Eventually I decide I’ll just stay in it.
I won’t go get food or water, I’ll lie here until I fade out, they’ll find my body here. It doesn’t matter anymore, without him nothing matters.
Two days later I’m still in bed.
I haven’t gotten up, weakness and thirst crush me, my mouth is dry as dust, but inside I’ve surrendered, inside I’ve chosen to die and I’m not changing that choice. That’s why I’m lying here, drifting between the hell of what happened and the heaven of what used to be.
I close my eyes and think about our first time, so forbidden and wrong and yet born from such deep love and the desperate need to be together.
I remember Bay’s shyness, his fear, and the enormous trust that bloomed between us, Bay had lost faith that he could ever be close to someone like that, but in my arms everything shifted, I could almost see my touch waking fire in him, as if sparks were flowing into his body, a body that was dimmed and stressed and terrified, melting his barriers drop by drop.
We spent that whole day in bed, breaking through fear, breaking through his resistance, breaking through old wounds and healing them, and when we got up the next day, Bay was like a different person, like life had filled him. We both had marks on our neck glands, marks that didn’t fade.
I touch mine now, its slightly rough surface.
Back then I felt an almost ecstatic joy that this broken, beautiful boy could be saved, that someone so wonderful and good and caring and gentle could walk a path of joy, I was so incredibly happy that we emerged from the darkness together, hand in hand, and built our life.
Now all of that between us, that miracle, that absolute miracle that happened, all of it has been taken away.
Deemed an illusion.
I close my eyes and sink deeper and deeper into the weakness spreading through my body, and I welcome it, and it’s funny, I thought I was the one pouring sparks of life into Bay’s body.
But it went both ways.
We were in perfect synergy, and he poured that energy into me too. It’s really ironic that when I was with him, my allergies and asthma were dormant, as if we were True Mates, as if he healed them. Now I have to dig my inhaler out of the closet and use it basically every hour.
My body refuses to be separated from Bay.
My beautiful boy whom I saved from destruction, and now I realize he saved me the same way, we were a closed system, a set of connected vessels that shattered.
On the third day I can’t get out of bed anymore, the thirst is so strong it hurts, but I welcome the pain because it brings me closer to the end. I start having strange visions, and in them I see Bay standing in the doorway telling me,
"This isn’t real, it was a bad dream, we’re True Mates… somehow, you have to believe it, everything will work out, everything will be perfect."
I smile at the vision, it drifts away, but a moment later it comes back, Bay knocks on the door again, and any second he’ll tell me it was all a stupid joke, that everything was just a dream.
He knocks and knocks, knocks and knocks, until he’s pounding.
"Come in, Bay, come on in, sweetheart, and let’s forget everything, let’s forget the last few days," I whisper, but he keeps knocking.
"Come in, Bay, come back to me, let’s find the happiness we thought slipped away for a second," I mumble.
"Come in, Bay, come back into my arms."
I toss on the bed.
"Come in, Bay, come to me and stay with me forever…"
But he keeps knocking and knocking and he doesn’t come in.
Eventually I start wondering if the knocking really comes from my vision.
It returns as a stubborn pounding drilling straight into my awareness.
Knock knock knock knock knock knock.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to shut it out, but at the edge of consciousness I hear a voice, someone calling me.
