Take Me

Chapter Twenty-Four

A.N. I am in such a fucking pissy mood. My entire group of uni flat mates just annoy me so much and I can't get out of raging bitch mode so I thought I'd release a chapter instead. It's an insightful one, but it's also really dark. Thanks for reading, guys, this story means a lot to me and it makes my day to see you all enjoying it - even if it is painful. Lots of love, your bitchy pal, Clay.

♔ Chapter Twenty-Four ♔                          

I tried to kill myself once.    

It was right after Luke had died. It was just moments ago that I'd pushed him away, and he'd vanished into the ocean. I didn't really know what to do, so the first thing I did was return to the first place that I felt safest. I went home. I must have stood outside of our front door for hours, before actually going inside.

The hallway smelled like our family, full and fresh. It had that hint of sea-foam that all of our things just randomly smelled like, and the wafting scent of chicken from the kitchen.

As soon as the front door had clasped shut, I heard my mum calling from the kitchen. "Is that my lovely boys, back so soon?" she asked, her voice hearty and so delicate. As soon as I told her, that voice would break. That voice would be full of sobs and cries and whimpers, once I told her that Luke wouldn't be coming back home for a while.

I didn't reply at first. I just stood in the empty foyer, barefoot. I hadn't bothered to pick up my shoes, so I'd left them at the beach. I hadn't even touched my clothes, piled in the golden sand. They sat beside Luke's on the sand, and I couldn't bare to even go near them. To disrupt anything of his.

I'd went home in my soaking underwear, ignoring the shivering cold that set in. I ignored everything I was feeling in that moment, the dawning realisation of what had just happened didn't really sink in. The momentum didn't really hit me at first, not until I was at home did I fully understand that he was gone.

On the way home, I'd just kept forcing every thought to the back of my find, focusing on just one foot-step after the other, pressing myself forward, feeling coldly alone. The sky was in that sacred state where it was a blueish-purple, right as the sun was setting, but just before the moon came out to play. It was a playful kind of bliss, with the lamp-posts alive like the light of a dozen scattering fireflies, but I hardly even noticed it. My mind had been elsewhere the whole trip home, thinking of everything but the truth.

"Your mother asked you a question, boys." The voice was my dad's, seeping in from the living room. It hit my memory hard. He left us just after Luke did, but he left by choice.

The foyer led into the long hallway, right at the mouth of the stairs. I'd sat on the first step of the stairwell, holding my face in my hands, contemplating. I could hear a football game in the background, with Dad screaming and booing and doing general dad stuff. Meanwhile, my mum slaved away in the kitchen.

They both acted like everything was so normal, totally unaware that Luke was gone. They were living in a peachy bubble of ignorant bliss that I was about to burst. Just sitting there, knowing all of that, and all I could do was just stare at the blank walls ahead of me.

I didn't know what I was doing, what was I supposed to do? I just remember the confusion, the overbearing sense that I was alone, like a sudden emptiness had sprang out of nowhere and taken me captive.

Instead of telling them, I crawled up the stairs on all fours, and I'd locked myself away in our bedroom. Well, it was just my bedroom now.

The first thing I saw in our room was his bed, right there. His presence was thick in the room, with his things tossed all over. Everywhere I looked, all I could see was Luke. All I could smell was him. On the walls were his scattered drawings, and old Polaroid pictures of the two of us, smiling, laughing and playing around.