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sobutanyway · 9 months ago

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This is a Jaketober collaboration with the lovely @pavartijanuswrites!

Warnings: Jake/Danny, 18+, paranormal, explicit language, violence, gore, medical horror, angst, alcohol abuse, major character death, trauma, ptsd, mental health struggles, feelings of isolation and loneliness, triggers and emotional reactions, hidden love, hospitals, needles, surgery, near-death experiences, grief, loss

Read Chapter 2 here

Jake collapses, as though speaking those few words had severed the tendons holding him upright. He falls to his haunches like a broken marionette, catatonic in his shock.

Am I dead?

“No. No, I can’t be,” He whispers thinly, “I’m not—I’m—I’m right here.”

He’s here, his rich brown eyes watching the room swirl around him, his palms feeling the carpet, his body filling the air. That’s his voice thrumming in his ears as he whispers numb phrases over and over.

“I’m not dead. I can’t be. I’m here. I’m right fucking here.”

But it’s as though his voice doesn’t carry at all, because Josh only lies in quiet slumber on the bed above, oblivious to the soul in turmoil on his hotel room floor.

Suddenly his denial turns an angry tide, the cold disbelief in his belly turning bitter in his mouth, “Josh, fucking look at me!” He bellows past the volume of pounding blood in his head.

But there are only the gentle puffs of breath in return, only stiflingly empty air.

“Josh!” Jake stands and reaches for a handful of beige shirt with intentions to shake him from his sleep and force him to break this suffocating isolation. But his hand only drops into his brother’s chest like Josh is made of glacial sea.

Jake yanks back his hand, rescuing his limb from the withering cold, and instead slams down his fist on the mattress. Again, and again, and again.

Then Jake screams in fury as that, too, proves utterly ineffective. His fist meets fabric without any force, the violent desperation in his outburst not even causing a ripple across the duvet.

Instead, there’s nothing.

Like he isn’t even there.

“Danny, please!” Jake begs, voice breaking with emotion. He feels like he’s cracking at the seams, panic seeping in to drown him like murky lake water. “I don’t fucking know what to do!”

Tears carve hot paths down his cheeks. His chest swells with terror, with all the tears and screams and bitter fury he’s been harboring like a poisonous rot inside.

He can’t beat his fists into the floor. Can’t find simple gratification in kicking the hotel entertainment center or throwing the remote with enough force to shatter it against a wall. He can’t even hurt himself, his previous attempts at pinching himself awake proving futile.

“Wake up,” Jake paces absently by the foot of Danny’s bed. Though it’s unclear who is the subject of his demands—himself or the shapeless mass of his friend sleeping on the comforter, “Wake up.”

Danny lies utterly still, lost to the world as Jake’s shadow passes back and forth unseen at his feet. He doesn’t even twitch.

And Jake stays as formless as a whisper.

“Oh God, I need to—I wasn’t…” Jake runs his hand repetitively through his hair in another desperate attempt at distraction, then gathers a handful by the root. Then he groans in frustration when even that fails to trigger a painful response. He is a shred of mist on the air, a collection of molecules so faint and thin as to evaporate into nothing. He is visible only to himself.

A choked sound throbs from Jake’s throat. His mind is suddenly clamoring with noise, full of all the guitar riffs he’d written and scribbled down for future creative projects. Music he’d make. Faces he’d meet. All the moments he’d been waiting for, the holidays he’d spend with family and friends—all of it now dissolving through his powerless hands.

He’d left a house in Nashville empty, full of instruments that would never feel his touch again. He’d left behind a musical legacy—one he hadn’t finished building yet. There might’ve been children, which now he’d never father, never watch their births and never be touched by the subsequent bloom of their young lives.

Never watch his brothers grow up.

Jesus Christ, my brothers.

“I wasn’t ready,” He weeps, and suddenly his fragile composure is gone. Loud, anguished sobs fill the room. They rip from his throat and squeeze the breath from his lungs, his vision becoming swarmed with the tears, “I wasn’t fucking ready.”

The strength bleeds from his knees again, and Jake sinks slowly to the floor. He grinds his palms deep against his eye sockets, feeling the salty wetness of his tears as they ooze around them.

Then he sobs, unheard, unseen. Alone.

Jake rests, cross-legged and vacant against the floor of Sam’s room.

There aren’t any tears left. He’d wept out everything in him for what felt like hours, curled and debilitated on Danny’s floor like a wounded man. And now he waits alone in the night as a single hotel lamp breaks the fathomless darkness around him.

His back rests in the cold corner where walls connect, eyes on the glimmering beads embellishing the ankles of his pants. There, they form a monogram—two letters, a goblet, and a skull, positioned at each corner of a cross. ‘J’ and ‘K’ gleam at him from the darkness—his name, his last remaining identity. Jacob Kiszka: a man who had glimmered like these gems, only to fade into obscurity before his prime.

Jake’s fingers repetitively roll a short length of the beading, hanging like pendulous teardrops from the silky fabric of his jacket. The breast of the jacket bears a motif of a sword, beginning at one shoulder and ending with a bloody point at his hip. At the center, where the blade is bisected by the open hem at Jake’s sternum, the embroidery creates an artfully gory depiction of bloody wounds, as though the sword had pierced through his exposed flesh.

Jake snorts a halfhearted and humorless laugh. It’s almost poetic now, the way embroidered scarlet slashes and dangling trails of beaded blood had foretold a grisly end.

Because he’d died by bleeding out. That much Jake has deduced. He’d seen it in Josh’s room, in all the rusty blood that had soaked that pearl colored jacket. Although there’s a swath cut out of his memory, he can deduce that Josh had been holding him at the end, had maybe screamed and wailed and begged as he’d slipped away.

Another tear slides silently down Jake’s cheek as he shakes the thought away. He shoves the tear from his face and groans in agony. He can’t recall how it happened, but he can add the details together in his mind, and the reality feels like a knife in his chest.

“Josh, I’m so sorry,” His words numbly slip from his tongue, “I didn’t want to leave you.”

Then a movement catches his attention—the slow lift as Rose’s canine head rises from Sam’s bed.

For a moment she just waits in the stillness. She just lies there, curled and warm beneath Sam’s arm, black eyes searching the darkness.

“Rose?” Jake scarcely dares to hope.

Then she squirms away from her master’s possessive embrace and leaps gracefully to the floor. Brown paws meet carpet with the gentlest of sounds, a pitter-patter like four heavy raindrops.

“Hey, girl. I’m here,” Jake whispers.

Lanky legs stride closer, her short face growing nearer, until Rose stands mere feet from him. Her dark eyes travel up and down his shape, as though curiously exploring the borders of this shadow in the corner.

“You can see me,” Jake gasps.

As though in answer, Rose gives a short whimper.

“Can you…” He leans forward, the jewels on his jacket dangling and clicking musically together. He stretches a hand forward, fingertips extended in the blankness, “Rose? Can you hear me?”

The glistening wetness of her leathery nose draws near, snuffling curiously for his scent. If Jake had any permanence, he might’ve felt her warm breaths, her gusty sniffs, her cool nose.

But there’s nothing. Just the fragile sense of connection, the only warmth in this cold reality.

Jake’s lips spread in a disbelieving smile, “Hey, good girl. I wish I could pet you.”

Rose lies at his feet, as though aware of Jake’s crushing loneliness, offering the invaluable gift of her company.

“So…What now? Why am I still here?” Jake shakes his head. He feels silly speaking to this animal like she can comprehend his words. But then he presses on, desperate for any contact with his old life, “Isn’t there supposed to be a bright light? Or is the Grim Reaper running late?”

Rose sniffs, almost resembling a laugh.

“Maybe God feels bad for dealing me such a shit hand,” He reclines against the wall again and unfurls his crossed legs, smiling as Rose moves to fondly lie between them, “Maybe he’s letting me haunt your asses.”

Rose skeptically raises her eyebrows.

“That’s not it, huh?” He desperately wishes he could scratch her dappled back. Instead, his hands fidget endlessly with the glass beads on his coat, “Is it because I’m pissed off? Am I gonna become a poltergeist or something?”

The darkness around him presses, broken only by the solitary lamp and the warm soul of Sam’s dog positioned softly near his lap. She’s so close, almost touching the black silken fabric of Jake’s inner thighs.

“Be nice if I could touch things. I wanna break everything and scream at the sky.” He bitterly confesses.

But Rose lifts her head, concerned.

“Oh, I won’t, good girl,” He laughs gently, “I just…”

He passes a glance around the lonely room. At Sam’s slumped form, propped up against the headboard. Those mysterious cuts and bruises look horribly out of place, darkened by the dim lighting and interrupting Sam’s youthful face with so much pain. Even in sleep, Sam’s smooth skin looks haggard, as though he hasn’t slept in days.

It makes sense, now, why Sam looks so ruined. Why Josh had slumped into bed, all his infectious joy withered into nothing. Why Danny had indulged in hard liquor, then retreated to weep alone in his bed.

They’re all mourning. Breaking and crumbling apart with the unfathomable pain, living with the reality of losing a brother. A twin. A friend. A pain Jake can’t begin to imagine, had it ended differently and the roles been reversed.

“Why, Rose?” His throat closes with emotion.

The pitbull gently laps her tongue out, resembling a dog-like kiss.

“Why? Why did I have to die?” The bloody gems in his fingers are a small comfort. At the very least, they offer a distraction for his restless hands, “I didn’t want to hurt them.”

Rose whimpers again, those kind eyes spelling out an empathetic It’s not your fault.

“Maybe. I don’t fucking remember,” He spits. Then he falls utterly silent, allowing the stillness in the room to swallow him. He plays with the ends of his hair. The edges of his clothes. The beads and embroidery and hand-stitching on the beautiful garments.

Then he comes to a realization.

For all the unfairness and all the cruel reality that had been spat in his face, these clothes offer one shred of comfort: that he’d died in his stage gear. He’d died in a place that he loved, with his closest family nearby.

With his brothers.

“Okay, Rosie,” Jake deliberates, his black boots clunking rhythmically on the carpet as he paces the length of the hotel room, “I wanna know how it happened. Maybe I’m still here because I have to make peace with it.”

Rose watches his motion, transfixed, the ‘C’ shape of her tail lapping back and forth on the carpet.

“Or maybe God just has a fucked up sense of humor,” He mutters to himself, “Maybe this is what happens when you die—you have to watch all the stuff you’re missing,” Then he jerks to a stop, pulling a sharp gasp, “Oh fuck. Maybe this is hell.”

Rose twitches at his sudden movement, eyes concerned.

“Yeah, you’re right: If it were hell, I don’t think I’d have you, sweet girl,” Jake smiles deeply. He wishes more than ever that he could ruffle her ears, dig his nails in where she likes it best.

But Rose seems to feel his affection, regardless, her eyes warming into a friendly smile. She lays her head on her crossed paws, that tail still flopping back and forth as she watches him contentedly.

“Danny was looking at something, right? On his phone?” He muses, wracking his mind for any traces of evidence he may have missed. He resumes his aimless wandering, the soles of his boots skimming softly against the carpet, “A stage. But that would make sense, huh?” He gestures animatedly to his current suit of glittery regalia.

Rose sniffs in agreement.

“Did I get shot?” He halts in place again, horror drenching his chest at the possibility of his life being maliciously stolen by someone in the crowd. But then he hesitantly resumes again as more facts add up, “No. No, Josh and Sam are cut up. Whatever it was, it hit them too.”

Jake glances at Sam’s unconscious form. He breathes evenly, body slack and awkwardly slouched where his torso lies propped against the headboard. His eyes are closed and shadowed with exhaustion, the bruise across his jaw almost like a mottled splash of paint—so wildly out of place across his soft young features.

Jake aches for him. He knows that crooked slouch will take its toll on Sam’s spine, leaving him in twisted agony when he wakes. Jake desperately wishes he could cradle Sam’s soft cheek in his hand, support his torso, and lovingly correct his position in bed by easing him onto his side. Jake wants to take every pain away.

But he’s so powerless, only able to stand and watch.

“Fuck, I hate this,” He groans.

I know, Rose seems to say in the gentle wags of her curled tail.

Then a bolt of memory comes, “The news.”

When Jake had found Danny at the hotel bar, something had flashed across the screen. He hadn’t realized it then, but perhaps the shaky iPhone clip had been tied to the exact moments succeeding Jake’s bloody end. The throngs of people screaming and running, bottlenecked in a narrow hallway as though desperate to escape. Perhaps there’d been a freak accident—equipment malfunctioning, pyrotechnics gone haywire, electrical wires catching flame.

After all, it had suddenly struck Danny with a bout of emotion, prompting his sudden retreat to his hotel room. It had affected him deeply.

Perhaps there’s more to the story.

“I’m going downstairs, Rose,” Jake paces hurriedly across the room, “I won’t be gone long. Maybe they left the TV on, and I can finally make sense of this crazy, fucking—”

Jake’s hand falls through the doorknob.

“Goddamn it!” Of course he can’t touch the knob. In his haste and excitement, Jake had forgotten just how powerless he’d been rendered.

But… He frowns, perplexed. He stares in blank consideration at the diagram of the fire exits, his mind racing.

How the hell did I get into Josh and Danny’s rooms? He doesn’t remember walking between them. Only appearing in each place, as though the film reel of his life had been cut and spliced, removing those details from the picture.

Had he really forgotten? Or had he only phased through states of existence? Had the molecules of his form been broken apart and reassembled again wherever they saw fit?

Or is this like a dream, his consciousness filling the spaces of things he finds familiar?

Jake frowns deeply. Then he closes his eyes. If he can phase through doors and across distances, he wonders—he prays—that he can do it intentionally.

He pictures that hotel lobby. The faceless people milling about. The tile floor. The television screen revealing the details of a horrible tragedy.

And when he opens his eyes again, the space around him is different.

What the fuck?

There’s a ceiling-high display of colors filling every corner of his vision. The lighting is almost blindingly bright in contrast to the dim hotel room he’d left behind, the warm yellow glow illuminating the garish labels of a hundred brands of candy. Chocolate bars, gummy worms, gum packets—the array before him is both staggering and confusing.

Jake takes a step back, straight into another pool of blistering cold—something he now recognizes as passing through another soul. With a yelp of surprise, Jake sidesteps into safety, retreating from the disorienting sensation and finding refuge beside a display of Beanie Babies.

There, filling the space beside him is the form of a pubescent girl, dressed casually in bright pajamas, golden hair wadded into a bun atop her head. She reaches one slender arm toward the wall of candy, makes her selection, and withdraws a packet of cherry SweetTart Ropes.

Jake swallows. He’d spotted a short length of IV tubing marring her inner elbow, taped into place with clear adhesive. The girl looks pale and sickly, her narrow nose full of oxygen tubing, which trails in a long loop on the floor and eventually ends in the backpack weighing down her frail shoulders. It drags at her slippered feet as they carry her toward the checkout counter.

“Hey, watch out, honey,” A bright and friendly voice comes from a display of candles and bracelets.

Jake almost chokes with surprise. With a fierce longing and a crushing, agonizing pain.

Mom.

She wears a rumpled tee shirt and capri cut jeans, her graying hair bundled into a lackluster braid over one shoulder. But her face wears the same warmth Jake remembers, the same kindness in her coffee brown eyes—the same shining, warm eyes Jake had inherited.

Karen smiles softly, gesturing to the hazard at the oblivious teenager’s feet, “Don’t fall, okay?”

“Thanks,” The girl slings the tubing over her shoulder and digs in her pajama pocket for change.

“Momma,” Jake’s voice breaks. Seeing her again is like opening a wound on his heart, the blood seeping out of him in the form of brimming tears.

She says nothing, only falls in line behind the girl at the register, “I’ll get your candy for you, hon,” Karen offers, gently leaning around her and placing her finds on the countertop.

“Thanks,” the girl says again, clipped and short, then ambles away with a candy rope dangling between her teeth.

Jake steps nearer, awestruck. He wonders if she knows. If his brothers had told her the news, or if they’d wanted to preserve her innocence awhile longer. She looks too sunny, too generous and sweet to be fully aware of her son’s gut-wrenching end.

“Mom, I’m so sorry,” Jake draws near enough to almost see Karen’s purchase, resting there on the countertop.

“Just this for you, ma’am?” The clerk asks.

“That and the candy,” She smiles.

“Oh don’t worry about that, Karen. I’ve got it,” The cashier smiles, then pats the fuzzy head of the toy on the counter, “Good choice. Big man will love it.”

It’s then that Karen cracks. She nods her head tearfully, giving the doll a gentle stroke down its fuzzy belly, where a blue heart is stitched, embedded into its fur, “You think? Thanks, Marcus.”

Now Jake can see it: a teddy bear, seated on the wood. Its limbs are well stuffed, filling out its soft shapes and chubby brown belly. Black button eyes watch kindly from the fabric face, the stitched features offering a comforting smile. And the soles of its feet are a different fabric, blue plaid flannel accenting its deep brown fur.

“He’s the same color as his eyes,” Karen sniffs in an attempt to compose herself, “I think it was calling his name.”

Something closes Jake’s throat.

She could be buying this bear for anyone. There are many people in Karen’s life with eyes that shade of brown.

“Want a bag?” The clerk—Marcus gently offers.

“No, that’s alright,” Karen swipes her card, smiles, then tucks the bear under one arm, “I’m just taking it upstairs.”

Jake numbly follows. But doesn’t allow himself to feel. He refuses to acknowledge the nagging and beautiful glimmer of… Is this hope?

He tamps every possibility, every emotion down to brew and writhe in his belly. He only follows as his beautiful, beautiful Momma exits the double doors of the gift shop, eyes down and Teddy securely tucked under her elbow.

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