Deflower

Epilogue

October, 1981. Eleven o'clock.

Allistair Dupont had viewed, recollected, revisited, and lived death more times than he could count. It ran through his nerves and vessels and took the form of crimson blood seeping through his wounds. It dashed past him in a bottomless pit that stemmed from unwanted and painful phone calls from prison, from strained chuckles and raw emotions that flooded every ounce of his body upon the gravelly tones at the other end of the line. It all came back to him in flashes, when he permitted his fingertips to brush along the ink that tainted the sheets of paper addressed to him—words clad in familiar handwritings.

She was in everything. In the roses that were colorful and pure but rotten by the part that attached them to the earth, in the narrow of his bones and the look in his eyes. She was everywhere. And it wasn't just her death, her unfortunate demise, but the wicked letter she left behind in the most dulcet way. Allistair felt, and it made him never want to, again.

(And it didn't only haunt him. Thomas, too, dreamt endlessly of the moment Lourdes took his grandmothers life and awoke from his midnight slumber, sweat-slicked and horrified. Sometimes, Thomas swore he saw her standing there when he closed his eyes, in the corner of his cell. Kyle would laugh upon this.)

Allistair had never been fond of regret, or sorrow—let alone both in some sort of depressing combination. Years before, to him, it was more than simple; he was human, he made mistakes that would inevitably affect his life and those of others, though he would never regret them. What was done, Allistair had always supposed, was done—but now, not quite. Not close. It was an all overwhelming emotional hurricane flooding over him, when he stood next to Thomas and Kyle and he heard the screams (he still hears them during the night) that made Allistair doubt everything he had become. The playboy... the heartless... It made him want to become a better person.

One year after the incident, Allistair chose to pack his bag and seek for freedom—for forgiveness for himself— elsewhere. But, no matter how warm the sun in the southern lands made his body feel, there always remained an ominous cold. He indulged himself into the art of prayer, visited the place she was named after, and lived on water and bread for months on end, in heavy contrast to what his parents suspected (they supposed he would drink himself to death and live a life full of women, parties,...) But it was never heavy music, or chattering individuals enjoying a drink... it was always a lone heart beating and raw emotions flooding him, drowning him. He realized that fleeing was never the solution.

To allow his demons to become not more than told tales of rust and dust, he would have to face them.

And the largest poltergeists that still remained a plague, were the ones in the figures of teenage boys with such innocent eyes but the minds of the most devious men. For despite their better times—of affection and understanding—Allistair had fallen into a deep and bottomless pit of scorching hell. Although at seldom times a beautiful hell, a hell at last. Few months ago, Allistair visited his friends for the first time, and undid himself of his juvenile weaknesses and stood victorious, as a man, over the angels of darkness he knew to be his sole comrades. Upon the soul of the sole person he had ever loved, upon her beautiful, innocent, and beloved soul, he swore that he would never come see, write, or phone them again. The knowledge that both would rot away in a small cell gave Allistair more satisfaction than any of the girls he had been with ever did.

The second demon he was more than fearful to face was the reason why Allistair breathed in the smell of the salty ocean. Clouds drifted overhead and it seemed that a storm was to soon don the heavens—a storm in more ways than one. He had stood at the edge of a cliff that overlooked the beach of the small town, contemplating what to do, where to go, once he had this over with. Deciphering if he would feel much more free if he would just jump and carelessly throw himself on the ground, he felt like an unfortunate child attempting to rescue his sinking ship from the reckless and untamed waves of the ocean; and the more water he bailed into his bucket, to dismiss into the sea, again, the deeper he appeared to sink.

Sunlight struggled to make its way through the heavy clouds, the thick fog, and the wind bathed in sea salt, but it still managed to; and to Allistair, this was a sign (no things were coincidental to him, anymore—fate was what he graced most things, both good and bad, to). The scenic vista before him drove him on to do what he came there to do.

When the door opened, when he was lead towards a familiar living room, when he sat down around the long, walnut table and when he was offered a refreshing or a warm drink—a cold sweat flood him and a shaky hand wiped the glimmering tendons of moist off his ivory flesh. He was offered unparalleled kindness, and he knew he didn't deserve it. He never was a bad person, and in the jaded ruins of his aching heart, he knew so, but it was far too soon for him to admit this.

He deliberately kept his lips pursed and sensed every movement that came from besides him—he felt unnerved.

"What can I do for you, son?" A gravelly tone sounded strained and forced, and he recognized ounces of pain in it.

He couldn't any longer keep up his composure. Hiding his face with his large hands, Allistair felt the salty tears pour down his cheeks. They were much more hollow than they once were, much due to the fact that he had lost far too many pounds. He looked particularly peculiar, unfamiliar, to the man that sat across the table, in the unflattering lightning of the room. His skin was exceptionally fair, compared to the beautiful tan he once had, and his cheekbones protruded gloriously from his flesh. All this was sufficient for father Guerrero to realize one thing: that the incident had eaten up a boy and spat out only a shimmer of who he once was.

"I'm so, so sorry," Allistair managed to choke out from behind his fingers—he couldn't let the man see him. He didn't want to.

Finally, he whispered out the words he kept locked inside of a golden cage for years. Words was too afraid to say, before.

"I miss h-."

However, before Allistair could ultimately finish the sentence he hardly managed to compose without tears swelling in and taunting his eyes, a dainty pair of arms wrapped around his muscular torso and he felt himself pulled against father Guerrero's soft chest. The male tore himself away from the embrace slowly after a moment, and though having been unable to meet his unforgiving stare a little while before, Allistair now finally gathered the courage to lock eyes with him. And just like that, Allistair felt as though all it took was a brush of wind to make him fall apart.

Shatter.

Red circles lined the mans orbs—eyes his daughter had inherited, and the sight of them sliced like razors, according to Allistair—but he looked the same. He was the same man with the same loving eyes, no matter how faulty you had been in the past, no matter how many sins there were written next to your name in the thickest font there was. There hung a familiar necklace around his neck, and Allistair was quick to avert his gaze as soon as he caught sight of it. For a brief moment, there was nothing else heard but the sound of air and heartbeats, and their eyes spoke louder than words.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"Her mother,"—Allistair halted for a second when he recalled there to glimmer morose in the man's eyes, but continues nonetheless—"Where has she gone?"

"I-I divorced her, a while ago—it caused me to become an outcast in my own church. She confessed to mishandling Lo for years..."

Raw emotion overtook every cell in his body. The sun brightly began to stream through the windows, and it was clear, to both, that the sun bathed the town in a colorful palette, when to the two men in the living room, their world was nothing but an opus of shadows. The older man of two reminds the younger one of the words that Lourdes once told him; Don't be afraid to live, and then you will not be afraid to die.

"Do you, sometimes, see her?"

"All the time."

And neither wanted to see her, ever again—or imagine her standing there, next to them, when they stood before their bathroom mirrors, or imagine them laying next to them in the bed when it is merely air that occupies the space—if they could not touch, hold, or cherish her. Not if they extended their fingertips but did not brush against that familiar, delicate flesh. When they would meet her and pull her close to them by the grand gates and know an eternity of love, feel stardust pumping through their veins, that was when they both did want to see her.

And until then, they would live. (And for two beings with such little belongings—no love, no soul, no heart—, life was enough.)