for him [bxb] ✔️

28 // gone

He had always liked laying out in the sun.

It had been a gloomy Monday morning; last night's rain drizzling down the walls of poorly paneled houses and the faint cry of birds above as they crossed over the small town to find their home up north for the next couple of winter months.

Being splayed closely together due to the events of the night before, I had been surprised to find Connor absent from my presence the following morning.

By noon, he had not returned to our pitiful excuse for a home and bearing no sign of him leaving, I began to search in grave worry for him. Taking circles around our rock, the only evidence visible were the dried drops of scarlet blood leading toward the lake a mere twenty feet away.

It was to no surprise that the lake had been empty for years- free from bustling harbors, lines of miners, rows of expensive homes and even the occasional fisher of the optimistic kind. The alcove was ours and ours alone.

Pacing along the edge, it had been to my surprise that I found the single raft constructed from rickety beach wood to be gone from its rotting, sedentary port.

I felt my chest beginning to struggle for air and my ability to manage the feeling of shock was growing overbearingly hard as I saw what was in the distance, it being merely visible to my glazed blue eyes. A rickety old raft with the shadow of a human form upon it- later finding out it was the lifeless body of a boy I once called Emerald laying upon it.

Whether it had been murder or suicide was a question that plagued every one of the reporters, lawyers and detectives as each of them did their own investigation as if they could look hard enough to know. It was no question to me.

He had always loved laying out in the sun.