Blaze

6. Voices

There's a liquid-dulled cracking noise—the kind two jaws would make as they finally manage to break a tough nut.

Crunch.

And confetti in the air.

The kind that's thick and red.

Screams. Jackie and Austin's. Like something you'd hear after you land a good kick. Nothing from me. My mouth simply flops open and stays like that; my lips silently rub each other as I try to say something and fail. And fail.

Ketchup, I think, stupidly. Like ketchup confetti.

Like Tim's head contains nothing—not his brain, his thoughts, or his spirit, nothing—but a sackful of crimson mush and thick horror and the odd overly-white bit of bone.

Flying. It all goes flying. A quarter of his head goes flying. Then—splat! His knees buckle. Although he only stands a few meters ahead, he falls a universe away. His body hits the ground, settles itself, stops moving, but his eyes, I swear they can still see, his mouth, I swear it still seeks water. Thump. His arms are at his side, his hair darkening, his skin soon to pale. Blood forms a grotesque halo around his head. Then a river. Then an ocean.

Like he fell asleep on a red pillow.

No.

No.

Death isn't sleep—sleep implies the option of waking up. Death is a life of darkness and forgetting oneself and others. A life without motion or sound. A life where those who abandon are in turn abandoned.

Death is a life lived backwards, staring up at the soles of the living's shoes.

I wait for the heat, or the cold; neither comes. My heart beats so steadily it's unnerving. Nothing comes but the lukewarm in-between of rational thought—the one thing I need to avoid at the moment. I shouldn't think of the crumpled body as Tim. It shouldn't be allowed to be thought.

But a small voice inside me betrays me.

He's dead he's dead he's dead he's dead he's dead.

He's dead! He's dead!

He's dead!

I try to scream, but all the texture of my throat condones is a raspy wheezing that makes me sound like I've been chocked. I have. Pain flares in my mouth and esophagus in response, reminding me it's been too long since my last drink.

He's dead.

I know it now.

My head doesn't move to glance at Jackie or Austin; neither do I react as the scraping, grunting, and wetness sounds resume (the Bandits have presumably gotten back to moving the deer). Instead, I look to Tim with unseeing eyes and try to breathe. It's hard. The air is thicker. And something blurry's in my eye. Something I can't blink away.

"Tim," someone says, but if it's me or Jackie or Austin or all of us at once in some kind of strange harmony, I can't say. The alarm bell is still in my head.

He's dead. He's dead.

Tim's dead.

He's dead he's dead he's dead.