Sixteen Small Deaths (15 page)

“J.C.…”

His eyes now nothing but two serene white slivers, J.C.’s body thrashed as he went into shock. Gregory was silent, but his grip was strong. I stood in the rain, barely able to breathe in and out. As J.C. slipped out of this world, I turned and looked back to where we had run from. A mist had begun to circulate from the woods surrounding the road. It danced in the rain.

#

My mother extended a hand to me. My fingers locked within hers, I squeezed. “This has to be a dream. It has to be.” She sighed and laid her head against my shoulder. My heart would never
again feel comfortable inside my chest.

“Gregory skipped his flight. He’s in the guest room. He might stay for another day or two.”

All I could do was nod. All I was thinking about was the nun two floors above me, her impending death turning into parallel suffering for the rest of us. Both Harold and J.C. were gone, when it should have been her that slipped away. Both of them talked to her right before their minds turned upside down, and I wanted to know what she said to them. I wasn’t a devout Catholic, but I knew strangling a nun with your bare hands would probably not sit very well with God.

My mother brushed her hair out of her eyes and kissed me on the cheek. “I’m going to check on your cousin. Castor, take a nap. Your eyes are bloodshot.”

The last thing I wanted to do was sleep. “Sure, Mom.”

The past three days felt like an extended dream sequence, one with rain replacing the cold sweat. One with the sting of loss at the end. Judi slept two floors above me. I glanced at the clock on the living room wall. Each second that she lived was another second that any one of us could die, and none of us knew why.

#

The rain struck the living-room window as I awoke from my unplanned nap. Yawning, I eased myself up and looked outside. Night had fallen and I was alone in the room. The light from the kitchen peeked into my vision. My mother was sitting at the table, sipping a cup of tea and reading a book. She was always the one in the family that maintained normalcy in the wake of crisis.

I couldn’t help but think of Harold. Only two years away from retirement. J.C., the youngest person in the family, he was a year away from college. A year away from
starting
his life. They were both gone. And Judi was here, rotting away upstairs.

My mother smiled as I walked past her. My hand slid against her chair as I left the kitchen to check on Gregory. Gregory, who in the span of two days had lost both his father and brother. I could hear him sobbing in the guest room. I resisted the urge to knock and instead went to my own room.

The bed swallowed my body, welcoming me into its softness. If I went to sleep forever, maybe the reality of this dream would disappear. Maybe it would all go away. Tossing and turning inside the blankets, I knew that checking on Gregory was something I should have done. When I opened the door to my room, I immediately noticed that Gregory’s was open. He wasn’t in the guest room. The door to Judi’s room slammed from above.

She’s going to talk to him.

Shaking my head, I leaned against the hallway wall and slipped down. Sitting on the floor, I was only wondering what was going on between Judi and Gregory. He could be seeking her angelic solace, or she could be whispering the words of the dead into his heartbroken soul.

Ten minutes or so passed, and Gregory slowly walked down the stairs and past me. He muttered not a single word. Not a single phrase. He stared straight ahead and walked into his room, calmly closing the door behind him. I expected to hear screaming. I expected to hear shouting. Instead, I heard nothing but my own thoughts. When the tears started to form in my eyes, the thoughts disappeared. They dripped down my cheeks and into my mouth. My eyelids grew heavy, and soon they fell.

#

I could hear my mother drop the mug of coffee on the floor. She muffled her own screams as I awoke from my slumber in the hallway. She knelt against the guest-room door, crying. Forcing myself to stand up, I tried to take it all in. The scene in front of me was something I expected. Gregory’s body swung from the
base of the guest-room’s fan. His face bloated and purple, his swelled cheeks about to burst.

My mother heaved panic breaths of air. My bare feet stuck to the wooden panels of the hallway floor. I felt a slight breeze from my cousin’s swinging body. Gregory had tied the bed sheets into a long, white snake of fabric and used it as a noose. His arms dangled by his side. For some reason, I figured that once he threw himself from the bed, he didn’t grab at his neck. I knelt next to my mother and held her for what felt like hours. The rain ravaged the house. Each drop emanated through our bodies. When we finally stood up, she pointed out a piece of paper crumpled in what was left of the sheets on Gregory’s bed.

We will be judged. It will come. It will come soon.

Gregory’s handwriting was in cursive; perfectly-spun letters detailing an unknown fate for us all. The same two paramedics who took away Harold were the ones bringing away my cousin. Their green jackets sopping wet, they walked into the guest room.

“Jesus…”

When we were kids, whenever one of us accidentally spurted “Jesus Christ” in any context other than prescribed by Judi, she’d grab the offender by the ear and twist it. One of the paramedics pulled my mother aside and gave her a small orange bottle of little blue pills. A few hours after Gregory’s body was taken away, my mother finally closed the door to the guest room. When she got to her room, I imagine that she swallowed two of the Xanax and quickly fell asleep.

I spent the remainder of the night watching the rain hit the living-room window. The moonlight struck the evergreen leaves of our front yard, swaying back and forth in the light breeze of the late hours of the night. When morning hit, I woke my mother.

“I need you to stay away from Judi.” Her blue eyes looked back at me, confused.

“Castor…”

“Don’t go upstairs. When she dies, she dies.”

She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “The past few days have been a nightmare, honey, I know. This entire thing feels like a dream. But it has
nothing
to do with Aunt Judi. We see Harold and his boys once or twice a year. They could have problems that we don’t know about. Problems that we
shouldn’t
know about.”

“Mom, we’ve spent a week in Hell.”

“We can’t undo what happened, Castor. My heart is split into pieces, baby, believe me. When the nurse comes by today, we’re going to find out how Judi is doing. It’s a miracle she’s been with us this long.”

I clenched my teeth.

“You need sleep.” She swung her legs over and sat up on the sofa. “I’m going to make some coffee before the nurse gets here.”

She left the bottle of Xanax on the coffee table. When she left the living room, I took two and felt at home on the plush purple sofa against the window.

#

The storm continued to beat down the world outside. The church’s appointed nurse rifled through the dishwasher. My head nestled in the corner of the sofa, I forced myself to drift back into consciousness. It was only a matter of seconds before I was sitting up, about to walk into the kitchen.

“Mister Hallaway, how are you?” I think her name was Betty, or Bobbi. It began with a “b,” I was sure of.

“It’s been a rough week.”

“I know, sweetie.” She pinched my cheek and smiled. Her slender finger turned my skin a light shade of pink.

Bobbi, or Betty, zipped up her leather trench coat. “I’m sure your mother was going to tell you, but…your aunt doesn’t have very long left to live. Her heart rate is very low. There’s nothing else we can do. She might not make it through the next 48 hours.”

I nodded.

“Tell your mom I said bye, and that I’ll be by in the morning.”

“Where is she?”

“Your mother? She came into the room as soon as I finished up. She’s been talking to Judi for the past fifteen minutes.”

Talking…to Judi.

The front door slammed and my heart sank. I ran up both flights of stairs, only pausing once approaching the door to Judi’s room. It took me minutes to grip the doorknob and turn it. The room was bathed in faint light coming in from the grey sky outside. The window was opened and rain was dripping in, slipping down the wall and onto the floor. My mother was curled up next to the bed, her head underneath the bed-frame. I took small steps to her, all-the-while staring at Judi, her body lain out as it had been for the past week. This past week, one of misery, one of tragedy. One of death.

As I reached the bed, I looked above Judi’s dying body. The silver cross was no longer hanging from the wall. My knees cracked as I bent down to my mother. My fingers gripped the side of her arm as I pulled her closer to me. The long end of the cross was buried deep inside her eye socket, the bulbous tissue sticking to its glimmering sides. Separate trails of blood marked her face, seeping onto her white shirt and the floor below her. Long marks were embedded in the floor around her, pieces of her fingernails still stuck in the wood. There was no smile on her face, no measure of acceptance. One of her big blue eyes was gone, desecrated. A simple world of love pierced open, revealing the gloom within.

The top edge of the cross reflected in the one beam of moonlight leaking into the room. Calmly, I brushed her hair out of her face. Standing up, I pulled the chair beside the bed closer to me and sat down. It creaked as my hands brought it closer to Judi. The nun opened her eyes and I felt my spine lock, my hair standing on end. Her bony hand opened and she smiled. I placed
mine into hers, and she grasped it, her cold skin enveloping mine. Judi’s lips parted and the first of her words drifted out.

My mind drifted into the darkness, my soul trying to clutch its safety. Judi opened her eyes, now like little black marbles, my reflection glaring back at me. Something croaked in her throat, a long horrible creaking sound, and my reflection dissipated in a milky white cloud…and I could see it.

I could see what the others saw. Her eyes like crystal balls. Like a filmstrip of the worst day in life that hasn’t happened yet.

And to know this is coming.

With a glimpse of the future in Judi’s eyes, what’s left of my soul, the part that hasn’t withered away…the rest just gives up. Because no matter how bad giving up is, it’s never been this bad. And hanging from the end of a rope doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Running in front of traffic would do the trick. The only thing more heroic than suicide would be to kill everyone else before they see it too.

Because it’s coming. We’ve felt it coming for a long time.

Thank you, Aunt Judi.

It’s here.

Gray spots of sky, the color of purgatory. The thick air hangs around my head and for the past fifteen minutes the only thing I’ve wanted is to die. There was a time I thought I’d live forever, live to see the end of the world. Now, the only thing that seems concrete is the one-inch-wide bullet hole right above my spleen.

Kylee looks down at me with day-glow eyes and the look of desperation. She never wanted this. The smoke from the barrel of the gun drifts in and out of her face and I can tell that every bit of love has escaped her body.

A few raindrops hit my skin and the metallic taste in my mouth is overwhelming. The pavement below me is unquiet and comforting, the perfect place for death, the end of this pain.

The rain mixes with Kylee’s anguish and the last remaining bits of sun circle around her head. Tinges of pink sky break through and I can’t feel the rain anymore.

Two days ago, things were much different. Two days ago, I was a different person.

I never wanted this.

#

Tuesday gripped the edge of the chair in front of me. I could feel her eyes staring at the back of my skull, eyes that could set the controls for the heart of the sun. She was high again and it was only a matter of a few hours before she’d ask me to leave the apartment so she could cry.

I can’t do this anymore, she said. I don’t want my life to be like this.

Her words were shaky. On nights like this, I’d rather be buried alive than to realize I’m responsible for this beautiful girl’s destruction.

I cleaned off the table with a soapy rag and caught a glimpse of myself in the small circular mirror on the kitchen counter. My face was sullen, tired. Cheeks were like pieces of latex pulled over sun-dried bone. I needed a shower, a shave and a good hour in a confession booth.

Tuesday lit a cigarette and its rosy tip inspired me to reach for the pack and light my own. Smoke billowed in my chest, the most comfortable I’d felt all night. My fingers slid across the cracked edge of the table as I searched for any excuse to keep quiet.

You have to say something at some point, Tuesday said. It’s always awkward when you’re here, like you’re not my friend anymore.

My deep breaths responded and I sighed. I remembered the first day I first met her, the chilly autumn wind nipping at my neck, Tuesday’s soft laughter as she kicked the leaves on the ground. Four years later and I’m feeding her heroin.

Britt, you should just leave, she said.

I nodded in agreement and let myself out of the apartment. The dark hallway was surprisingly inviting, the bare touch of silence and the quaint smell of apathy. Pitch black outside the window, I took another deep breath and barreled down the three sets of stairs to the lobby.

It was late November but the night wind held small traces of a warm autumn. I finished my smoke and tapped it out on the stone wall outside of Tuesday’s apartment complex. If the stars were echoing the noises in her bedroom, they’d be washed with her tears, the sounds of losing a battle with herself.

Nearly forty-five minutes and a long walk back to my apartment later, I unlocked the front door and crept into the living room. Kylee was sleeping on the couch, the top half of her breasts poking out of a purple camisole tank-top. I could tell she was dreaming of me, dreaming of everything that we should have together instead of the mess that I’ve dragged us both into.

I gave her a light kiss on the forehead and brushed her blonde
bangs out of her face. Time passed slowly when I stared at Kylee; my breaths were long and sensitive, the air between my lips as smooth as polished glass.