the night :: c.h. (2)

e i g h t e e n / t h e n e x t m o r n i n g

When you left,
Not without warning or regrets,
Nothing would fill this hole in my chest.
                       still remembering - as it is

T h e N e x t M o r n i n g

As the sun rose, it felt like relief. Everything seemed so simple and peaceful, and as if it was something new that the sky would be tinted in a faint peach color all 12 hours or so. It felt as if things were different now. How different though was something no one could've known.

"Michael, the teachers could've caught you with the alcohol", Michaels mom said as she was giving him a short glance, taking her eyes off the street for a moment. "Afterall you're still underage."

Michaels mom insisted on taking Michael home after prom, - as she was out to work early the next day and she knew that even if Michael and his friends would've told her they wouldn't drink a bit, even the faint chance of her son drunk driving wasn't the risk she would take.

"Mother", Michael muffled, "The teachers were drinking with us"

This comment resulted in her glaring at him, and Michael knew he shouldn't have said that. His mother was stubborn, - there was no chance to lead an argument, period. He rolled his eyes, looked at his phone only to see Calum still didn't apologize for being the dick he is, and looked out of the window. He admired the sunrise and looked at the houses and trees passing by, before they turned into the river you had to cross in order to get to the Clifford's hime. Suddenly his mother slowed down, and before even getting the chance to question why the hell she wasn't driving at a normal speed, Miss Clifford already said "Damn"

Michael turned and looked at the street that was leading to the small bridge, connecting both sides of the river. A police officer stood in the middle of the street, waving his hand for Miss Clifford to pull over.

"Michael, just don't breathe-", she said but as the police officer told her to stop the car and turned around again to walk towards the bridge again, he didn't even want to check on them. There were a couple of policemen, firefighters and paramedics all over the place, surrounding a crane that was trying to lift something out of the water.

Miss Clifford unfastened her seatbelt and opened the door of her car, and without looking at Michael, she told him to stay there.

Miss Clifford walked over to one of the police officers standing closest to the cordon of police, obviously trying to find out what was going on here.

Then, suddenly, without caring, Michael caught sight of what the crane was trying to lift out of the water. With the lump in his throat thickening, his jaw fell a bit and his eyes nearly fell out of his scalp. He opened the door of the passengers seat, almost as if in trance, not once taking his eyes off the crane's weight. Slowly, he got out of the car, and then sped up running past his mom and the police officer talking, and with one swift move he was beyond the cordon trying to get as close to the crane as possible. There must've been his mother calling his name, but he barely took notice of it.

It was as if everything happened in slow motion - Michael ran for his life but so did the police officers from his left and right until he was finally stopped by a police officer stepping in front of him and pulling him back, Michael crushing into him with full rush, his eyes still fixated on the old rusty car with the dents here and there that he knew so well. His mouth was faintly opened gasping for air, and he didn't even try to free himself from the grip of the police officer - it seemed this was the closest he could get to receiving a hug from someone other than his mother who couldn't understand him anyway and would only try to comfort and calm him down which wasn't what was going to happen. His mouth was dry, and he couldn't speak unlike the voice in his head that kept saying No repeatedly.

He caught snippets of words the police officers exchanged right into the water and too early to say if it was alcohol involved and no body yet but nearly impossible to have survived the crash by crushing into the rail.

The officer brought him back behind the cordon to his mom who, looking just as drained, reached out for him to take into her arms. He let her, not caring about her understanding nothing, and it triggered something insife him that stopped him from being numb, but made him sob into her shoulder.

"Mom it's-",he started but got interrupted by his own sobs, "it's-"

"Calum's car, I know"

I killed him. We got in a fight. It's my fault. I freaked out.

Was what he wanted to say, but he couldn't.

He knew his mom knew it was best for him to leave this place, but she also knew he couldn't, so she didn't say anything. Because even if he left this place, even if he went home, he couldn't continue life as if nothing happened, as if he was gonna feel any better if he left, because it couldn't be un-done. He couldn't just forget about it - it wasn't that easy.
You couldn't just go back to sleep like you do after waking up from a nightmare, realizing it wasn't real. There was no calming down from this shock, once and for all.

Because you couldn't just rewind time and fix this. You couldn't bring the dead back to live.

And in the miserable state that Michael was in, he didn't even think of how someone could've potentially witnessed the accident; how someone could've called the police if Calum left the party in the dead of night, crushed into the rail, and dived into the water.