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“You’ve ever having one of those days where it feels like someone forgot to turn the lights on? Like you can still see everything and all, but that’s just your mind feeling in the blanks… It ain’t the same, ‘s not really there or nothing, and you know you should feel something about it, but it doesn’t… it doesn’t…”
Roy sets down his kitchen knife. Double-checks the screen on his phone, where the word ‘Prick’ is still proudly displayed at the top of the connected call. For reasons Roy can no longer remember, his profile picture is a photo of a gecko wearing a pink feather boa and sunglasses.
Nothing could be further away from the wet rasp on the other end of the line. The hoarse, dying slur, almost too low to hear.
Roy moves away from the cutting board and towards the windows, like having extra light will help him hear over the sudden pounding of his heart. “Where are you?”
A wet sniffle crackles at the other end of the line.
“At home,” Jamie says. Below the off-putting gravel, he sounds tired. “I haven’t left the house in days.”
“Well, that’s part of your problem. You need to go outside,” snaps Roy. He curses under his breath; his fucking shoe won’t go on. “Are you – listen, just stay there, alright?”
“Roy,” Jamie’s voice breaks. “I did something stupid.”
“No.”
“I didn’t mean to,” he chokes, an awful hacking that isn’t natural, too wet and violent. “I didn't feel good. I didn’t feel anything. I just wanted to feel better. I’m sorry, I’m sorry-“
“No. Listen to me now, alright? You’re gonna hang up. You’re gonna call 999.”
“No.” Roy can picture him shaking his head. “No, I can’t. I don’t want. it’s- its not that big a-“
He stumbles on the lie.
Roy grabs his keys. He doesn’t close the front door behind him.
“Jay, I’m on my way, okay? We’ll figure it out together-“
The call drops.
Roy doesn’t remember the drive. He pulls up to the front of Jamie’s house. Leaves the car running. Punches in the door code. Probably breaks the latch, because it takes an eternity to unlock and he doesn’t have the fucking time to wait before pushing his way through.
The house when he enters is stifling in its silence, with not a slice of life to be found.
The living room is empty. Roy rounds the kitchen, eyes drawn the tile, but there’s nothing – no body that’s gone cold. Nothing still and lifeless and moulded in the shape of his best friend.
He takes the stairs two at a time. If his knee screams, he doesn’t hear it. The distance between himself and the physical world remains at an arms length as Roy bangs open the bedroom door. The curtains are pulled shut to the world, and every mound of clothes on the floor casts shadows on the cave walls.
The bathroom is similar, empty and lifeless and undefinably wrong in a way that escapes Roy’s limited focus, beyond the fact that neither contains Jamie.
After he checks the guest rooms, his soul pulls him back towards the bedroom to stand in the doorway. It’s clawing at his chest, the feeling that he’s just missed him. That if stands on the precipice of this cliff, he’ll hear it. A pitiful whine, a croak, something, anything to prove there’s still air or a heartbeat or just a fucking chance that Roy isn’t too late.
But there’s nothing, and nothing is what walks down the stairs. Nothing stands in the middle of the living room, a lighthouse rotating back and forth looking for signs of life in a terrifyingly placid sea.
Small signals catch his attention, buoying him to one last strand of hope. Jamie’s bag, bright orange like a safety vest, waves for his attention. Jamie’s wallet with all its evidence of existence. His shoes; bright red, a happy red. Nothing like the scene Roy’s been envisioning. His cellphone charger-
His phone.
Roy fumbles his phone from his pocket. The stupid fucking gecko flashing across his screen when all Roy needs, all he wants, is a fucking glimpse of what he’s searching for.
He dials the number.
Billy Joel calls to him from outside.
Roy throws open the sliding glass door so hard he’s amazed it doesn’t shatter.
Sat against the wall of his house with knees tucked tight against his chest is Jamie. He stares up at him, stunned, his mouth mouth agape
“You told me to go outside,” he croaks.
His hair is stringy and unwashed under Roy’s hand. Tears streak his face. His complexion is sharply pale against the dark of his stubble, and his pupils blown unnaturally wide. Something chalky and wet sticks to his chin, and a matching patch on the back of his sleeve, and there’s apparently a whole upturned bottle of pills lost in the dark rank of his bedroom where Roy didn’t see it.
But he’s alive. Roy can feel his heartbeat where he presses him against his chest. He can feel warm puffs of air against his neck as Jamie sobs, as he apologises, as Roy rocks him, uncertain and unknowing of the future.
But he’s alive.
That’s a fucking start.