Visions (Oliver Sykes)

Epilogue : Hold On.

Matt Kean's POV.

I knew it was coming. Oli was a time bomb. I've understood that since he began to lock himself away. I just never thought his time would come so soon.

Today was his funeral. Nothing relgious, of course. It was quite intimate that way. The fact that none of his family was here made me angry. I don't know why I expected them to be here when, clearly, they had made no effort to be there for him before. For me, attending someone's funeral was a sign of respect. But once again, maybe they didn't respect each other in this family.

A man named Josh was here. I hadn't heard of him, but he told me about the few moments he had spent with Oliver. He was truly sorry and looked devastated. I could understand why, Oli was quite attaching when you got to know him. And the time they had spent together was intense.

Sometimes I felt angry at Oliver for leaving us behind. I didn't think he was weak for ending his life. Because I know it was no accident. Yes he was drunk, but since he hated life when he wasn't, I could imagine what he felt like when drunk.

But mostly, I felt angry at myself for not being there, for not doing anything. I had noticed how bad he had gotten in the last months, but still I haven't tried anything. I let it happen.

Deep down, I knew I couldn't have done anything. I knew I had tried a few times and nothing good came out of it. But these things get forgotten quite easily, when the one you once cared for has left.

We were all eaten by guilt, even though I'm sure he didn't want that. He only wanted to be free from the pain. He never meant to make his loss painful for us. Though I'm not sure if he really thought about that at the end of his life. Could anyone think about that when their life felt like a disaster?

I might sound distant talking about him like that, but truth is, I'm scared of what would happen if I let myself feel something. He meant a lot to me, and now he was gone.

There was at most twenty people here. Some of them I had never heard of. But it was okay. They didn't disturb, and that was all that mattered : not to have any disturbance anymore. All this ceremony aimed at was to leave a sensation of peace in everybody's soul.

I think the hardest part was emptying his flat. There were reminders of his pain everywhere. His life was a living hell and we did nothing to change it.

I think he had become schizophrenic in the end. All the drawings and writings showed a troubled soul which created a lot of scenarios of what could possibly happen, thinking it would have happened. We hadn't seen that coming.

The consequences of this were awful. We barely talked to each other anymore. Lee spent all his time smoking his feeling away, Natasha stopped visiting, Nicholls drank a little more each day, hiding away in his flat. I, on the other end, didn't dare to do anything. I could see what smoking and drinking did to people, and I didn't want that. In fact, I feared I might end up depending on something so deathly.

I didn't sleep well at all. All the drawing I had found were haunting me. Maybe I was becoming paranoid, but honestly, I couldn't tell. They all reflected his demons so well, it blurred the limit between imagination and reality.

Demons used to be fictive characters which carried death with them. Everywhere they went to, they sew terror, agony and death. Seeing all of that in Oli's drawings scared me. His demons were real, they lived in our world and had left only death and pain where they hit.

This was tragic. It shouldn't have ended like that, but now it was too late. We just had to grieve and move on with our lives. That didn't mean we will forget him, but only that we shouldn't let his loss affect us so much anymore.

I guess life was just that. Moving on and holding on. Whatever happened, all we could do was learn to live with it, hoping that one day, the pain disappears. And it does eventually. You just have to hold on long enough until then.

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Hey'

I'm quickly posting this before I decide it isn't good enough.

That's it, the very end. Once again, thanks for your support through the building of this story. I hope you enjoyed this.

Have a nice day,
Love,
Laurelenn. xx