Whispers In The Dark

Reximus

Reximus

“Why are we doing this?” Robin gasped for breath, but the words kept coming. “Cutting our own skin, setting things on fire, passing out on drugs, starving ourselves, drinking until we’re shit-faced and puking our guts… At this rate, we’ll be dead by senior year.”

I coerced him into sitting down on his bed. He was shaking and on the verge of hyperventilating, but it was the best I could do.

“We can’t do this, Rex,” he told me, eyes locked with mine. “I’m bad news. I’m only going to screw everything up.”

“You aren’t bad news--”

He shook his head, cutting off my feeble protests. “I am! I never listen, I see shit that isn’t there, I--”

“Stop!” I yelled. I grabbed his shoulders and looked into his eyes, unflinching and glad that he wasn’t pulling away because surely I wouldn’t have the strength to stop him from doing something reckless. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding and let my hands drop from his shoulders. “You are not bad news. And you know that when you see things, it isn’t your fault, right?”

He nodded his head, but I could tell that he didn’t even believe it himself. “They tell me it is,” he whispered. “They told me it’s my fault.”

“Who?”

“The voices in my head.” He cradled his head in his hands. “And I know that when I say that I sound like a lunatic. I mean, they have me on anti-psychotics, for God’s sake! How could you possibly want to be around someone who is psychotic?”

“That’s normal,” I told him softly. “Anti-psychotics are a common treatment for those with schizophrenia.”

“There’s nothing normal about this, Rex.” He was still speaking self-depreciatively, but he wasn’t shaking or gasping. I allowed myself to relax slightly.

“Hearing voices is the most common hallucination people with schizophrenia experience,” I recited from memory.

He looked to me and raised an eyebrow. “You sound like a textbook. Have you been studying or what?”

I blushed and laughed. “I just a did a little research, is all.”

He rolled his eyes and laughed. I relaxed even more.

He sobered. “I like you, Rex.”

I cocked my head and my eyebrows furrowed. “I like you, too, Robin.”

And then his lips were on mine. It wasn’t like when I kissed him first, or even on New Year’s. It was more desperate and needy. I kissed him back nonetheless.

It didn’t last long before my phone started to ring. I tried to pull away, but he moved with me.

I laughed. “I have to answer my phone,” I mumbled around the kiss.

Robin huffed and leaned back against the wall like a scolded child. I rolled my eyes.

My mom’s name was flashing across my screen. “Hi, Mom,” I answered.

“Rex, baby, I…” Her voice caught.

I sat up straight. Alarm shocked my heart into moving. “Mom, what’s wrong? Are you crying?”

Robin moved closer, alert.

It took her a few tries to get the words out. “Reximus, your father was brought to the hospital a few minutes ago. He--he had a heart attack. The doctors are saying that he isn’t going to make it much longer, probably within the hour. I’m so sorry, baby. I can have someone come get you, I just…”

She kept talking, but it was all gibberish after that. Robin was watching me, and I watched him right back. He took the phone from my hand, and when I didn’t do anything, put it to his ear.

It only took a few seconds for his face to drop and his hands to reach for me. I shook my head once before feeling my body lock up.

I followed him tensely to his mom’s car, trying to ignore the look his mom gave me when he whispered something in her ear. I remembered him telling me that, legally, he could never really drive. He already didn’t have a license, or even a permit, but with Schizophrenia, it was considered a danger. He also told me that he didn’t give a shit. At the moment, neither did I.

He stayed with my mom and I at the hospital. When my grandmother showed up and started screaming at me that I was the reason for his heart attack, I had caused him so much stress, I was the faggot he never wanted, Robin was the one who let me hide my face in his chest as the dam broke and sobs crushed my chest. "He hates me," I sobbed. "He going to die hating me."

At 3:44 P.M. on January 29, 2014, Robert Williams was pronounced dead.

At 3:45 P.M., I saw my mother faint though I didn’t hear her hit the floor, and I decided that it should have been me.