Thousand Paper Cuts

Five : the late ducks of autumn

Mark :

He once had a life. A beautiful life everyone should have.
Big Bang theory depicts that the world was a big black nothing before, and that there was a time of non-existence before our own existence. But then the world came into being, just like that.
Mark had a life, happiness, and the best friend who'd showed him the Great Perhaps.
But the universe took everything away. It was the Big Bang in reverse for him--everything that became a nothing.

It was almost sunset time, and the red wine beside the coffee table looked like the colour every artist would adore to use in their sophisticated masterpieces. Mark was on his comfortable couch, with his guitar, trying to sound better enough to set the house back to life. But it never happened.
The guitar was a gift from Lucas, because Lucas had once noticed Mark singing so good. He didn't know how to play it very well, but atleast he could pull off a few classic rhythms, and Lucas would dance to them saying,

"Yeah, that's the thing about music. It heals you In ways you can't quite imagine."

But Mark couldn't find the healness in music anymore. Everytime he played, Lucas's bright and happy face would appear forth. It would always bring forth his delightful face, specifically when he had danced all night knowing life is a gift. Every chord he played turned into void of sadness, every string he plucked was pulling things apart.
For people who are beyond broken, music isn't a healer anymore, but an affliction.

                             ...........

Lucas's funeral was on 2nd April,
1996, and no matter how much you deeply love someone, funerals would always suck. At every funeral, there would be unbrookable people who'd fake pray in their perfumed suits. The people you never knew existed would come to your funeral merely because you'd be dead and precious.
So Mark tried his best not to go to his only friend's funeral, because he could never tolerate people who didn't know him, crying over him.
But his father convinced on taking him along, and making him wear a stupid brown flamingo tie.
He didn't drive but his father did, and he was seated on the backseat like a kid, and the tears were endless. It was a warm Sunday afternoon, the kind of light Lucas would have loved, as they headed to his hometown, New Jersy, four miles away.

When they had arrived, the place smelled of mildew and discomfort, with the yellow wallpaper peeling off from the corners of the wall. Few of the people were standing at the corner, just talking about the weather, how it was warm and serene, and that how finally Lucas would be whole in the heaven.

Bullshit. Total bullshit, Mark had thought. And all the funeral, he kept on thinking about "whole", as if Lucas was less whole here.
The song Hectic Glow was playing which was some funeral song, while Mark walked towards the coffin, in front of the chapel. It was closed.
That was it. He couldn't see his face again.
He had leaned down, while tears weren't ceasing, and whispered,
"Is this the way out of suffering?"
A man had walked up to him, and said,
"You must be his friend? Ahh, he's gone kid. He just wanted attention from us. What a pity!."
Mark just stood frozen, while his hand was rubbing the smooth texture of the stupid tie.
Lucas wasn't scared of death, he'd concluded. He was scared of human consciousness.

He left the funeral once he'd realized that Lucas wasn't a person anymore. He was just flesh rotting and bones crumbling.
Lucas was dead, and something inside of Mark had died too.

Skye :

How amazing it would be, if we could undo some things, people and memories. But that would have been something extraterristrial, and the real life was like an arrow shot. Utterly irreversible and always forging ahead.