remember me. (crenny)

six

Craig stayed at Acute for three months before going back to South Park.

I spent most of my time with Stan and Kyle while Clyde made his weekly trek back to town to spend some time with Craig. Every time he came home, he'd give us the update on how his recovery was going and usually didn't bring us back a bad report. There were efforts being made towards his own wellbeing.

Craig was recovering slowly, but he was still recovering.

I made the personal choice to discontinue contact with him. I was not a significant figure in his life, and he wasn't going to make his place as one in mine. We were never really friends. We were just two guys who'd hooked up once in high school and one of us thought that made us something. A one-sided something.

I was glad that he was recovering, of course, but I tried my hardest to put my focus elsewhere. He didn't need my attention.

I remember the peaceful two months that followed.

***

Clyde was screaming.

I threw myself out of bed, knocking into every single wall in the apartment while I ran towards his door. I heard the front door open and caught a glance of Stan and Kyle, alarmed at the doorway. Someone was shouting. "Is everything okay?"

I found Clyde on the floor against the side of his bed. He was sitting on his knees, phone and vape on the floor in front of him. He kept screaming even after he saw the three of us standing at his bedroom door.

He wouldn't stop. He was hysterical. There were no words coming out of his mouth as he cried, just a blubbering mess of sounds.

"Kenny," he sobbed as I made my way to him.

"What happened?" I asked, trying to soothe him. Stan and Kyle didn't take more than a few steps in the room, obviously trying not to invade Clyde's space. "What's going on?"

He started shaking his head, wailing louder. He let out another scream that felt as though it was cutting through my core. I couldn't understand him, I couldn't make sense of the situation enough to know what was happening.

"She's lying!" He howled.

"Who's lying?" I rubbed his back. I begged him in my head to calm down.

"She–the–" he couldn't form his words.

It took five minutes before he could tell us what was wrong.

Eventually, he told us.

I remember throwing up once I left the room.

***

The funeral was small. Mostly family, not many friends. Outside of the Tucker family tree there was me, Clyde, Stan, Kyle, Jimmy, Tolkien, Tweek, and Wendy.

Something inside me hurt knowing nobody else came.

It also hurt sitting through what felt like an eternity listening to his family sob throughout each speech and staring at Craig's closed casket sitting on the platform at the front of the room. It struck me as a sick irony to see himself enclosed in a box for the remainder of his existence, never to be seen again. That had been exactly what he'd strived to achieve the entire time he was alive.

It hurt my stomach knowing that even in death, he could close himself off from the world.

Thomas stood at the podium, eyes bone dry but void of any light inside. "I want to thank you all for coming," he greeted everyone, though despite looking around the room I couldn't be sure he met anyones eyes. "It's nice to see the faces of those who have supported Craig throughout all stages of his life."