonged to the scarf. He sobbed, Jude’s lifeless form next to him. He would never be free of the scarf. He had allowed it to consume him and his life. He had allowed it to take Jude’s, the stench and grime so intense that it had suffocated his best friend, stealing the air from his lungs and replacing it with the scarf’s own atmospheric buildup.
Now, Willem was alone, crying in the empty, silent apartment. There was no one. No one but that stanky nasty ass scarf.