Chapter Text
Mari, or a shape resembling her, was lying at the bottom of the staircase. A snarled mess of hair entwined itself with the fringes of the setting sun that was slowly retreating from the living room doorway. Sunny wanted to crawl into it and be pulled back down with the sun as it fell further and further back.
He didn’t mean to do it. It was a mistake. But he meant to do that, didn’t he? Didn’t he want to push her? She wasn’t letting him leave. She wasn’t listening. His feet were moving down the stairs. His dress socks slipped, but his hands had gone so cold and dry that their desperate grasp for the railing succeeded.
“Mari?” Whispered Sunny as his feet hit the solid wood at the bottom, a cracked splinter of wood piercing a toe. She must be asleep. This isn’t happening. Darkness flooded the corners of his eyes, leaving space for only one gap: Mari’s half-visible face.
Silence.
A gasp escaped past the living room door, and Sunny quickly looked up. Through the darkness, pair of blue eyes, below pale yellow strands of hair, stared directly at him.
“Sunny… oh my god…” Basil stepped out of the shade of the living room. At the back of Sunny’s mind, a small but noticeable weight was lifted. His best friend would know what to do. He always did. Maybe he could even wake Mari up.
“W-we need to move her…” Stammered Basil, to the vacant face of Sunny. Basil looped his arms around Mari’s upper torso, trying to ignore the seeping wet feeling spilling out of her neck and onto his forearm. It dried quickly and flakily in the ashen autumn air.
Sunny gave a nod, so imperceptible that Basil did not see it in the twilight. Sunny numbly brushed the pieces of wood away from her legs before reaching under them to lift her up. His eyes were locked on Basil’s. It was as if they were ice-blue beacons that cut through the darkness that had encroached on his vision.
He followed their light as they started moving Mari up the stairway. Myriad thoughts were running through his mind. No one would believe it was a mistake. No one but Basil. Basil was here. He’d cover for him. And no one could doubt him.
Basil was silent besides his breathing, but in his mind he only repeated one word: “no no no no NO NO NO-”
Sunny couldn’t bear to look away until Mari was laid in her bed, upon which he fell to his knees and buried his face in her palm. “Mari? Mari.. please wake up already.. Mari?” His mouth ran on repeat, but his mind fell back to thinking of the boy behind him. After some hours, or days, or months, or years, had passed, he fell back to his bedpost.
His back scraped against the maple as he pushed his head to his legs. A whisper escaped from Basil’s direction. “Sunny… are you listening? I-I know what to do…” But Sunny is already far away.
-
Sunny looks up. An endless white nothingness encapsulates his existence. He looks at his hands and moves his right one to feel his face. The tears were gone. He takes a step, and realizes he’s not slipping on a wooden floor anymore. His socks had been replaced with those he wore to bed each night, and the ground was covered by a small rug, as pale as the world around it.
Hanging from the ceiling, a single black lightbulb cast no light across the floor. In fact, it consumed what little ambient light existed at all around it, paling the bright white into a thick gray around it.
Why was he here? Was this a dream? Sunny couldn’t think of anything before. He wondered where his friends were. Hero, Kel, Aubrey… Basil… But someone was missing from his memory.
Hadn’t there been someone else? A bad knee… piano player… his… sister…
-
A firm grasp on his shoulders shot Sunny back to his room. Basil was shaking him. “Sunny… listen to me. We don’t have much time. Just… take this…” The jump rope that Mari and Hero would swing for him when he was little was shoved between his clenched fingers.
“The backyard, we need to take her there. We don’t have a choice.” Sunny looks up towards Basil. “Everything is going to be o-okay.” Basil swallowed over the cracks and stammers in his statements, but he couldn’t hide it anymore. He was breaking apart inside.
The boys grabbed Mari again, but Basil’s arms were no longer getting wet. As Sunny stepped down the staircase for the second, possibly more painful, time, he tried desperately to ignore the eyes that stared at him from the walls. He locked his gaze with Basil’s and felt them slip away slightly.
Sunny elbowed the handle of the sliding door, almost stumbling as he backs off the lip of the house. “We’re almost there… just keep walking…” Sunny barely sees Basil’s mouth move beneath his eyes.
If he just keeps looking at them, maybe he can disappear into them, and all this will end.
At the foot of a tree that bordered their lawn, the boys dropped the girl to the ground with a sickening thump. Sunny tore his eyes away from Basil’s, which had been fretfully examining the tree, and refocused them on his hand, where the jump rope was still held. His knuckles were pale white from how tightly he gripped.
Basil pulled Sunny towards his end of the body, and guided him with his hands to begin wrapping the rope around her neck. The clammy, cold feeling of his fingertips on Sunny’s as he made a shaky noose held Sunny in reality, despite his wishes.
When it was done, Sunny tried to lift Mari by her arms, as Basil had, but he struggled to find the strength to lift her at all anymore. “Sunny… let me handle this part.” Basil had regained control of his voice, probably convincing himself of the certainty of what was about to happen.
Sunny let go, and turned his eyes to the trees next to his house. He tried to ignore the creaking and Basil’s struggling behind him. Basil.. What would he have done if he wasn’t here? What would have happened to him? There would have been nothing to do, then…
He heard footsteps approaching behind him and turned around, half terrified that it would be Hero- but it was just Basil. The sun had finally reached the horizon, and wisps of its light spread through Basil’s hair, giving him a glistening halo. Basil grabbed Sunny’s hand and started dragging him indoors. For a moment, Sunny felt like he was safe.
That’s when he heard a rustling, and glanced behind himself.
There, at the tree, swung Mari. Her neck grossly distorted where the rope met it, barely visible beneath her hair. Her arms, which had held Sunny through so many nightmares, fell limply at their side. They could not help him through this final dream. A fallen chair was kicked to the side beneath her, her shadow softly cast upon it. The scene was disgustingly serene.
At the center of it all, beneath her twisted black hair, Something stared back at Sunny.
Basil pulled, hard, and Sunny was dragged inside. Basil slammed the door shut behind them, and slide down against the wall next to the glass, panting. Mari’s eye was burned so hard into his vision that as hard as he shut them, he would never see anything else. If he had opened them, though, he would have seen the piercing gaze of the eyes of his best friend.
-
Sunny sat halfway up the staircase, watching Basil work. He was gingerly picking up the last pieces of the shattered violin from the bottom of the staircase, dropping them into Sunny’s old toybox. Both boys delicately avoided letting the small pool of dark liquid next to it enter their vision.
Sunny couldn’t stop thinking. But not about Mari. Basil had saved him. It was like he had said. Everything would be okay. As long as he never let Basil leave his thoughts, he would be safe from retribution. From punishment. Although, he still shuddered to think about the fact that Hero would be there any second to see if they were ready to go to the rehearsal.
Basil had started to mop up the bottom of the staircase. As he moved the mop back and forth, and the water dissolved the blacky redness that had stained the floor, Sunny carefully observed his face. Basil’s tears had never stopped flowing, but they had slowly reduced from sobs to reluctant drops that fell onto his dress shirt. His lips quivered, but he constantly regained control of them.
Sunny always knew Basil cared about him, and now he was proving it. The two had always been particularly close, perhaps even closer than Sunny and Mari. Basil had spent hours just talking to Sunny, with him only nodding in reply. But he was always listening intently, and they both knew that.
There had been a time when Basil and Sunny were laying on his bed together after a long day with the group. Sunny was so happy to have him alone again. Occasionally, Basil would stop talking and just return Sunny’s gaze, smiling slightly in the light of the bedside lamp.
When Sunny’s mom told Basil it was time to go home for the night, Sunny had to sleep with Mari because of how hard he cried.
A knock came from the front door.
-
Sunny shakily opened the front door. Hero stood on the stoop, his orange dress tie almost seeming the color of the cans of Orange Joe Kel insisted on attaining every time they went to a restaurant. He smiled back at Sunny, his mind clearly prepared for a fine night with his friends.
Kel stood behind him, pulling at the dress shirt that was too tight at his neck. His long brown hair was immaculately done, for perhaps the first time in years. He smiled awkwardly at Sunny and nodded while running his hand through it.
“Hey, Sunny! Are you guys ready to go? Where’s Mari?” Beamed Hero. Sunny stared hallowly back at him. “Sunny? Hello?” It was clear something was wrong, but he didn’t know exactly what.
Sunny felt a presence approaching from behind. “Hero… thank god you’re finally here. Mari… she’s…” Basil turned away and pointed towards the glass door.
“What’s going on?” Hero asked, clearly confused. He gently pushed past Sunny. When he first entered, he quickly glanced around seeking for Mari, and when he saw through the glass door, his breathing audibly quickened. Sunny could hear him beginning to walk faster and faster as he approached the door, slamming it aside as he reached it.
Kel, still on the front doorstep, looked at Sunny, confused. When they all heard Hero’s cry of “MARI!” from the back, he stepped in, grabbed Sunny’s wrist, and started taking him quickly toward the backyard. The material on his suit rubbed against Sunny as they moved. It was annoyingly rough.
Hero had fallen to his knees by the back door step, a new addition to the scene that had already imprinted itself into Sunny’s memory. Kel gasped besides Sunny and gripped his wrist even harder. His arm shaked as he stammered out, “M-Mari? What… Sunny… what… she…”
Basil had walked out behind the two and moved silently to stand beside Sunny. As Hero began releasing staggered wails, Sunny shook his hand out from Kel’s grasp and reached for Basil. Although his hold on his best friends hand was not particularly requited, he could only focus more and more on it as Hero scrambled for his phone.
Sunny wanted to run. But as more and more people came past him, he could only hold a steady gaze on Basil’s face. This was the boy who had kept him safe. Sunny would never let him go. Even while the world fell apart.