Higher

(-30) (-40)

I don't know what happened, but all I can recall was that we were taking a walk one night. It was an evening of clarity. There were no stars nor clouds that littered the endless domain of the Gods, nor were there any unsettling sentiments that began to stir in the deepest recesses of my figurative mind. This was the reason why I never came to trust my intuition, after all, because it would always end up mistaken. Although the results and causes were most often of frivolous matters, they were still occurences nevertheless.

I could never have imagined my fate would end up in such a manner. After bearing witness to a friend's death, his guts spilling, the tires smearing the black asphalt with his thick red blood, I never expected myself to be hit with such blunt force. I didn't plan to get myself a traumatic memory that would soon be the cause of such things I could have stopped if I were not broken by guilt at an early stage. I watched as the boy who had been beside me hit the ground, his knees thudding against the road. Before I knew it, I began to yell and scatter myself among the packed crowd.

"He's still breathing! Somebody call an ambulance--"
"Stay where you are, kid. This is a crime scene."

The least I would have expected was Oliver speaking to me with such hollow remorse that might have been one of the things that caused me to fear the reaches of human beings. His empty stare that had been a stark contrast to his heavy-hearted words was probably one of the causes of my early trauma. It was otherworldly. It was not just inhumane; it was beyond cold, brimming with intensity brought upon by a diffetent kind of sentimentality. It was akin to the guilt that sharks would feel as they snapped their jaws on their juicy prey.

I heard sounds, but it seemed to my tired, fearing eyes as if his lips failed to move in synchronicity with his tone. His hand on my shoulder felt colder than the evening air, its sharp and distinct bite cutting not only through the fabric of my clothes but impaling my very sanity in the process. He was not someone to be reckoned with, and the force around him was scary. It was not intense. In fact, it was quite the opposite. The pressure was brought forth by the lack of presence in the aura that surrounded him.

"It's alright. Don't panic. Len can get through this." he let out another one of those silently deafening sounds of a smile. "He's always been a strong piece of work."

The way he said it sent chills down to the very tips of my toes, ripping my nerves out of their respective control centers. I could feel my bones rattle inside my body, both from shame, self-loathing, and fear, from the one person whom I never would have expected to affect my life in such a way.

A lady, who was in her pink apron carrying a bag of groceries, probably extra ingredients for tonight's meal, approached the scene and immediately recoiled. She repeated the words, 'dear god', a few times, and performed a Christian ritual before approaching me and Oliver.
"He was ran over by that truck over there! Do you know him?"
It seemed, from her first greetings, that she had borne witness to the skidding of the speeding vehicle against the flat road. Her eyes wandered, darting from me to the accident, to Oliver, who nodded to my right. His hand slipped off my shoulder, and I could swear I almost felt a hundred misfortunes strap themselves away from myself. Although, despite this case, his lack of sentiment stuck to me like suction cups, as if sucking away my own remorse for the incident in its wake. But I shook it off. I had my humanity intact. I was fine.

"Yes, he's..."
"I see. I'm so sorry about what happened. We're going to get him to the hospital in time and everything's going to be alright." the lady, as if sensing the fact that it was quite painful to talk about a person who was being carried away on a stretcher, interrupted the silence. She spoke to us as if we were her own children, and she was comforting us about one of our relatives fainting in the living room during a heated argument. She departed as Oliver and I went to follow Len's body into the ambulance.

I aimed my stare at his bloody form, as it seemed at that time it was more pleasant to witness a failing heartbeat than a stone-carved Noh mask that was trying to tell a morose story in full animation, and in tears.

* * *

It had been a little more than five minutes, that Oliver and I sat ourselves outside the E.R. My heart pounded against my ribcage like a roaring lion attempting to escape a metal cage that had it enclosed. There it went, thumping, thumping, eating away at the stability of my mind which was never really empty and at peace. It was soon overriden by the steady rhythm of heels clacking, hitting the floor with as much intensity as a flame against flame. There stood at the end of the hall, was Len's older sister, who had obviously rushed from her own school to the hospital. I never knew her as the kind of person who paid attention to morals and ethics, but her current dress had proved otherwise. She strutted over to us, and, despite her angry gaze, she was turning into jelly all the same.

"Oliver! Where's Len?" I felt a little hurt about the way she had ignorned me because of her apparent impressions of me being a total freak. The scars that ran down my left eye had not struck her as particularly pleasant, and the way she warned Len about it sometimes when she thought I couldn't hear, was another part of my life that I could never have come to forget.

"He's-- he's back there in the E.R. They're currently--"
"Damn! Why did this have to happen?"
She dropped herself onto one of the chairs, digging her elbows against her knees and resting her head on her palms. She tugged fistfuls of hair, as if she was holding herself back from lashing out any further. Oliver looked at her with a gaze that one might get mistaken for sympathetic. All I could picture in that hollow, empty eye was scorn, hate, and something akin to that of disgust one would use to look at a pool of vomit. My heartbeat had quickened its pace. I was more afraid than not.

"Why didn't you watch him more closely? You know he has tendencies, for God's sake!" she used an expression that most Christians would deem 'blasphemous', and I instantly marked her lucky the lady in the pink apron from earlier was not around. Although I was relieved, some part of me wanted her to have been heard by a pope to give her eternal damnation, probably out of my confusion about why she wouldn't acknowledge my presence because of my scar. But that train of thought, I drew back in immediate action, as I was starting to sound more and more like the kind of person I would escape from.

Oliver responded, his words dropping to a low tone, as if sincere.

I knew more than that.

"I'm sorry... I... I thought he was just fooling around as usual. He always, always pretends to be the happy-go-lucky kind of person he really isn't, and--" I heard sobs, and, realizing it was coming from myself, I didn't know which situation had caused me to lose control of the floodgates. Was it Len's likely death? Rin's apparent blaming? Or was I pretending to be sad, too, despite the fact that I was beginning to feel anger bubble up? Was I covering my temper with a fit of tears so I would not be taken as a heartless person, like my fabricated appetite during mealtime, which I actually dreaded the most? My confusion got worse, and I sank back into my seat, burying my face into my hands.

At this, Rin's intense aura seemed to lessen, and she approached me slowly, putting a hand to my shoulder. I could almost have celebrated. I have finally gotten another human being to my side, until I realized she was using her left arm, and on my left shoulder. She was still avoiding the scar, as if it would give her reasons to commit suicide. I couldn't be more offended. She was faking it.

"I'm not mad at you, okay? I just..." she knelt infront of me, and as I made eye contact with her, she began to cry as well. "It's just that I feel guilty for not listening to him sooner."

At the short period of time I had seen her irises and the humane glint in them, I immediately drew back my hate and put forth a new set of emotions. The both of us let our tears flow, and I couldn't determine whether or not I was starting to exaggerate, or if I was actually this emotional. I wished it would be the latter, for as long as I lived, I didn't want to be the least like Oliver, who was staring at me and Rin with pure disgust. I could almost read his thoughts, but had been repelled once more by his hollowness and lack of character. I wouldn't want to be like that, ever, and I concentrated on sharing woes with the lady infront of me, to draw myself away from thinking further of what the future would have in store for me. The doctor emerged, and he shook his head.