Paper Hearts (Phan)

5 days after

I still couldn't sleep. Not even a wink. I tried too many times with no progress to be stupid enough to try again.

I'd close my eyes and just sit there, like all the lights had shut off in the middle of the day. It was pure torture, I tell you. It was awful. My eyes burned whenever I blinked and each time I blinked I nearly fell asleep.

And over the past few days, I've proudly accumulated a grand total of 4 hours and 15 minutes of undisturbed rest, somehow much better compared to how PJ was doing.

I'd made the mistake of asking aloud why we couldn't sleep, even though I already knew the answer. I just wanted someone to be in denial that he was still alive in dreams. And PJ said, "he's always there when I try to sleep", confirming the one theory I didn't necessarily want to be right this time.

But what he said was true; I could still smell him in my dreams where he wasn't dead, specifically the watermelon candies and overwhelming smoke and the strong stench of alcohol when I'd first set foot in his room. His sticky scent seemed to be the only thing holding both of us together at this point, like stitches in an old frayed blanket.

It lingered in every dream I had during sparse hours of sleep, but once the reality cannonballed into my head, he didn't smell like himself anymore. Freshly cut grass and smoke was replaced by the fragrance a rotting zombie would be expected to emit.

And in my dreams, he was still himself for a little while, only to be replaced by the image Joe had engraved in my mind without meaning to do so.

But each and every night without failure, I'd wake up in the fallacious bed my mind had created, and he'd be curled up in a ball under the covers right next to me with just his eyes and above peeking out.

He'd still be himself, wearing that stupid white tank top and the ripped jeans he never seemed to take off and those swirled coffee eyes that got me hooked from the start, still burning bright like a wildfire. Then he'd pull the covers down just barely past his chin and smile at me like he used to and say "I missed you" and before I could tell him I missed him just as much, maybe even more, he was dead.

The blood would waterfall from his nose and the pink grey mush would spill from his head and the eyes that had never been shut would stare into space forever and he was cold and dead again. Just like he'd always been. Just like he always will be.

So I didn't sleep, constantly terrified to receive the reminder that he's dead and is never coming back.

And after a record amount of broken sleep, measuring up as a total of 2 and a half hours last night, the alarm chimed on the nightstand, screaming 6:00 in gross green font.

Today was the day when we had to take the bus down to that stupid chapel attached to the Pine Hills home for the elderly, which Dan had always laughed hysterically at each time we drove by.

PJ wandered in, holding a tie with smiling cartoon clouds in one hand and another with little emojis in the other. "Which one looks better?" He alternated the ties over his grey button up shirt and pulled up the black dress pants I'd never seen him wear, while waiting for a response.

"They're both too happy."

"That's what Cat told me," he sighed and tossed them behind him and into the huge laundry pile gathered near his bedroom door. "I should've bought the black instead of the clouds."

I gave him a bowtie.

__________

Cat was the one that drove, remaining a mystery as to how she'd gathered up the courage to even sit behind the wheel, because none of us could even touch the back seat without the crushing feeling that he wasn't there to crack jokes about how the seat cushions in the back looked like they'd been shit on by a vengeful dog that had eaten too many spicy bean and cheese burritos.