8: Dear Erik
Wilhelm's letter to Erik
Dear Erik,
I don't believe in ghosts, but if I did, yours would be attached to my hipbone.
Now that I'm not on pain meds anymore, I find bits and pieces of you all around the castle. What I mean is that you're one of those undying souls whose living left a permanent stamp on every surface you touched.
At the hospital, my sleep was unperturbed (or at least, if I had dreams, I never remembered them). Now the same nightmare sees me nearly every night. I wake up, and I huddle my blanket, and I sink my face into my pillow, and I feel so unbelievably stupid.
Always, your broken face visits and revisits me. I hear sirens. I see your head, split-open and bleeding all over the steering wheel. My hands are painted red, your red. I see your snapped jaw, your blood-stained lips, and your hollow eyes. You petrify me.
I wish I never spoke.
Mom's not doing so bad, in case you were wondering. I've caught her crying a few times, though never publicly (you know her, always so cautious of our image). She weeps when doors are closed and she thinks she's alone with the moon. You know she loved you more than anything, her golden boy, her dearest prince.
Dad acts like he lost both his sons that day. I catch him staring at your empty chair at dinner but never at me. I'm his live and breathing son, yet he's forgotten how to adress me. I'm the foul, biting reminder of you and your absence, maybe. But then again, I guess Dad's always been closer to you, and I can blame him all I want for never trying to see me the way he saw you, but maybe it's my fault, too, for never establishing a better bond between us.
As for me, I've been reading a lot (believe it or not). Just to pass the time, I think, and perhaps to find answers in old poetic utterances. But none of these poets have ever been me, I'm afraid. Recently, I read something in a book about sorrow making its chamber in blood; thus explaining why pains pass with time. You'll bleed it out or filter out the toxins in your veins, and like all things, it will vacate. I'll admit that I'm skeptic of the verity of that theory. Or I'm wondering just how much blood I'll have to shed for it to go away, if it ever does. Shouldn't I never be rid of my pain?
These past two months have taught me that I will never be the same without you. I will never be pure again, if I ever was. From now on, I will be chafed elbows and bloodied teeth. I will be woven in dirt and soot and debris. I won't be fixed, and I won't be healed, but I will remain mean and rough as monolith.
I'm not quite sure what's brought me to write to you, honestly. Maybe I'm imploring for your forgiveness, so you see my misery and know I'll forever bleed for what I did to you. Or maybe I'm making sure I never forget. And there's no greater sadism than the wish to remember everything.
Back at the hospital, I used to see your teethy smiles and the glint of blithe in your eyes when I thought of you. That's how I remembered you in the haze of the drugs, so alive and sheer. Now all I see is your punctured flesh and soulless gaze and deconstructed bones. No one else will remember you like this, only me, the idiot who fooled you into your death. And it's all I deserve, really.
I don't want to be numb; I want to feel my sorrow until the light in me goes out. When I deep-dive into my veins, and my radials bleed in torrential streams, I feel the keenest I have in months, however sick and twisted it may sound. It's like a dance, and I find salvation in rehearsing it day and night. Cut, cleave, butcher, feel something. I look at my blood, and I know there is no sorrow in my veins, for it all resides in the unplumbed depths of my soul, and I should taste it until I'm slain. Some might say I've turned into an addict, but I'd hate to imply that I ever found even the slightest rapture in this. Because I don't. This is my own little sadistic way of remembering.
I don't know why I'm still writing. You wouldn't want to hear any of this. No one would. That's why nobody will ever find this letter, and I trust that you won't ever read it because word doesn't travel across realms and never will.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm still on the side of that road, where I'll forever stay. I was 16 when you forsake me there, and I feel that I'll stay 16 forever.
Merry christmas, Erik.
—Wilhelm
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