Before Descended Afternoons

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Trigger Warning: Suicide, death

"How's it going?"

"Not bad."

That was the only response my cousin, Nolan, offered me that afternoon. He was peering out the window, watching the raindrops hit the glass pane and run down until they fell, while the sun's feeble rays illuminated it. We could both see the wet pavement, its paving stones, and the slippery road.

Many people are walking with umbrellas on, which are also glowing, as the afternoon sun sets and puts forth its last rays, much like a dying flower in a vase tries to shed its petals before its time comes.

My cousin, Nolan, has been in this hospital room for more than a month already. I was only watching him, seeing bandages wrapped around both of his wrists with a faint red color plastered on them.

We weren't really close. And Nolan, like how I call him, was only his second name.

I don't know what actually happened. I've only heard about him from our relatives while they badmouth him, calling him names that he's insane and messed up in the head. They said he should be in a mental hospital. They said he's still too young to do dramatic things and that he hasn't experienced more of what they had, yet he proceeded to hurt himself.

The only thing I was sure of was that he didn't want to die. He merely wants to escape.

He wants to flee. From the grasps of his home and from the grip of the uncertain future he was afraid of. From the sharp voices of everyone around him who punctures him like a tire, with their ears open for teas but closed for the truth.

I still could recall how I woke up one midnight because of the ringing of my phone, as well as how I turned down the call, and how it made me not want to answer until I heard Nolan's voice on the other line. I knew it was him because I saw my aunt's number.

"I randomly called this number from my mom's phone." His voice was almost a whisper, muttering under his breath that I could also hear as he kept on panting. I waited for him to continue, but a few seconds passed and I didn't hear anything.

"Hello—"

"I'm too exhausted to explain my soul."

That made me stuck in my own trance. I couldn't muster speaking, as I let what he said sink into me, still wondering what he called me for.

"I will rot in this room forever..." He trailed off. I could hear his shaky breath, and it made me remember the same situation I had in the past.

I was thirteen, and my best friend, Lemery, who celebrated his thirteenth birthday a few days ago, took his own life.

I remember it was also midnight, and I was deep asleep when my phone rang. I awoke. It was Lemery, and when I answered the phone, all I heard was his heavy breathing. I assumed he was suffering one of his asthma attacks, but, like Nolan, he began uttering phrases I felt driven to comprehend, as if I was required to absorb everything at once.

"Is there a way out of the mind?"

Simple question, but I remember asking that same question to one of our subject teachers. I told Lemery about it once, so I thought he was curious about the answer my teacher gave me. But I was wrong.

"Lemery? What's up?"

He said nothing, until all I heard was his heavy breathing until the call died on its own.

I knew the answer to his question that time. But I wasn't able to give it to him.

The next day, I woke up with the news that Lemery, my best friend, jumped from his window with his wrists slashed and one of the metal posts of their fences struck through his torso.