In The Bird Song | TWD

chapter 49 - Crickets and lullaby's

Carl pov

There are crickets in the garden, I hear them now, chirping under the moonlight. There is still sick on my tongue, I can taste it, bitter and acidic. Hours must have past since she left, and in her absence the night has only grown colder.

I shiver now, still at the edge of the patio roof, curled into the fetal position unable to move for the pain. I must not have gotten all the sick out because my stomach won't stop cramping.

I don't feel anything, not really, but the nausea keeps me paralysed. I want to get up and go to my bed but my muscles are seized up and tense like they have been permanently frozen solid. something wet and icy rolls from my eye down the curve of my cheek. A tear. But I am not sad. I am not much of anything, here, frozen in time, breathing but at the same time not quite. A mark only slightly missed.

My mind is fuzzy as I stare out at the moping garden, my cheek pressed against splintered wood. Did someone once tend this garden? nurture it, love it, watch it die in winter? did they pour their coffee each morning and gaze out at it before work. did they lay out in it during summer, rake its leaves in fall, shovel its snow in winter, build it back up in spring? Would they still love it, even now, if they could see it? or would they begrudge the time wasted on it, write it off as a bad job and move on? Does the garden grieve its owner, does it weep for what it could have been? I think it might have been beautiful, in another world, but not this one. Not anymore.

I'm to cold to sleep, it evades me, and I'm to tired to chase it. And so, here I lie in limbo, as the night wares on, feeling the cold seep further and further into my bones. But eventually, the sun peaks back over the horizon. it glazes my skin like a sheet of ice. Its warmth stolen by morning frost. The birds replace the crickets, and with them something tickles at my brain. A memory I cannot quite grasp.

And as the birdsong intensifies, I feel my lids begin to droop. sleep returns to me, head hung in shame, like a runaway child returning home. And I finally fall asleep, just as the sun mounts the now blue sky.

***

Carl pov

When my eyes open again its dark once more, and the realisation that I slept through an entire day without anyone noticing sweeps through me all at once. Something about that hurts, a lump forms in my throat, and I want to sob. But then the feeling slips away, gone before it ever really came, and I'm left wondering. Wondering why. I feel displaced, Like I am looking at a blank wall where I'm sure there ought to have been a picture frame.

Blinking, I try shake off the unease prickling beneath my skin and stand up for the first time in what must have been 24 hours. but as soon as I'm up, I'm back down. lurching forward as a new more vengeful strain of nausea roles through my stomach. My hands fly out frantically as my feet wobble at the edge of the roof nearly sending my crashing to the ground. And no sooner have I steadied myself than I am bent over the edge all over again, this time to hack up whatever's still left in my stomach. I have the overwhelming sensation of needing to be empty, but all I manage to cough up is a thin shot glass of bile

.

Gasping for breath I stumble over to the shut window and force it open so that I can ungracefully flop back inside what is supposed to be my room with a loud thump. My mind is loud, chaotically so, filling my ears with static. I fall into my unmade bed and clutch a pillow tightly to my stomach in an attempt to quell my rolling gut. I'm not well. I'm fine.

***

Carl pov

I wake up a third time to the sound of someone's voice sounding out from the other side of my wall. It's not loud enough to have woken me up normally, but there is something different about this voice in particular. Its clearer than I can remember hearing anything before, the edges of each syllable are crisp as opposed to dull. I can feel it pulling at me, like a loose thread on a jumper, unravelling the pain in my gut.