Beast of Burden

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

  Life still did not feel normal even a week after the incident.  Mike skipped class most of the days after his sister's passing. It felt dishonorable to go to school pretending nothing happened. It was as if a fog had suddenly fallen around him and confined him in a heavy and hopeless solitude. On the first day, he locked himself in his bedroom.  His bones molded into his mattress and it was impossible to stir from his fetal position.  The only indication of time passing was the sun's rays peeking through his drawn blinds.  The second day, he peeled himself out of bed and played something on his record player.  A slow, sorrowful ballad echoed the walls of his room. Anything to drown out the empty silence in his room.  Someone had left him a plate of food and a bottle of water.  His heart ached at the sight of it and the implication that someone had cared enough to think of him. He took the water and planted himself back into the abyss of his bed.

It should've been him. Elizabeth was sweet, innocent, full of life and joy. She was worth something to the world. Mike was not. He couldn't bear to live another day in a world so cruel. He wanted to see her again, be with her again. Somewhere other than here.

Mike picked up some manuscript paper he had laying around and a discarded pen. This would be his manifesto. A "goodbye" to the merciless universe, his grieving family, his ruthless father. A requiem for his innocence. He did not deserve to be tethered to this mortal coil. The words wrote themselves, scrawled onto the crumpled paper. On the back was a random bassline he had written years ago. On the front was his suicide note.

The clouds fogging his mind dissipated. He stared down at the paper for a moment, finally filled with a sort of adrenaline and a sense of meaning. The motivation pumped his blood and excited his nerves. He could take the decision into his own hands and end it once and for all. Yes, it would be a glorious end. Nobody wanted him around anyway. Yet as he stared down at the scribbled paragraph in scrutiny, he had an epiphany. What was wrong with him? Was this ending really necessary? Mike suddenly became enraged at the ideation flooding his mind. The darkness couldn't win. No, he was going to stay alive in spite of it all. To flip off the universe. Fate wanted him to die quietly, a victim of the cosmos. Fuck that. He crumpled the paper into an angry ball and shoved it in his jacket pocket.

Mike didn't need to end his life, no, just leave the one he was in now. He was trapped in this dark bedroom and the coffin of a bed he had created for himself. He didn't know what time it was, just that he needed to escape.  The room was suffocating him and the walls were closing in. This house was trying to kill him.

Outside his bedroom was empty and quiet. Everything was in the exact same place as it always had been. Anger surged within him again. Things should be strewn across the room, dirt covering the floor, tears staining the walls, the house should be deteriorating and disarray just like his family. The ironic neatness and perfection of it all left a bitter taste in his mouth. How can life continue when his baby sister's life was stolen from them? In a rage, he kicked the leg of a coffee table and knocked over a vase of chrysanthemums. It shattered against the floor into pieces and the flower wilted. Mike looked down at the destruction he caused and felt relieved. Yet it deepened his sorrow even more. He wiped a bitter tear from his eye and left the house swiftly.

-

The day dully dragged on as Jacqueline ghosted through her classes. The courses were too easy for her, her friends were too simple, and everything she worked for seemed so pointless. At lunch, she followed her friends to the courtyard outside the school, as they always did. There was a large crowd of girls making a commotion as she got closer. Some of Jacqueline's friends were giggling and stopped her.

"Jackie, there's someone here for you!"

Their laughs gave Jacqueline a start and she raised a brow.

"What do you mean?"She asked.  She was lost on who would show up at her school.