In The Bird Song | TWD

chapter 51 - Burnouts

Carl pov

I wake up to crimson sheets. Congealed blood glues my sleeve flush to a freshly cut wound. I rip the fabric away, feeling fresh puss ooze in protest of the ruptured scab. This is routine now. I get up and change my hoodie, sluggish memories of the last night tossing fitfully in my mind. restless and dull with a sharpness that mimics the raw truth of a blade.

I don't know what I ought to feel, what I ought to think, what I ought to do. Or if there is anything even to do. Is it possible, to rebuild a thing when all you have left is the smoking remains of what it could have been? And if it is, who am I to try? Why should I burn myself scraping at hot rubble. I did that once, it brought me here. Here. its not a place I want to be.

My stomach feels heavy, though I have not eaten. I want to wonder at this, to ask why. But I already know. It's my body's que, that same incessant pull to be close with her. It's a demand, not one belonging to me, but to someone else. They say after an amputation your body still feels what it has lost. this is what drives me. Phantom pains of a lost limb.

And I try to ignore it. try to convince myself It is detached from my person. That I am above it. but we do not choose the body we inhabit, and this one is mine. So, without the will to match it, I am too tired to resist the line dragging me forward. or perhaps it is not the absence of the desire I am trying to convince myself of, but rather my hand in harbouring it. It is easier is it not, to imagine my body's whims as belonging to someone else. Someone dead. Both possibilities make sense, but as to which I should believe I don't know. or maybe there is no truth in either. Can I exist without logic? can anything?

I can hear the commotion of movement downstairs, and instinctively know she will be down there. and so numbly, my body carries me to the kitchen. To her. muscle memory.

On the way I think of what I might say, but find no words come to mind, they rarely do these days. It is strange to remember now, how easy they used to come, how they would slip past my lips without thought. They used to burden me, with so much I wanted to say and everyone to busy to listen. It used to make me so angry, how the adults would tune me out, how they would smile and nod with their minds already having moved on to something else.

Then, I found the one person who would listen. With her my words carried weight, they were something to carefully consider and build upon. And just like that all I had to say I had to say to her. So, it only made sense that when she burned out and the world went quiet my words went with her. because they were always for her.

When I arrive downstair and walk through the kitchen door the room goes silent, and I can't bring myself to look up and face the watching eyes. I instead go over to the fruit bowl and take an apple, finally acknowledging the hunger I have been steadfast ignoring up until now. I try look nonchalant when I lean against the counter and finally force myself to meet her gaze. Like I don't care, which is true. Is it? Only, when I look up, I find that it is not she who is looking at me. her eyes are glued to the table in what can only be an intentional avoidance of my own.

I feel something inside me disappear, it is important, an organ perhaps. my eyes look over her for answers. She seems back to normal, or at least not crazy anymore. The little girl is back at her side. But she is pale, to pale. her hands are clasped beneath the table and I can see the violent tremble that racks her skeletal fingers. She is not eating, at least not currently. Maybe she finished already. Maybe she didn't.

She's mad, I can feel her hate radiating at the edge of silence. The message is clear, I am to stay away. I am not forgiven, nothing has changed. whatever happened last night is not to be acknowledged, not by me, not by her, not by anyone. The girl from last night is to be no more than another ghost that goes bump in the night. A thing you feel is there but never see.