What Remains of You

The Rope

I can not believe that this is already the last chapter- I hope you guys enjoy it as it is extra long for the occasion!

TW:  Suicide 

Rosa was mixing up batter for some kind of pastry or cake and Dennis doubted she herself knew what she was cooking. He finally let the emotions win out over the numb, scared feeling and started to cry.

It was a silent cry. Sobs that shook his shoulders, tears that sprung out of his eyes, and red that rimmed his eye line. It was quiet and yet it screamed a yell for help. It looked like it needed to be responded to, to be stopped before it sucked him in and drowned him in raw, black sorrow.

His knees almost buckled as his mom turned around, an empty paleness deepening in her eyes and a sharp black outline underneath them that he knew was not makeup. Her dirty blonde hair frayed restlessly at the edges, curling into itself as it lay in a rough ponytail that was slowly slipping off due to the greasiness on it. It looked like she hadn't showered in days.

She did not speak, did not flinch. She just stood there, lifeless. Rebecca decided to break the weird tension, unseemingly happy and so unaware of everything. Either that, or she did not care.

"I brought Dennis home mom." She said it with a winning smile like it needed to be awarded and her mom should walk right up to her, pat her head, and give her a little star that says You did it!

Dennis started to cry even more.

He realized with a small amount of shock that he knew she couldn't care less. And he knew his sister that he had grown to love had changed. He was never going to get her back.

"Dennis is dead honey," she spoke, looking directly at him and somehow not looking at him at all. He quivered at her unblinking stare, so empty of its usual joy and happiness.

Rebecca frowned deeply. "No mom, he's right here. See!" She gestured openly at his mangled and dirty figure, "He's right there!"

"I think you should go get some sleep, it's been a rough few days." She talked like a robot with no emotion in her voice, a hollow tin can who had limbs which only seemed to be used for whipping up batter and making waffles.

Rebecca huffed in annoyance and turned to him. He was still staring at his mom who looked like she had lost everything. It wasn't just her family, it was herself. And he knew what he had to do to make it right, he had accepted it on the way home. It would set the world back into its proper motion, it would fix it all.

Rebecca grabbed his arm and shoved him up the steps with one last weird look at her mom like she was the crazy one in this situation. She pulled on his arm and Dennis stopped for a moment as he looked at her hand.

The blood that was in it before had vanished. It was clean, almost sparkling, and he wondered when and how she could have cleaned it off. It was one more crazy and impossible thing after another and like all the other things that day, he shut it off. He tried not to think or feel, tried not to grasp all that had happened. He just let it play out like a tape, knowing what was to come from the tiny picture you could see before you put it in, but still horrified to see the whole thing enlarged before him.

His arm continued to be tugged on by a now clean Rebecca as she led him to her room. He didn't want to be in there, a ghost in a bright pink room that would make the fact that he wasn't actually a ghost, but a living being feeling ground beneath his feet.

He realized that tears were still rolling down his face and that even though Rebecca was gripping his arm, it was shaking. He had to get out of there.

He spoke for the first time in what felt like endless hours of repeating horror after horror.

"I think I'm going to go to my room and get some sleep." It came out shaky with small fluctuations on the word sleep that made him cringe.