It’s exhilerating to stand this close to the edge of something; to have death staring me straight in the face. The water is thrashing underneath me, and for a moment I entertain the thought that it will just spit me back out if I decide to jump in. But why would that ugly mass of green spit me back out? I am no different than any person whom it has taken before me. In fact, I am probably even more insignificant than anyone else. Sure, I have a kid who would probably cry if I died, and a wife who would hate me for leaving her with a girl not even six and with another baby on the way, but right now, I do not really care. The cliff crumbles underneath my toes and I wish that I was strong enough to find out whether or not my brother felt any pain after he slipped into the oblivion.
It would be so easy to die. To jump off the cliff. To raise my wand and utter a curse that would end this pathetic existence. It would be too easy. So easy that I shouldn’t allow myself to entertain these thoughts. But I so dearly want to see Colin again.
Mother kneels by the body and kisses Colin’s hand. She presses it tightly to her pursed lips. Her tears trickle down his limp arm as a small sob breaks from her while she says good bye to her eldest son. Father has a hand on her shoulder. He squeezes it tightly, but I can’t tell whether it is meant to hold her up or to keep him from losing control. His eyes are wet: the closest I have seen him to crying in my short existence. Louisa, my younger sister, takes my hand and squeezes it tightly. From my peripheral vision I can see her looking up at me. There is a lot of concern in her small eyes. As usual, she sees more in me than I would like her to. I think she senses the pain that lies just beneath the surface of my cold face. I just hope she does not see the guilt beneath that. She knows something happened when he died. Something I have not told anyone.
My mother beckons me over, to look at him. She has made her peace, and my father has already shuffled out, broken and defeated. As she passes by me, she grabs my arm with her tiny little hand. “At least now, he is in the hands of God,” she whispers to me before following my father out. In the momentary pause before she starts for the door, I see that she has lines across her face that I had never noticed before. She turns back to look at me as she walks out and offers a weak smile that breaks my heart. I watch her walk across the parking lot to the car with the shuffle of a cripple. And then I go to face the thing I have been most dreading.
Louisa is already standing beside him, looking at his face as it will remain forever. She reaches out and runs her hand along a face I can’t see. A face I do not want to see. She looks up and sees my hesitant face. “It’s alright,” she says quietly, taking her hand off of the body. She beckons me with her hands. I slowly come to the place where my brother rests. My feet drag as I walk over to him. Do I even want to see him? I want to run, but it’s already too late.
Death has made his body so incredibly small. I avoid his face, avoid the fear that my greatest hope, that this is not him and he will walk through the door any moment laughing at me, will be destroyed when I see it. Louisa walks away, leaving me alone.
I stand in silence for a while, waiting for my miracle. I refuse to look at his face, because this can’t, will not, be him. Mother and father identified the wrong body.
And yet I find myself adressing Colin when I do finally speak. “Colin, I’m sorry,” I say through the heart beating loudly in my throat, “It’s not fair. You were the brave one: you should be standing here, not me. You should be here and I should be the dead one. Hell”you would be if I hadn’t been so damn stupid.”
I break off. I look at his face. It is his as it always will be. He will not get any older, he will not get any taller and his features will not change. Those are his eyes, closed forever, and”God this is so hard. He looks so peaceful now that life is over for him. Like he doesn’t care that he is dead. At least he doesn’t have the look of fear I have been dreading. Doesn’t the killing curse leave a person with a frightened expression in death? It kills me a bit that he looks as he does. Shouldn’t he have been afraid to die? Shouldn’t it have worried him what was coming?
It seems like everyone is saying I shouldn’t blame myself, but I can’t help it. Without me, Mother wouldn’t be crying. Father wouldn’t be so broken. Louisa wouldn’t be looking at me with those knowing eyes. We wouldn’t be dressed in black, ready to send my brother’s body into an incinerator. I watch him for a minute, letting his face burn into my eyes.
And suddenly, I can’t look at my brother any longer. I turn and I run from the mortuary. I run past the car and past the world that does not care that my brother is dead and leave everything behind for the moment. I just run and run and let tears and guilt and pain crush me with their weight.
I run for more than a mile before I notice my parent’s car driving behind me, making sure I do not do anything rash. As I come to a stop I see the frightened looks on their faces. Even Louisa has a glint of it in her eyes. I walk back to the car and apologise to them; it isn’t fair that they see me like that.
My lips become possessed by something I didn’t know was in me and I shout to the crashing waters, “Why did you leave me?” I look heavenward as the first drops of a growing storm fall around me. They land on my face and slowly slide down, like tears I want to cry. I somehow wind up on my knees, hitting the ground underneath me until my knuckles bleed.
I stay there for a moment, morbidly watching the blood slide off my hands in the rain. I hold in a hysterical chuckle. Bleeding is no reason to laugh like a lunatic. But it shows my mortality. How easy this body can be broken. I sit there on my knees until I am soaked through, waiting for the bolt of lightning that should have struck me down a long time ago.
“Dennis, come look at this!” Colin yelled at me as he reached the top of the cliff. The light was hitting him in a strange way: almost like he was a shadow with a golden outline. He looked back at me struggling over yet another boulder about five meters away. He laughed at my ridiculous posture until I was about to yell at him. Then he remembered himself and went back to help, having no trouble getting around and over the rocks in his path. Mother always called him her little monkey, for his toes and his ability to climb into places he shouldn’t go. He once climbed to the top of the tree in our front yard and she had to call the fire department to get him out of that mess.
At last, he pulled me up to the top of the cliff and we looked out to watch the waves.
“You know, I never understood why they called it the deep, blue sea,” he said to me after a moment of admiring the waves. I looked up at him, confused. He noticed me looking and explained further, “I haven’t seen it really blue, have you? It’s been gold and green and other colors, but I’ve never seen water that’s truly blue.”
The rock is crumbling underneath my feet and I can’t help but let everything overwhelm me. I stand again and open my arms to the rain and the wind. This decent into oblivion has been ten years in the making. I am so ready to jump over this edge. I want to do it, I want to leave everything I have ever loved behind. I want to know how he felt when he died more than anything I have ever wanted before. It does not matter that Gabrielle and Alexandria are at home waiting for me, or that Louisa will hate me for leaving her as an only child. I have gone past caring about all of that. I know that Mother will cry and father will stand there gripping her shoulder over my body, trying to keep from spinning out of control and I do not care.
I wonder if they will understand why I did it. Why I had to know. I only told Louisa about that black night. I hope that she will understand at least. I hope that she will explain to them why I should have done this a long time ago. She will help Gabrielle with the baby who will never have to know how truly despicable their father was.
A very small part of me wonders if this is the right choice. A part that wonders whether the baby will be a boy or a girl. If Alexandria will hate me for not being there to protect her when she grows up.
But these thoughts are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. We are all going to die in the end anyway. I am just going to find out what exists on the other side more quickly than most. And I have lived more years than Colin anyway. Why should I have eight years more on this earth than him if he died so that I could live?
And with that final thought, I plunge over the edge.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
-Edgar Allen Poe
Beyond the Sea by Emily_the_Poet
Story Notes:
This is meant to be read like a monologue, which was why I left in all of the contractions and some of the grammatical errors. I have triple-checked it for unneccessary errors.