Between Life and Death

An unspoken truth

It was evening when I landed back on solid ground. Looking around vaguely at the now setting sun. Time had gone by a lot faster wherever I had just been, Though for some reason I now felt intense hunger. I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and unlocked it.

I stared at the background instead of looking for the time. Seeing a picture of Chris and I on there. I felt my heart drop as I did. His blue eyes piercing through me.

"Is Ed okay?"

I could hear his words echo through my head. It hadn't been the first time he'd said it. I got into the hospital once. Heard him ask my parents from the hallway next to my room.
"He'll be fine."My dad responded. I could hear his footsteps retreating as Chris entered the room.
"Fuck man, can we agree to not do stupid shit like this anymore?"

I looked at him, his eyes red and puffy. Hair messy and clothing ragged. He was breathing heavily from having run to the hospital.
"Well, you weren't there to stop me." I said. A smile on my face.
"How was it though? Was it good?" He asked as he sat down next to me.
"It was amazing, you should've been there." I laughed out loud, coughing after "Ouch."

I had been dared at school to do a grind over the staircase railing. Chris had been skipping out on classes for whatever odd reason he always had so I had no white angel on my shoulder to help me make a good decision. I happily agreed to this feat of brilliance and ran to get my bike.

"I got to the last railing man, 6 seconds of an amazing grind." I said, holding my ribs.
"And then you hit the bump before the bottom" Chris's face showed the obvious emotion of the classic "I told you so" even though he hadn't been there.
I nodded. "And then I hit the bump..." The room stayed quiet for a bit.

"Those first 6 seconds though." I said, trying to make Chris break a smile through his disapproving facial expression.
"I bet I'll see them on the internet in no time." He replied, a small grin on his face.

I looked up at the darkening sky. Breathing in the cold winter air. Normally by this time, the city would've been covered in snow. Now though with the freak weather it had stayed fairly warm. My stomach rumbled as I started walking towards the city in search of food.

I ended up going to the diner again. It was a nice place and luckily for me had been empty ever since the recent chaos. I sat down in the same booth I had first met Death in and placed an order with the same waitress. She had immediately run up to me to take my order and now talked to me in the same way as she had with Death.

I sat there for a while, just calmly looking out of the windows. It started raining again, the sound of it pattering on the windows once again filling the room. I unlocked my phone again, looking at the picture on the background. Tears starting to brim in my eyes. My stomach had started to produce a constant numbing pain, but I had ignored it. It didn't help with the holding in the tears though.

"Why did you care so much?"

I jumped as Death calmly asked me the question from the other side of the booth.
"Fuck man. You gotta stop doing that." I wiped the tears out of my eyes with the ends of my sleeves.
Death calmly looked at me, waiting for me to answer his question.

I looked at death. "What do you mean, care so much?"
"About that friend of yours dying."Death continued staring at me.
I didn't answer immediately. "You genuinely don't know?"
Death didn't answer my counter question.

"Don't you feel... Sad about your brother's death?"
"I don't know."Death looked around a bit, grabbing another toothpick as he had done the last time and starting to play with it in his gloved hands.
"I'm angry that he isn't around anymore... But death is a part of life. Why would that be any different for my brother and I."

I didn't respond to that answer. It had been what Life had told me already. But even as I had been told earlier I still had no clue what to say. Death was fiddling with the toothpick. His eyes concentrated on it. I realized he wasn't exactly comfortable discussing his feelings.

"Are you angry at me for it?" Death looked up at me as I asked the question. He seemed to think the answer over carefully.
"Maybe a little bit... Even if I know it's not your fault. It was his time." Death replied. It was the first time I had heard him talk like this; Emotionally.
"I understand... I mean I am too about Chris's death."

The kitchen doors opened as the waitress came out holding several plates. More than I had ordered. She set them down for the two of us, giving a brief nod as she hurried off.
"I ordered before sitting down." Death said as he took a bite of his pancakes.

"To be honest I had kinda expected you to be a waffles guy." I said as I ate the blueberry from the top of my stack of pancakes.
Death didn't bother swallowing before speaking. "Pancakes have been better since the invention of them."

We ate on in silence, finishing everything off of our plates and ordering a cup of coffee to wash it down with. As the waitress set it down death started fiddling with the toothpick again.

"I care so much because I... Because I..." I tried to get the words out of my mouth but, I had never said them before. "Chris has been there for me my entire life. Helping me when I needed him most, taking care of me when I got in trouble. He would've taken a bullet for me, and in some way... He did."

Tears started flowing over my cheeks.
"I was driving the car that night, I honestly don't even remember what happened... I just remember waking up in the hospital and them telling me that he hadn't made it. I wailed... I never told him..."

"I never told him I loved him," I said looking at death as I cried.
"I never told him in what way I loved him," My voice cracked and my throat closed up, but I finished my sentence. "And I'll never be able to..."