Journey || Erik Durm

♂

ERIK:

               ACCORDING to a 4 A.M. text on the phone on my nightstand, Mama had a medical condition called appendicitis. She would have to undergo an operation to get her appendix removed; "It sounds serious, but it's pretty common," Kellan reassured. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, and you can come to see her when the visiting hours open."

According to a 5 A.M. shame dream, Charlotte and I lay peacefully on Marco's bed, staring at the ceiling that seemed to have no roof. Marco later ambled into the room in a sober stupor, and when he did, the velvety stars from the skies fell to their deaths, relaxing in Marco's eyes, which were plastered on us.

Like the stars on a night sky tended to reside amidst darkness, Marco's pupils sadly glistened in the center of his darkened, anger-clad irises.

"Marco," Lotte breathed. As her watery voice overtook the air, there was an abrupt change in scenery; we were no longer in Marco's bedroom, but at a remote park that I was unable to recognize.

I stood on an isolated corner, watching Marco toy with a football. He flaunted his reflexes by dribbling it around with his foot before tossing it in my direction, but the gesture was far too abrupt, too uncalled for, and so the ball collided with my figure in a personified thud, igniting another change in setting.

"It's not your fault, Erik," murmured a haunting voice.

I gasped, examining the unfamiliar territory: vividly dark skies and the cacophony of late-night crickets. "Emilia?"

"No," answered a sharper, more brazen voice. "Marco,"

"Marco," I repeated, my words soft, contrasting the outer discord.

As my voice faded into the distant horizon, silence creeped into the scenery, settling in like a new presence. More than anything, I desired to see Charlotte, and the thought itself shamed me senselessly.

"You and Charlotte, huh?" Marco asked, shattering my formulating mirage.

"Marco," I implored. "It was nothing."

"You're not sorry," he deadpanned.

I closed my eyes, exhausting myself with a coerced sigh.

I wanted to be sorry. In that very moment, I craved nothing more than to be able to say Marco, never again, in a raw, meaningful manner, but how could I have been sorry for a night like that, when nothing had felt wrong at all?

"Marco," I began again, but he raised a hand as a motion for silence, a gesture that immediately jolted me awake into the real world.

The clock on my nightstand read a quarter to six, and as the waves of objective reality washed over my consciousness, I was gutted by pangs of inexplicable remorse: remorse for having betrayed my best mate in such a way, remorse for having felt attracted to Charlotte, and even more remorse in the recognition that this attraction, even at its most reduced form, was greater than a mere, transient force.

Even as the intoxicants from the previous night wore off, toxic thoughts of Charlotte lingered clearly in my mind, unwavering.

I discerned a faint Rammstein song playing in the background upon awakening, and bolting out of bed, I reached for my phone to turn it off. The lock screen displayed 13 missed calls, and my lips parted after gaining the recognition that they had all been from Mama's cellphone.

I dialed her number frantically, counting the rings it took to reach her.

"Hello?"

She seemed casual and intact, and so I wisped out a sigh in relief.