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It started with a realization. It ended, like all things about Dark, with Chosen’s tears and a couple of crumpled-up tissues.
Dark’s death is like a date on the calendar. Simple. Quiet. Placid, and meaningless, as if it were just someone’s birthday, marked with a big red x with little candles or balloons. Another day to celebrate and rejoice. Another perfectly ordinary day with a perfectly ordinary bloody stain on the ground.
A day that Chosen will be counting off of for the rest of his life. The day his world exploded into so many colors that he could not count them all– blinding sunburst yellows and lovely azures– the dizzying shade of crimson that Dark bleeds, steady and unavoidable, into the grass of Chosen’s front yard where he used to water his tulips in the mornings.
There is a thing no one seems to tell you about the death of a loved one. At first, it’s like this big, grand event that happened, and everybody you know is talking about it, or saying sorry to you about it(but seriously, what are they apologizing for? They didn’t kill whoever you’re grieving, after all), and then you start to kind of realize that nobody actually cares as much as you do.
Sure, everyone’s discussing it at first, but after a while they just stop. And it isn’t even as if they don’t want to hurt your feelings by mentioning it around you– it’s simply that they forgot. They will move on, and expect you to do the same, but you’re going to have to carry that on your shoulders forever.
When they say forever, they mean forever. And ever and ever and ever, ‘til you take it to your grave, too.
It was like that for Chosen. He could recall so perfectly how he stood there, carved out of stone, the horror dawning on his face along with the bloody pomegranate sun, as The Second Coming’s friends cheered and hugged and screamed with joy.
His hands were red. It was a detail he could never forget; trying to wash it off, get Dark’s blood off him, hoping the stream would carry his deeds away, too. It never did. The insides of his nails were caked pink for weeks after, and when Second asked, he’d lied through gritted teeth that it was just a bit of paint. He’d been painting, that was all. He’d been getting better.
He would leave his house again soon, he told Second, and go get a bit of fresh air. It would be good for him. He wasn’t planning on following through with his promise, but that day he put one foot out the front door, stepped out with the other one too, and went to water his tulips. One of them was crushed and dotted with browning red. Chosen straightened it, and wiped the blood off with his sleeve.
He also watered them, if that was an important fact. He watered them every morning before Dark died, too, so he has to do that now as well, even as the day of Dark’s death grows further behind on the calendar with each passing midnight that Chosen can’t sleep.
To him, it was as if the world paused. Slowed. Stayed in the frame where Dark’s body flew through the air at impossible speeds, ripped across the heather on the moor, and went up in one giant explosion. Had left maybe a single drip of blood in the ocean, and that was that. Dark was gone, yet Chosen was still stuck at that moment, that critical moment.
People will forget. Second and their friends will tell stories, for a while, and boast about it(never near Chosen), but in the end they will forget too, and Dark will fade into the background of everyone’s normal, daily lives. He will stay burned into the forefront of Chosen’s mind.
Yesterday was the one hundredth day of Dark being gone, and also Chosen’s drawnday. He’d gone out and watered his tulips, like always, but the tap got jammed halfway through so he used some water from a nearby stream in the woods instead. Then Chosen went inside, ate a sandwich from last week, and slept. Again.
If a funeral falls in the forest, and there is no one left to remember it, does it still happen? Does the person still die properly? He hopes they do, or else maybe Dark is wondering why Death isn’t coming to fetch him.
Chosen would make a grave for Dark himself, but he doesn’t think he can stand seeing an ugly dirt mound in his backyard– bitter reminders– every single damn day of his existence.
He’s been thinking. It’s as if Dark never died at all– that he will go into the kitchen and find the red stick scrubbing violently at that one stain on the wall, or messing around with his trinkets, or draped lazily atop the couch like an overgrown cat. Chosen holds his breath half the time he opens the peeling white door of his room, because perhaps he’ll turn the knob and see Dark waiting for him with that smug grin of his.
He never does. Throughout the many days he’s been counting since Dark’s death, no trace of the other warm soul that once lived in this house remains. The only thing left seems to be the dust settling onto unused metal scraps, and the couch Chosen hasn’t sat on in one hundred and one days.
It was Dark’s couch, anyhow, he reasons with himself– as if they hadn’t shared everything in the house since they moved in. There was no point in one of them using it if the other was absent. And then, he’s wondering if Second even remembers Dark at all.
If Chosen asked them, forced his lips into a gentle, swaying smile, and gazed into their large, olive eyes, would they flinch– duck underneath his scrutiny– or would they smile back, and reply with yes? Would the answer finally crush his ribs under their weight at last?
(Would it be the answer he was holding his very breath for, waiting on, the reassurance that somebody cared about Dark as much as he did, even if it was in a different way.)
Chosen will still breathe, feel the air over his tangled block locks, skim his fingers over the wide-open sea; and Dark will not. Dark and his memory will remain buried beneath the earth's heavy, heavy embrace along with all of Chosen’s other forgotten regrets. The normality of death will never cease to break him.
The crushed tulip from a month ago had died. Chosen woke up one morning to find that its petals were wrinkled and browning at the edges, and the leaves drooped depressingly. He'd left it there hoping the bulb would grow back.
Dark liked his tulips, too, and would sometimes join him to water them. Chosen can't help but wonder if the dead tulip was the universe's final laugh.
You were a wonderfully terrible person, yet I found that I would not have it any other way but loving you forever. Carrying the weight of you to my very own grave.
The sky is grey today. Chosen waters his tulips, and goes back inside by the time he's finished because he could feel the rain gathering within the clouds above. The thing is, people will celebrate Dark dying like it's Christmas. Chosen will grieve. They will forget.
He washes the dirt off his hands, reminds himself what an ordinary day it is today, and takes the calendar off its special spot on the wall. He flips it backwards three months to stare at the dates, eyes blank.
A red x over the day Dark should have died. He picks up his pen, and draws a smiley face next to it.