Free Fall

: Chapter 23 : Trunk or Treat

Chapter 23

Trunk or Treat 

(Unedited)

In Linda’s living room, I pace back and forth, wondering what to say. I had never gone trick or treating as a kid, the forbidden witchcraft called against my childhood imagination. Nor had my family left any treats for the sacred “sinners” that had been bestowed to like some fun of what the Pagan holiday held. Whilst still attending Midnight Mass for the robed man at Christmas. 

“You look stunned,” I hear the ever so lovely voice of Linda, as I see her approach wearing her Nurse scrubs, loose strands of hair straggling down the side of her face, showing that she had been used to how she looks amongst being tired and most possibly doing work than I could bargain for, amongst working with the community. 

“Just worried I’ll mess this up,” I told her truthfully. The words leaving my mouth before I could summon up anymore words to tell her. “What if they don’t like my version of Rey Skywalker?” I ask her. A question that I was sure she had prepared an answer for. She was a nurse. She’s supposed to have an answer for those who are scared. 

“Luke, darling, I’ve come to find that in this generation you’ve got to put the what if’s behind you and keep going,” Linda tells me, taking a seat on the sofa as Christian comes down from his bedroom dressed up in a Dolly Parton costume, showing no flaws of insecure. Instead of saying something, I simply smile as he enters the living room where his guardian and I were. 

“You look,” I tell him as I try to find the right adjectives to say. Stunning. That’s the word that popped out in my mind. “Beautiful,” I tell him, as my nervousness calms down, then pulling out my phone to take a photo of him as he poses, and urges me to join him for a selfie. 

“I’m going to let you two finish,” Linda announces, as she gets up from where she was sitting on the couch, making a beeline towards the kitchen, leaving us alone in the living room until we were certain that we were ready to leave for the tradition of costumes and candy. 

***

“I started listening to Dolly Parton when I was a kid,” Christian tells me as we get in his jeep, turning up the volume for whatever our soundtrack endured during the ride. I didn’t feel as though he had needed to tell me why he had dressed up as Dolly, but I was ready to listen. It was time to hear his story. “Maybe five or something. My mother just listened to her day and night. No favourite album or song, just simply listened,” he added, his voice slightly cracking, giving me a feeling this was going to add to his “I don’t do heartbreak” line he had told me once. 

“You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to,” I tell him, yet I had wanted him to tell me. I hadn’t known this version of Christian and I was more than ready to learn now. 

“I want to though,” he tells me softly. “I haven’t talked about it in a while,” he adds, as the silence between us sets in, letting him gather what he had wanted to say. My mind wandered places and thoughts I wasn’t sure about the answers that they would lead to. 

“Is that how you ended up here? In Ember River, I mean?” I ask, clarifying as my curiosity gets the better of me. These are the questions and reasons I wished we had talked about earlier as our relations and stories stowed away. 

“Part of it. The heroin addiction didn’t help,” he tells me, his hand gripping the steering wheel, leaving to wonder if he was going to tell me more or just leave me hanging, confirming what Dryden had told me. The reality of confirming what I hadn’t wanted to be true, now being true. Would he tell me why he had the addiction, or should I ask him? I remember reading somewhere that Kurt Cobain had gotten addicted shortly after recording the band’s biggest album, well we in high anarchy know what happened to the band after that. Was it like that?