Member Sections: Weird Rei Angela Wolfwood |
ephemerality.permanenceLast Breath He hated the rain. Rain meant he couldn’t go outside, couldn’t open the windows, couldn’t ambush me under a tree for am impromptu make-out session. God, he was a good kisser though. Granted, my experience was and is limited to a bare few, but the only person I ever kissed was even less experienced than me, and drunken kissing with your best friends never produces favorable results. I mean, who can really concentrate on making their partner moan in pleasure when they’re wondering why the room is rocking weirdly, and there’s a strange looking penguin trying to get in on the fun? But he really hated the rain, and I do too. Not only because he hated it, but because it was raining on the day he died. I mean, who would think that after surviving all the impossible shit we survived, that he would die in a fucking car accident!? Okay, he didn’t technically die in a car accident. He actually died 5 hours later in the emergency room if the local hospital. But my lover has always had uncannily quick reflexes, and he never would have wrecked the Jeep unless the driving conditions were shitty. The fact that the driver behind him wouldn’t have passed a sobriety test didn’t help matters. The fucker is only alive today because one of my friends held me back and convinced me that my lover needed me more when I tried to tear down the hallway to where he was getting treated for minor wounds. Minor wounds, while my lover was fucking coughing up blood two doors down! God, I wanted to send that asshole to hell so bad, I could taste it in the back of my throat. As soon as I was back in the ER though, the other driver was the absolute last thing on my mind. My lover is taller than me, true, but he always had a kind of lithe, slender build, and he managed to look as fragile as glass in that hospital bed. Like the slightest touch would break him. It was too late though, because he was already broken. The doctor on call had taken one look at the amount of internal bleeding, and the mess that the steering wheel had made of his rib cage, and informed me that he would do all he could to lessen the pain, but my lover was toast. He, of course, didn’t phrase it that way, but he may as well have. The only blessing was that the doctor had managed to stop the blood flowing into his lungs, and he could talk. I never would have survived if I hadn’t been able to hear that roughened tenor for five hours until his body finally gave out. His hair was matted with blood, a large bump crowned with split skin and a butterfly bandage on his forehead. His bottom lip was split, cut open when his mouth hit the top of the steering wheel, but his eyes were as bright as always, and only for me. He was doped up on the strongest painkillers available, with the local anesthetics not yet worn off from the surgery, but he kept his wits about him. And he stayed awake, talking to me, and sometimes lying silently as I talked in choked tones the entire five hours until he died. I was in denial, up until the last half hour, I think. I mean, sure, part of my mind knew exactly what was going on, and had already prepared me for the inevitable. But I didn’t really believe, until it was almost too late, that I was never going to hear his voice again, never going to wake up to his soft, cat-like snores vibrating against my chest. Never feel his oh-so-gentle, and sometimes playfully rough hands stroking through my hair, touching me casually, or meaningfully, massaging my shoulders when I had had a late night at work and came home tense. Never be able to touch *his * skin again, feel his bodyunder my hands… Never feel his lips again, never hear him scream my name, never hear his whisper, so soft, that he loved me. I was never going to have him with me again, and it tore me up inside as effectively as the steering wheel had torn his insides to pieces. Finally, I knew what was happening. “Stay,” I said, begged, pleaded, and at the last, shouted. But he only gave me one of those wistful smiles that I hadn’t seen since we were teenagers, and asked me for a last kiss. I would have given him anything, my life had he asked it, and bent over him as the heart monitor stuttered weakly. It was the longest kiss I had ever given him, and I could taste the faint copper of blood on his lips. His last breath, as the heart monitor settled into a steady tone, and his chest didn’t lift again… was mine. It was only later, at the home of one of my friends, that I realized how profound that last moment had been. Past the usual “last-kiss-on-the-death-bed” appeal. I remembered something that my lover had told me once. “The souls of the dead leave through the eyes. It’s bad luck to die with your eyes open, because your soul might get lost without a guide.” “And what if the eyes are closed?” My lover gave me one of those tender, open mouth kisses, then smiled against my lips. “Through the mouth. With the last breath…” His last breathe had been mine. His soul… --owari |
