It started with a dream…

The biggest mistake Julien ever made in his life was a result of his own willful ignorance.

And the end result, was a tragedy.

The ear splitting sound of sirens wailed in the background as blue and red lights blended together. 

It was a sinister orchestra of sound and light. 

Passersby lingered around the scene. Some stood on tiptoes to get a closer look, others pulled out their phones to record, others still pretended as though they didn’t see anything at all, as they took cautious peeks at the commotion around them, walking with hurried steps.

Police shouted in every direction, redirecting traffic, shouting out warnings, and shoving people away as their dogs stood guard around the macabre center.

Wait, was that what happened?

Julien was disoriented. 

So much was going on around him but he wasn’t paying attention to any of it.

No, how could he?

He was focused on one thing and one thing only. 

At the heart of it all, Julien’s pale eyes were glued on the spot, his heart raced with every passing second, sending tremors through his frozen body.

His mind was elsewhere.

Vitriolic curses were thrown at him in a manic raving. Each word cut deeper and ached more than the fresh blood soaked wounds covering his palms, a result of a desperate defense against the clumsily clutched kitchen knife in the other man’s hand, that just seconds prior, had been swung about in his direction.

Blood was flowing endlessly through his fingers. 

“I hate you.”

Julien looked up.

“I…hate you.”

The man’s voice trembled and tears flowed down his cheeks, his face scrunched up in strained fury as he yelled.

“I HATE YOU! IHATEYOUIHATEYOU!!!!”

Startled, Julien took a step back, or he tried to.

But he was rooted in place.

Julien could tell that he was dreaming, of course he was, he’s had the same dream so many times that he was starting to lose count. 

But despite that, even though his dreams repeated over and over, he just couldn’t muster up the courage. And even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to use it.

Julien felt old emotions awaken within him, weighing down his tongue and holding his body in place. Thorns formed around his beating heart, threatening to drown out all else except for the aching pain. 

His sense of reality was slipping away as he became immersed in the moment, cold anxiety encroaching on his patchily healed heart and an even colder reality cementing itself in front of him. 

His mind went blank, leaving him with only two words:

I’m sorry.

Julien’s fists clenched tightly to his sides, hoping to gain leverage in the torrential storm of his own emotions, hoping against hope that this time, he could say something.

To voice his regrets.

To clear up the misunderstandings.

Anything. 

And yet, he was unable to produce even a single sound. He would never get the chance to say anything to him again.

It was too late.

It was all his fault. 

If only he had noticed sooner, he shouldn’t have gotten so defensive, if only he hadn’t ignored their warnings, if only he could go back in time and fix what he’d broken. 

Why wouldn’t someone hate him when he hated himself so much?

As the storm reached a deafening crescendo, the scene started to slip away with a harrowing screech, like nails clinging desperately to a chalkboard.

He helplessly wrestled with the air, trying to hold onto anything he could. But the world itself was slipping through his fingers, like illusions in the mist.

And the blood on his hands.

Please don’t go…

Tears clouded his vision as the world faded away. He looked at the other man with desperation on his face, hoping that maybe, just maybe-

“I wish I never met you.”

And just like that, he fell.

He fell for a long time.

Fell fast and far into an elastic abyss of black.

Into an endless void of despair.

The world bent around him, as if straining against his weight, before snapping and sending him plummeting away from the last bits of light.

In an instant, he was all alone.

—-

He ran and ran, searching desperately, pleading with the vast expanse of nothingness, struggling with ragged breaths.

But there was no direction he could go in that could take him back.

There never was.

A manic, terrifyingly familiar grin found its way to his face as his teardrops became a puddle, and then a flood, before becoming a rapid that swept him away with the current. 

He floated aimlessly for a long while, swaying in the hammock of tears before they gave way to an empty field, depositing him in its desolate center. 

Exhausted and unable to move, he stared into the black sky.

It’s not over yet.

The young man continued to stare into the empty sky, waiting for something to happen. 

And then it did.

In the span of a single blink of his eyes, he was no longer laying down, he was standing up, staring emptily at the man in front of him, the man that hurt him and who he hurt even more.

His best friend.

He stared at him, and was stared at in turn. He looked down at his friends’ hands, at the knife still clutched within pale fingers, and then looked back at his gentle face.

“Have you come to kill me?”

He received no answer.

Before he knew it, the skin on his friend’s hands began to melt away like a burning candle, leaving a grotesque husk of a human being in its wake.

The world shifted around him once more, enveloping the morbid silhouette into a blanket of inky black, shifting the edge of his dreams towards the center, and the center of his reality towards the edge.

The world wiggled and squirmed like it was alive, squelching and creaking with every movement the vindictive ghost made as it struggled against the shifting world.

Julien was engulfed in the sickening cacophony of sounds, unable to cover his ears.

Stop it!

He was so sick of this.

He tried to look away, to scream, to do anything but he couldn’t. 

He was stuck, a prisoner of his own mind.

And yet, his memories of that day were just as imprisoned, unable, or unwilling to break free.

He was aware that what he was seeing wasn’t everything, he knew that the course of events were too jumbled up to find closure within them.

But he wasn’t ready.

And he wasn’t sure if he ever would be.

Despite his desire to end this farce, in some part of his heart…

He felt like he deserved this eternal torment.

“I hope you suffer as much as I have.” 

The eternal specter spoke in a whisper, the bitter smile tainting his beautiful face shifting into one of vindication.

His voice echoed within the endless expanse and caused the young man’s heart to break apart, images flashing through his mind at those few simple words.

That’s right.

I deserve this, I did this.

He curled into a ball, clutching his head and rocking his body, tears streamed endlessly down his face.

It’s all my fault.

The world quaked and split apart once more, sending him back to where he came from, all sorts of sensations overwhelmed his taxed mind, pulling him out of his reverie.

Not again.

He slowly lifted his head and stared at the sight in front of him with dead eyes.

His own corpse was looking back at him with the same gaze.

Instead of disgust he felt relief, like it was always meant to be that way, like his life up until this point was just an unlucky bonus to when his life should have ended.

As the metallic smell of blood hit his nose he watched coldly as blood poured out of his own lifeless body, staining the concrete a brilliant shade of red.

He continued to be assaulted by flashing images, but there was no reason to react anymore.

The dead couldn’t feel after all.

—-

*BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEE—*

*Click*

An alarm rang out in the vast expanse of his bedroom, waking the young man up with a start, his messy auburn hair clinging to his face. 

Sitting up abruptly, he roughly turned off the alarm with his left hand before letting it limply fall back down into his lap.

He sat there for a while, staring at the lilac canopy of the sky peeking through his curtains with blank eyes, pretending not to notice the beating of his heart or the flowing of his tears.