Sliced Trees and Dead Words

3 - I always knew this day would come.

- LUNA -

I always knew this day would come.

Even when things were good, I still knew I would get this call one day. Well, this text. I assume it was easier to write than speak aloud this kind of news. I know my voice will break the very second I open my mouth to call my identical twin sister Siella to tell her. And I know I'd not get anywhere near close to dialling my best friend Nella's number before crawling into an immoveable ball and weeping endlessly.

I hoped, obviously, that my constant fear might be unfounded; an irrational conclusion to the years of anxiety that have plagued me whenever I thought about my best friend out there travelling the country without me.

But I guess life doesn't work like that.

I looked back down at my phone, knowing whoever had messaged me from Dalen's phone wasn't, in fact, my best friend Dalen. Dalen's messages always, always started with 'Thuffering thuccotash, Luney Tune!' to which I would reply with, 'Eh, what's up, Doc?' with a carrot emoji, acting out my inner bunny before we got into the real meat of the conversation. It was our thing. He'd given me the nickname of Luney Tune the very first time I met him and told him my name, then proceeded to get drunk and watch a shitload of Looney Tunes episodes together.

There was no playful Sylvester in this message, though. No, puddy tats or wascawwy wabbits. No 'I say, I say, lookee here, son.'

Just, 'Hi, Luna. Please call me as soon as you can.'

That's not my Dalen. That's someone who already knows they're about to break my fucking heart and are trying to ease me into it.

Well, fuck that. I'm a big girl. I'm ready to pretend to be prepared to hear whatever they have to say to me. No use beating around the bush. He's going to be just as dead later as I know in my bones he already is now.

Luna: How did he go?

I waited for my phone to ring, expecting the person who had commandeered a dead man's phone to bring news of his suicide to call me straight away, knowing that I implicitly understood something bad must have happened to have received their original message.

But I didn't get a call, nor even a text reply for another three fucking hours; after I had all but cried myself to sleep just before midnight, with Siella already dead to the world—pardon the ill-timed and unintentional pun—in my bed next to me. She came over as soon as I called her crying right after receiving that damn text which completely ended my world as I knew it. Siella knows how much Dalen meant to me, so abandoned her date the very second she heard my first sniff and croaked out his name.

Even though we were often worlds apart, distanced by thousands of kilometres, slightly different time zones, mountain ranges, deserts, often even seas, Dalen was always my greatest friend. I spoke to him every single day, without fail, except for the past few days where my messages have gone by unread, which is how I already knew something was seriously wrong. This text has just solidified what I already knew deep down must be true.

A world where my heart beats alone without his is the most wretched thing I could imagine, and it is now my reality. And I blame no one but myself. I should have been there with him, taking him up on his offer to come spend some time in the Snowy Mountains before he moved on to his next job. I should have messaged him more to check in and make sure he was okay. I should have pushed him harder to get the help he needed and not backed down when he hadn't convinced me that he was truly okay. He never did, because I knew he never was.

And now it's too late, and I can't take any of it back.

I can't laugh at his dark jokes or the nihilistic memes he sends me every day. I can't call him after another failed date, and be reassured that he somehow knows for certain that whoever he was wasn't my 'forever guy,' despite knowing nothing about any of them; not even their names. He'll never again send me photos of the sky from wherever he is on the night of the full moon to let me know he's thinking about me. I'll never receive another package in the mail addressed to La Bella Luna in his messy scrawl with a roughly drawn crescent moon. I'll never be able to send him photos whenever I'm near the ocean to test how accurately he could guess at which beach I was sitting on without him. No more Facetime with him and Medusa, the most gorgeous dog in the world. No more spontaneous visits in the dead of night when I thought he was on the other side of the country. No early morning deep and meaningfuls when he's at the end of his rope and can't bear the thought of living another day with the chaos in his tortured heart. No more 'Goodnight, Moon.'