Letters to Juliet

Juliet

    We inhale sharpley as we both realize that he's not there. But for me, the breath got stuck. My lungs stopped working and I couldn't exhale. He's not in here. He's just.. gone.

    "No!" Caroline whispers as she takes a step towards the bed. "NO!" She began to tear at the sheets, almost as if she was hoping to find him hiding under the hospital grade pillow. Tears begin to slip down her cheeks in a torrential downpour as I watch her frantic attempts to move the sheets, like there was one square inch she hadn't yet checked.

    I stood there, watching this mother cry out for her child as her attempts become slowly less and less energetic, and her small frame seemed to deflate as she turned around and fell onto the bed, crumpling a corner of the sheet in her hands. 

    I'd never seen anyone look so defeated. Her shoulders slumped and she let out a sob, and I could almost see the life draining from her eyes as she started to accept that her son was dead. Her only child, hell, her only family, was gone. And she was alone.

    As for me? I didn't feel anything. The world was a dark place, and I felt absolutely nothing. I was numb. To live in a world without Devon? And to know that I had caused it? No. That's not something I could handle. Not something I could feel. 

    So I didn't. 

   Instead, I sat on the bed next to the mother of the boy I had killed, and I put my arm around her. She leaned into my shoulder and began to cry harder than I'd ever seen anyone cry. 

    And at that moment, I knew that I was the most evil person on the planet. So I closed my eyes, and a part of me died in the bed that Devon did.