deathbydumbass

[deathbydumbass]

remember me

“Please, please, I’m sorry, I promise I’ll be good, please, stop, please–!”

The knife moves, slowly, steadily, carving down my arm, until suddenly he pushes it in right at the crook of my elbow

I scream - 

“Why’d you stop? Your voice is so pretty when you beg, I was considering listening.”

He pulls the knife out and rests it on my temple, next to my eye 

I try to turn my head away but he grabs it with his other hand, drags it back so I’m facing him 

“I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll talk forever, just please don’t kill me-”

He moves away, I gag for air, try to think - 

“You’re gonna die anyway, sweetheart, we all are.”

Abby, my name is Abby, not sweetheart-

“I’m just helping you get it over with.”

Helping, helping, as if this is kind, how egocentric can someone be-

“And you approached me, remember? All caught up with the mysterious bad boy, not even caring about leaving your friends behind or texting anyone where we were going. If you’re not careful, some could say you wanted this to happen. I bet, somewhere in your subconscious, you’re just as done with living as the rest of us, and you’re begging me to end your suffering.”

I jerk, push myself up–

He’s walked into the kitchen, started pouring himself something, his back to me-

My phone got thrown somewhere during the fight, I look around - 

He’s still talking, I can’t hear him past the frantic beat of my heart- 

There it is, under the couch - 

I reach for it, shuffling quiet as I can - 

My fingers wrap around it - 

It turns on and I swipe to emergency - 

The blood on my hands messes up the screen and it won’t dial - 

He’s back on top of me, and pain flares white hot in my chest, and I can barely see beyond the red-

“Really, how dumb can you be! You thought I wouldn’t notice your pathetic little attempt?”

He’s laughing - 

He has my phone, holds it above me, smashes it into my face - 

“I was actually starting to like you, y’know, and I was gonna be so nice and gentle, but then you had to go and mess that all up, didn’t you? You really are suicidal!”

My nose crunches, blood sprays - 

“That’s all anyone is going to remember about you, understand? That you’re a stupid, suicidal whore who got herself killed.”

He has the knife again, waving it around wildly - 

“And then - then they won’t remember you at all! They’ll forget you even existed!”

No, please, no-

the knife sinks into my arm

They’ll remember me, they have to-

my stomach

My name is Abby, Abigail Willow Carter-

my chest

Like my aunt and the tree my parents had their first kiss under-

my lungs

I go to Eastbrook High School, I’m a setter in Varsity volleyball, and my favorite band is the Crane Wives-

My neck

My hair is black, but I wanna dye it blue- 

My heart

My name is Abby

Remember me-

‘Abigail Willow Carter’ is confined to fluttering, yellowed missing posters hung up on a couple bulletin boards and light posts in her hometown when they finally find him. 

News stations pounce on his arrest, repeating his name like mockingjays and plastering his smug, smiling face onto every newspaper, live report, and social media page they have access to. They crucify him for his crimes while hanging off his every word, glorifying his twistedness, so that his poisoned honey voice haunts the radio.

Her name is read off three times throughout his trial - once during the reading of his charges, another while the prosecutor is trying to make a point, and a final time as the jury convicts him. Each time, it is tucked safely in the middle of a list of his other victims, forgotten as soon as it is said.

His is repeated, and repeated, and repeated, a never ending echo, a cautionary tale, a scary story around a campfire. He is immortalized in the minds of man, woman, and child ever to catch a glimpse of him, just like he wanted when he first admitted his guilt. 

Her pictures are all confined to the attic by her grieving family, too painful to look at, until none of them can quite remember if her hair was black or brown or blue, what her volleyball uniform looked like, the color of her eyes.

His are shown on book covers, in articles, on true crime websites, on TV channels, so that anyone who saw them could tell you exactly how his mouth curved as cameras flashed in his face during his march to the courtroom, how his eyes narrowed when he was sentenced to death, how his posture had tightened in the electric chair.

She becomes a nameless warning whispered between girls at parties, one of a hundred, a thousand, a million to strike up a conversation with the wrong person and be punished for her friendliness. 

He becomes a household legend, denounced and psychoanalyzed at the dinner table.

She is forgotten.

He is remembered. 

Forget him-

[deathbydumbass]

and for sure, there are some poems i will never write. they exist as something intangible and spiritual in the very essence of myself. beneath and beyond the flesh and blood and the clamour of the mortal world. i ought not to get too intimate with them but rather admire from afar. every once in a while i am filled with emotions so foreign to me and that is how i know, i have become the poetry.

[deathbydumbass]

damned battlefield

Samson was destined by God to fight - given strength to defend his people from the Philistines and take revenge for the hair stolen from his head. God wanted a warrior, and so he made one. 

God fulfilled his promise to the Isrealites through Joshua, who became Justice. Joshua was blessed to take the land that had been given to them, and he would come out victorious with little struggle. 

You weren’t blessed by God, or given a promise to fulfill. There’s too much struggle. Too much pain. So did God not care about you? Did he decide you - and all the people in your squadron - weren’t worth the attention? Did he decide this entire blasted war wasn’t worth even a couple little miracles? Or did he just decide to abandon humanity altogether to this stupid, senseless blustering?

There’s no God here in the muddy, piss ridden trenches that don’t smell like anything so much as death, which you can’t get used to no matter what you try. There’s no divine presence in the terrified set of your best friend’s shoulders or the puke swimming around your shoes from the upperclassman beside you that you used to look up to so much, now seemingly trying to use tears to clear out the taste in his mouth. There’s no angelic cadence to your Sergeant’s voice as he screams for you to go.

The adrenaline flooding your body as you push yourself over the lip of the trench and sprint through No Man’s Land is the closest thing to holy you’ve felt since you kissed your mom goodbye.

There’s blasts and bangs and baying and blood, and the person beside you explodes - you can’t even remember their name - and if God is anywhere on this battlefield, he’s not doing shit but laughing at the stupid humans he created and sentenced to this death.

You catch sight of the opposing trenches, and see the glint of a rifle tip lit up by gunfire.

You slow down. Stop. Raise your rifle. Shoot. 

The bullet through your heart is the most sacred thing you’ve felt in years.

It takes you a second to realize you’re still standing. It must have missed your heart, and suddenly all of its blessings are gone.

The German bastard you shot is standing up from his position like the dimwit he is with this pained angry desperate mean look on his face under his helmet, and he’s staring right at you with all the furious intensity of a true Angel, sent by God to destroy. 

You step, step, step, run towards him, and ignore how your boots have stopped sticking in the mud, and then the German’s running too, and you can’t feel anything but fury burning up your soul. Before you even get to the German, your rifle is backwards in your hands and raised above your head, but as you slash it down towards his jugular he dives and shoves the pistol you didn’t realize he was holding into your gut and fires once, twice, thrice-

It feels like the fires of Hell lapping at your insides but you’re still not finished, so you tug him down to the dirt with you, and you both lose your weapons in the struggle. You catch glimpses of the German’s face as you roll over the blood, mud, scud covering the earth, and he almost looks your age.

He throws you off then, and you

Kick

Punch

Hit

Crunch

Spit

Hiss

On

And 

On

And

On

This fight will end when God gets bored watching people suffer.

This fight 

will 

never

end

[deathbydumbass]

important business

The tetherball swings, swings, swings, around the pole - distracting, enchanting, mesmerizing - and hits her in the face. 

It hurts, hurts, hurts, and Jorge is yelling from the other side of the circle, but it’s hard to hear for a second. 

She checks, but there’s not any blood, blood, blood, even though the thought still makes her stomach feel like it’s being ripped out of her body.

She shakes, shakes, shakes, her head and feels okay again. Jorge is still panicking a little bit, but she tells him to quit it because she’s ok, and then she grabs the tetherball from where it’s bouncing against the pole, and throws it back around and then it’s like nothing bad ever happened. 

The ball is bright yellow against the bright blue sky, and the wind is rustling the leaves in the big tree right next to the blacktop. It’s almost fall, so soon those leaves will get blown off the tree and form a big pile under it that they can jump in again. They’ll be super crunchy and probably get in her hair so that Ms. Woods will have to stop her before she goes back inside to pick them out. 

The wind blows her hair into her face so she can’t see the ball as well, and she just barely misses it, and then it’s wrapped itself around the pole in the middle and Jorge’s won. He’s got this big grin on his face, and that and the smells on the wind and the laughing of all her friends on the playground makes her want to smile too, but then it would seem like she’s happy he won, so she just sticks her tongue out and demands another game. 

After recess that day, they do an experiment with batteries that makes her feel like the electricity is coursing through her veins instead, and she can’t stop jumping up and down on her feet even when her table group looks at her a little funny, because she’s just so excited! 

After class, she waves Ms. Woods goodbye and hugs all her friends tight and fast and runs off to Mommy’s car, because they have Important Business they have to go do. Her older cousin, Adam, is having his bar mitzvah soon, and Mommy’s friends with a farmer who has a bunch of cows and makes really, really good cheese, so they have to go get cream cheese from her. The farmer’s daughter, Tori, is a couple years older than her and the funniest nicest person ever, so she’s excited to see her.

They start turning, and she laughs when the car presses her towards the door, and then Mommy stops talking all of a sudden, so she looks up and there’s another car coming towards her side and it’s a really pretty purple and-

It should hurt, hurt, hurt. It did. But it doesn’t anymore.

She’s waiting, waiting, waiting, and she thinks she’ll be waiting for a long time. 

It’s boring, boring, boring, but she has no choice. There is no death to speak to this time, no angel to comfort her.

But there are her thoughts, which fill the space in her head with blooming color and figure that could be her friends, if she really believed they were real. She tries to talk to them sometimes, but she always knows what they will say before they say it, and so it’s not really fun at all. She draws flowers and trees and sun and dogs and cats and becomes like a god to the world in her head, but she does not create humans for her world, so that they can’t create tetherballs or pretty purple cars or little girls for them to hurt, hurt, hurt.

She watches her world develop 

and wonders how God could have messed it up so badly.

[deathbydumbass]

seven minutes in heaven

They say for the seven minutes after you die, your brain replays your life - jumping from memory to memory in two times speed like a frog on so many lily pads - like the band on the Titanic playing their last songs, like your father carrying your ‘sleeping’ toddler self from the car to bed and your mother tucking the blankets to your chin, like a last meal on death row. It’s a final comfort and a beautiful tragedy.

It’s minute one:

You’ve just woken up from a nightmare with tears streaming down your face like waterfalls (which you just learned about in class yesterday, aren’t they cool) and your feet take you to your parents door before your brain even finishes processing that it wasn’t reality. You knock, because it’s polite, but don’t wait for an answer and then you’re standing at the foot of your parent’s bed, and they’re sleeping and for a moment you feel horribly guilty, but then your mom is blinking awake and inviting you up into the bed and your dad is asking what’s wrong? and you can’t help but start to cry again because it was scary. But now your parents are here, listening to your babbling explanation, and it’s hard to be scared under their blankets with them bracketing you like sentries, keeping all the monsters under the bed and in the closet where they belong. 

(You are loved, you are loved, you are loved,)

It’s minute two:

Your parents took you to see a musical for the first time - you’ve listened to a couple before, but never seen them – it’s Hadestown, at the theatre downtown. Hermes introduces the characters with music that’s seen the world, and Orpheus and Eurydice fall in love with each other like you’re falling for this theatre, and Hades’ voice rumbles up your spinal cord like the first sign of an earthquake - a life shaking event. And there’s this feeling like something clicking into place. You’re looking down at the Fates, and this really is Fate isn’t it?

You can see yourself then, years older than you were at the time, standing on that very stage, singing When The Chips are Down like your life depends on it, with a costume that feels like pride and fits like love.

You’re watching this musical, and you know that the universe can be kind, that everything is right in the world, and that you have a part to play that is just waiting for you to fill it.

(you are loved, you are loved, you are loved,)

It’s minute three:

You’re with your friends at a roller skating rink. One of them is doing laps and spins and other tricks you can’t even name while you’re clutching just as desperately at the other’s arm as they are clutching yours, because you don’t know how to skate, ok?

The lights are flashing, the music’s blaring, and you make some joke that in the next second you couldn’t recall if someone put a gun to your head, but the friend you’re holding onto is laughing like nobody’s business, and your other friend has done another lap around you and is now on your other side catching their breath and asking what’s so funny? You try to explain, but get so confused that your feet follow and you trip over nothing and bring both of them down with you.

Now all of you are laughing so hard none of you could get up if you tried and you don’t care about how embarrassing that was or that you’re blocking the way, just that you can barely hear yourselves over the music and the lights are running wildly through the tears bubbling up in your eyes from how hard you’ve doubled over, and everything in this moment is perfect.

(you are loved, you are loved, you are loved,)

It’s minute four:

You’re finally under the bright lights of Broadway (or, you know, the off-brand type that performs in tiny theaters in front of tinier audiences on the outskirts of the city right next to a bar that gets more attention than you do) and you’re playing the Bullet in Hamilton. You have no speaking lines, and your costume is almost the same as the rest of the ensemble, but you deliver every bit of news, every killing blow, perfectly. 

You’re deadly, you’re proud, and you might not be famous, but you’re known by the actors on the stage and the people that read your name in the playbook. 

And that’s enough.

(you are loved, you are loved, you are loved,)

It’s minute five:

You’re in love. 

Your co-actor, playing the main antagonist, has eyes like oak wood with rings denoting each year of wisdom and a voice like a wildfire. You want to be caught in the black river of their hair and burned by their ferocious energy and witness to every one of their incredible feats - from verbally assaulting your horrible director to beating you in a race to whispering a lullaby to your future children to knowing the answers to your questions before you ask them to simply existing in every patch of comfort they come across. 

They don’t know you exist. You don’t think they do anyway.

But then they look over, and you lock eyes, and hurry to look back down at your script, and pretend it never happened

(but if you imagine hard enough, you can pretend there was affection in that glance)

(you are loved, you are loved, you are loved,)

It’s minute six:

You’re divorced. 

(Horribly)

(Terrifyingly)

(Finally)

The papers were approved by the judge, and now, legally, you are no longer married. 

(You haven’t been together for over a year)

It should hurt, and it does, it burns like the wildfire you always knew them to be.

But, mostly, you’re just relieved. You’ve stepped out of the river, out of the woods, and now you can see the sky clearly for the first time in what seems like years. 

It’s a strange comfort, especially when you can still see the hurt from the divorce in the few-ringed, beautifully brown eyes of your children.

But beneath that hurt is love.

Love that is shown through surprise hugs and joy filled laughs and affectionate glances that prove that everything is going to be okay, eventually. 

(You are loved, you are loved, you are loved,)

It’s minute seven:

You aren’t on your own bed. This one is stiff and uncomfortable and doesn’t have nearly enough blankets. 

“Are you cold?” Your granddaughter asks, and when you force your eyes open, there she is - young, with hair like a black river, and eyes as green as yours. She has so long to live, so much to learn, so many places to be - and still she is beside your bed.

  “Don’t worry about me, honey.” You try to say, but it comes out more like a croaking in your throat, and-

And you’re more scared than you remember ever being (you thought this moment would be easy, that after all these years you would be ready to die, but you’re not, you’re not, you’re never going to be) and then your son is by your side, and your granddaughter is draping her favorite blanket over your chest, and - it’s hard to be scared under their blankets with them bracketing you like sentries, keeping all the monsters under the bed and in the closet where they belong. 

(you are loved, you are loved, you are loved.)

[deathbydumbass]

a chat between bunks

I wrote this for Creative Writing lol

Creativitwins angst, Remus centric, other sides are mentioned. TW: Major character death

I can hear you crying from up here, you know, no matter how quiet you try to be.

…

            Was it Jonah? He keeps showing up trying to talk to you, and he’s called you like 500 times, and still won’t pick up, so what’d he do? Did he cheat on you? I’ll kill him you know, carve out his stupid heart and eat it. Just say the word!

              No, don’t try to hide it, there’s no one to hide from. It’s just me. We were attached in the womb - quite literally. There’s nothing you could hide from me. So what is it? Did mom finally admit she likes me better?

…

C’mon, Ro-bro, tell me what’s wrong. I know we haven’t been on the best terms recently but we’ve always been able to come to a truce for things like this. Are you mad that I passed and got my license and you didn’t, so now you have to deal with me driving you around to all your little dates? I promise I won’t make fun of you - too much anyway. But hey, that’s what twins are for, right?

…

Ro, Rodent, Prince of Dicks, Roman, Roman, Roman, Roman, Roman!

…

Seriously, I’m freaking out, this is maximum bear-eating-my-insides, surgery-with-just-enough-anesthesia-to-keep-me-quiet, rusty-needle-in-my-arm not funny. Please, talk to me, ple-

“I can’t do this without you, Remus.”

Do what without me? I’m right here, fuckface, what’s going on?

“I always thought that once you were gone, I’d be happier because people wouldn’t make fun of me for my demented twin hanging around me-”

Well, hey you’re not always my favorite person either, are you? You’re way too much of a goodie-two-shoes to do anything fun -

“-but that was always gonna be when we were just going to different colleges or something and I could just call you whenever I felt like it, if I felt like it. But now I can’t talk to you at all and I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

What do you think we’re doing right now? I’m not just yammering into the void for fun, you know?

You’re acting like I’m dead or something, but we both know I’m basically immortal. Remember that time I got so sick with pneumonia as a kid I turned blue? Mom freaked out, it was awesome. Or a couple years ago when I was climbing a tree up on Daisyshow peak and slipped and fell basically all the way down the mountain? The doctor said I should be dead, but I’m not, and I never will be, ok?

“People keep staring at me like I’m gonna combust, and Patton keeps coming around and treating me like I’m some fragile little damsel in distress, and you know, maybe I am, but that doesn’t mean I want to be treated like it, you know?”

Really? You don’t want a little bit of coddling? That’s why you got with Patton in the first place, isn't it? Cause he treated you like some pretty little prince and bought you flowers and chocolate and all that gross romantic stuff? Why are you so against it now? Especially now that you look like you’re literally going to bawl your eyeballs out of your head, so that they’re just hanging out by the optic nerve like in all those sick zombie movies you hate. Honestly, you’ve been looking bad enough to play a zombie for a while now and you’re not even trying to cover it up. What happened to your perfect little reputation, huh? Can’t imagine this is helping. 

“You’d probably make fun of me mercilessly if you saw me like this, huh? I look even more like you now though, don’t I? I went downstairs for water last night, and mom was in the kitchen, and when she saw me I swear I thought a dragon witch had broken in and was rampaging around with how surprised she looked. She covered it up well enough but she definitely thought I was you for a second.”

You know what that means, though!

“We could almost impersonate each other now, like we did when we were kids-”

Hell yeah we could! We could switch classes and I could scare the soul out of your teachers and go on the cheer team for you and let Christy fall when she says something snide, and- oh, I wonder how long it would take our friends to realize? I think Virgil would get it pretty quick, he’s always been a little extra paranoid, and maybe Logan for you, but Patton ain’t that observant and Janus is a bit too self focused, and I would need to shave, and - 

“I’d just need to grow a moustache - or whatever you call the scraps of hair you had - and grab some of your clothes. I’d have to wash them first though. I might miss you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go walking around in your gross, moldy gym shorts.”

Hey! My moldy gym shorts are like my biggest achievement! You can’t wash that off!

“I wonder how that would go over at school. Most of the teachers would probably figure it out, but some people will definitely freak out over you being ‘back from the dead’ or whatever.”

To be back from the dead, I have to be dead, dumbass. Ooh, do you think we could fake that too? I’ve always wanted to run away and start a new life as a forest cryptid. 

“...I don’t think I could do it. Looking in the mirror is already hard enough, but without even our little differences I think I’d go insane.”

I don’t like looking like you either, Prince Pathetic, but we all have to make sacrifices, don’t we?

“I can still see you in that casket whenever I close my eyes. I don’t think you’ve ever been that still since we came out of the womb.”

What casket, Ro? Cause the only time I’ve ever been in a casket was when I climbed into one at that funeral home after Pop-pop died, and I definitely wasn’t still - I wonder if I’m still banned? I was like 9 then so maybe she won't recognize me. We should go test it out!

“I’m pretty sure the manager at that funeral home remembered you because she kept looking at me all scandalized like she was expecting me to climb in with you at the service.”

What service, Roman? Why were you back at that funeral home? You hated that place. 

“I almost wanted to. But when I touched your hand you were so cold, when you’ve always been like this walking heater, and I just couldn’t bear it. I don’t want to remember you like you were then.”

Ok, fine, since you’re so set on me being dead, I’ll play along. How did I die? Oooh, lemme guess! I got kidnapped by a serial killer who slowly cut all my tendons out and slurped them up like spaghetti with my blood as the sauce! Or, or, or, Christy finally got tired of being afraid of me and pushed me into a wood chipper and little Remus-bits went flying everywhere! Now, that would be sick!

“What were you even doing driving around that day! You barely passed your drivers test, and Mom told you she didn’t want you going anywhere without her in the car!”

Oh, so you’re saying it was a car crash, huh? I do remember driving recently actually, to go see the new ‘It’ movie with Virgil and Janus, Virgin said he’d pick me up but our house is so out of the way, and you know I love the thrill! Mom’s so uptight too, she never would’ve let me go see the movie at all, so it’s not like I could tell her.

Actually, come to think of it, I don’t really remember seeing it… 

I don’t even remember finishing the drive- 

Hold on. Hold on, hold on, hold on, I gotta think. I pulled out of the driveway, and it was like 10 so mom didn’t see me leave, and horror movies are so much better at night anyway, so it was really dark. I got out to the stoplight for the highway, and I turned on and then - 

And then.

…

The car skidded. 

And then

…

It ran the light, didn’t it, 

And then

Some other car got thrown off course and crashed right into my door 

And then

Nothing

Nothing.

Nothing!

Nothing!!

Shit!!!

I really am dead, aren’t I, holy hell, how did I not realize, Ro, I can’t- 

Ro?

Roman? 

Where’d you go?

[deathbydumbass]

If I give you my heart will that make you love me?

(If you take it will that make me capable of love?)

[deathbydumbass]

Cold

She’s cold, colder than the ocean under the arctic ice, colder than her last interaction with her dad, colder than space itself.

I choke on rancid air, shove her off of me. Blood streams into my eyes, and when I reach up to my head, my hand catches on glass from the windshield. The windshield that shattered when the branch stabbed through it, when she crashed into me, when the world stopped making sense. 

I fumble with the button on my seatbelt, hit it again, again, again, until finally it pops open. Then there’s the door handle, which takes me one, two, three, tries to grab and three more to push the door itself open, until I’m outside, sprawling on grass and broken glass. 

The world spins as I try to push myself up, and I fall back down onto my back. I can’t tell if I’ve blacked out and the sun is setting already or if it’s the blood making the world look red. Whatever it is, red-tinted light bounces off the glass, the hubcaps, the rhinestones on her boots, and I have to close my eyes against it.

The darkness gives a bit more space to think - makes the too hot wind and copper stench and burning pain feel just a bit more distant - and I try to remember what happened. We were driving up the mountains to go camping. It was a kind of windy road, and I was getting nauseous. She unbuckled her seatbelt to grab something in the back, my dramamine maybe. But she was blocking my view of the road closest to the mountain, so I didn’t notice the deer creeping out into the street. I jerked the wheel. She was jerked back in her seat. She cracked her head on the window just as we went over the side of the mountain, and she hit another surface with every bump of the car down the way in a symphony of snapping bones and blood curdling screams - hers? Mine? Both of ours? The airbags went off just as she catapulted into me. And then - nothing. Then the screen goes black. Then we were dead. 

Except we weren’t. She was - she was cold, getting colder, and her face was starting to bruise like the corpses that came off the ambulances at the ER Dad worked at. I wasn’t - I was hot, getting hotter with my sweater and racing heart, and the red-hot tears that streaked down my face. I tried desperately to wipe them away, along with the blood, as if I could erase what had caused them.

She was dead, and I was alive, and the sun was setting, and we were alone in the mountains, and I had to find help, and I had to tell her mother. Her mother, who I had made a promise to that she would come back from this trip unharmed, who had let me sit at table and eat her food and sleep at her house more times than I could count, who had given me a hug just as tight as the one she gave her daughter before we left, who had made me promise to get back safely too. 

But now her daughter was sprawled like a ragdoll across the console in my car, with her head on the airbag, staring at me with empty, glassy eyes so unlike the ones that had been comforting, laughing with, loving me since the moment we met however many years ago. I had done this, I had killed her, my girlfriend, my best friend, the person I wanted to marry, and now I had to take her home to her mother who had took me in without a second glance and, and, and, 

I can’t face her mother, I can’t, I can’t, but 

There’s a roar of an engine from far away, and I think it’s coming closer, so I take a breath around my tears and try to focus on getting her up to them because I can’t leave her to rot in this car any more than I can kill a puppy. 

I pushed myself up again, crawled towards the car, ignored the pounding of my head, grabbed onto the seat and the doorframe and pulled myself up onto legs shaking like a doe. I reached for her, jerking like a puppet on a string, and tried to collect her limp limbs into my arms. She was cold, colder, the coldest she’d ever been, against the overheated skeleton of the car I had to lean her on to readjust my grip like a too-heavy box. 

My fingers burned on that junction, like slipping into a hot spring during winter and catching my foot on a rock, like blood staining the water, like her mom applying anti infection spray to it and smiling at me like I didn’t ruin everything I touched, like it wasn’t my fault her daughter would die. 

The sound of the engine had faded by now, but I knew another car had to come by soon - I hoped anyway - and so I pushed myself up and towards the path of destruction my car had carved into the mountainside. It’s steep enough that when I fall, I slide down a few feet before lodging myself against a tree. Her body had landed underneath mine, and all I can think about is how much she would hate the dirt I got all over her hair, and how I can’t smell her conditioner anymore - the one that she bought once and then kept buying because I told her I loved it so much.

As I push myself up, tears still streaming down my face, I start to babble out apologies like that will help her, like it’ll clean her up or stitch her head wound closed or bring her back from the dead. I stay in front of the trees the rest of the way up, so that if I fall again I won’t slide. When I finally get close enough to the road, I lay her body on it and then push myself up after her. 

There’s no engines roaring that I can hear, but I think I see lights against the now-dark sky. I kiss her head, which is so cold against my lips I worry they’ll get stuck there - like that kid’s tongue on a pole in A Christmas Story. I gather her in my arms again, wanting to stand up and go to the other side of the road, where we can get higher up and be more visible from the road, but when I try to push us up, my head swims and my vision goes black and then we’re both lying down. 

I think I’m dying. The blood loss is finally catching up.

I think I’m grateful for that. I can’t stand to live without her. 

It’s hard to focus, even harder to see, especially when I can’t seem to keep my eyes open. But I hear something strange against the silence of the night, and force myself to look. 

Someone’s standing over us, and my head throbs in time with their voice. I don’t understand what they’re saying. I think they might be Death, and I try to smile. I’m not afraid, not anymore. Now that he’s already taken her. I try to tell him that. 

He bends down, and I see a figure behind him. Maybe it’s her, waiting for me?

She comes over to my other side, takes - her body? No, the figure has red hair, my girlfriend’s is brown. Why is she taking her? I panic. I scream. 

The man - Death? - wraps his arm around my back and says something else in that horrible voice and lifts me up too. 

The pain hasn’t stopped, my heart keeps throbbing, and the man isn’t Death. He’s a stranger, they’re both strangers, and they’re taking my girlfriend. Why? What’s going on? I thrash and he tightens his grip but doesn’t drop me-

I shove against him, and fall, and he lurches to catch me

The movement must have been too much because my head throbs one more time and the world goes black

I wake up to bright lights and white walls and I think this is Heaven. 

Dad appears above me. Is he dead too?

I try to sit up, and the room spins. He pushes me back down. 

He tells me what happened - slowly and softly. I want to scream, and I do, and his arms come up around me like a cage that I push against with all my strength. He doesn’t let go, and eventually the lack of air getting to my lungs makes me pass out again.

It’s bright and sunny the day of her funeral. I don’t remember anything else about it until after, when people are leaving and I am sitting beside where her head should be six feet under. I can’t hear anything except my sobbing, but I feel hands press ruffle my hair from the people passing, as if there can be any comfort now. Then nothing for a while. 

Then, there’s pressure around my shoulders that’s warmer than I can remember being since I first touched her body. It burns, but I lean into it anyway. The person hugging me’s breath hitches and I realize they’re crying too. 

We cry together for a long while, long enough for the sun to go down and for my head to hurt from the dehydration. When we both finally calm down, I look up, and it’s her mother. Her mother that hasn’t spoken to me since her daughter died. Her mother that hates me. Her mother that should want to kill me. 

But she just kisses my head and helps me up. 

I open my mouth to beg for her forgiveness, but she stops me.

“It’s ok.”

[deathbydumbass]

All of Us Will Someday Die (Rock a Bye Baby)

Rock a bye baby, on the tree top

It is October 19, 2009, and a toddler is held in his mother’s arms. She is exhausted, but sings sweet songs anyway, her voice gradually dropping in volume and pitch.

When the wind blows the cradle will rock

They rock together in a plush chair in the mother’s room. A couple childrens books are open and scattered around the floor. A kid’s rainbow xylophone lies on its side.

When the bough breaks the cradle will fall

The chair rocks back, and she thinks of clutching her own mother in this very chair when she found out she was pregnant. Forward, and she thinks of dragging it up into her apartment careful of her bulging belly. Back, and it’s her first day home after giving birth. She’s sobbing too hard to figure out if it’s because of joy or fear. Forward, and she’s in a better place now. She no longer wants to cry every time she sees her son’s face, and he’s quieter in return. Back, and she wonders - just for a moment - if she would go back. If, given the chance, she would decide never to have a child at all. Forward, and she hates herself for thinking it.

And down will come baby, cradle and all

She loves her son more than she loves the bones that give her body shape and the muscle that holds them together and that skin that covers all of it up. She loves him so much that when he learned to crawl, she baby proofed the entire apartment with duct tape and old clothes she shoved on sharp corners. When he learned to walk, she covered the floor in pillows and blankets just in case he fell, and scooped him up with tears in her eyes when he did.

Rock a bye baby, gently you swing

She knows she’ll have to let him go eventually. She’ll need to let him run and play and grow up and move out. Let him take care of her when she grows too old to do it herself, and let him see to putting her in the ground. 

Over the cradle, Mother will sing

But right now, in this rocking chair, she wonders if they’ll get to that point at all. It’s years away, after all, and every day there are 100 new ways to die. A stumble down the stairs, a cold that fills his lungs with mucus, an excited run into the path of a careless car. 

Sweet is the lullaby over your nest

Life is fickle, and Death is eager, and she won’t always be able to protect him. 

That tenderly swings my baby to rest

The toddler finally closes his eyes and, for just a moment, she is terrified he will never open them again.

From the high rooftops, down to the sea

The boy will worry that himself - when he is old enough to worry. Every time he lays his head down to sleep, he doubts that he’ll wake up in the morning. 

No one’s as dear as baby to me

Because Sleep is friends with Death, and don’t friends invite each other over? Don’t they share the things they enjoy? If Sleep decides that it likes him enough, will it call to Death, saying, look, look, look at what I found? The perfect little boy, so peaceful in his sleep, wouldn’t you like to hold him?

Wee little hands, eyes shiny and bright

And Death will say, yes, of course I would. And because Death is not a good friend, it will never give him back again. 

Now sound asleep until morning light

So the little boy won’t go to sleep. How can he? Death stands somewhere behind his eyelids, lurking over Sleep’s shoulder, waiting. When the boy’s eyes are open, he can watch it as it comes closer in sickness or tires screeching, and maybe that will hold it off, like in the world’s worst version of red light green light. But with his eyes closed, he can’t see it move. Maybe when he opens them, Death will be standing right in front of him. Or maybe he won’t ever open them at all.

Rock a bye baby, on the tree top

Still - Sleep tugs at his bones and his muscles and his skin, until his vision blurs from the tiredness. So, he closes his eyes for a few seconds at a time, waiting for sleep to get closer and closer. At first, it’s just a figure in the distance but gradually he can make out its hunched back and faint smile and eyes that glitter like the night sky. He doesn’t pay attention to any of that though, because he can see the cloaked head and the gleam of a scythe over its shoulder. 

When the wind blows the cradle will rock

“Hi,” he says, because it’s nice to greet people. “Are you going to take me today?” He asks, because he’s scared. 

When the bough breaks the cradle will fall 

Sleep looks confused, glancing over its shoulder. Maybe it doesn’t know Death’s there - or maybe it’s faking it. But he sees, over Sleep’s shoulder, Death shake its head. It’s enough for the boy to not fight Sleep when it wraps its arms around him. 

And down will come baby, cradle and all.

The boy and his mother wake up, and it is October 20, 2019, and all none of them will someday ever die.