"Jack come on, it's been an hour, wake up, it's not funny anymore." Jack heard the concerned voice of his brother and slowly opened his eyes, his head hurt as if he jumped off a building and landed face first on the concrete sidewalk. It took him a moment to realize what happened before tears welled up in his eyes.
"Look... he can't be dead. Policemen have done their investigations and they haven't found his body." Dave sighed softly.
"Body? Investigations? How did he even kill himself?" Jack had so many questions.
"They said they found his car burnt down with a burnt body inside. There was a jerrycan of benzine next to the car so they think it's suicide. They haven't found any DNA on the body in the car yet so let's just hope it's not him, okay? He's still alive, I'm sure."
Jack fidgets the ring on his necklace between his fingers. "But what if he is? This is all my fault!"
"It isn't! If anyone's to blame it's that teacher who made him come out to the whole class."
"I'm going to fucking kill him!" Jack sat up but got immediately pushed down.
"If you kill someone I'll bring you to the police station myself." Dave looked down at his minutes younger brother. "I know it's hard because you really loved him but he's gone okay? People die. That's their whole thing."
Jack looked away from his brother before nodding slowly. He sat up and sighed.
"I know what I have to do..."
Many hours later Jack parked his motorbike against a fence outside of ACE Chemicals. He had to work a nightshift. He walked in and switched shifts with his colleague and sighed. It felt horrible to be at this place. He would've given up time he could spend with Bruce to work.
Jack did the same routine he always does. He puts on his work clothes, grabs a candy bar from the vending machine in the lunchroom and makes his round to see if everything's still going well.
"Oh, just so you know." An older man, one of Jack's colleagues, put his hand on the slim boy's shoulder before he's able to walk away from the vending machine. "There were a couple of guys here who tried to break in a minute ago, followed by some weird guy dressed up as some sort of bat. The police came to take away the boys but there hasn't been any sights from that bat man since I last saw him."
Jack looked at the man and swallowed before nodding. He walked out of the lunchroom, talking to himself a bit. "Okay... a man in a bat suit... yeah that's totally not weird, I can totally handle that... it wouldn't even be a problem because a guy in a bat suit that chases criminals around surely isn't dangerous to an unarmed teen who just tries to get some money to pay for gas for his motorbike.." he sighed, knowing there wasn't anything to be scared of, knowing what he was planning to do.
Jack walked up some stairs that lead him to a platform about some vats filled with chemicals. There was no reason at all for him to be up here, it wasn't on his route. He looked down at the green yellow glowing chemicals and smiled sadly. He grabbed ahold of the railing around the platform with both hands and took some deep breaths, breathing in the chemicals, a thing his employee advised him to never do.
It didn't take him a long time to think about what he was doing as he put his one foot onto the lowest bar of the railing, followed by his other foot on a bar higher up.
When he finally climbed onto the railing and got his balance he spread his arms and leaned forward, letting himself fall off the platform. He closed his eyes, thinking "this is it. This is the only way to be together with him again." But that thought quickly got disturbed. Jack felt a rough jerk on his shirt, widening his eyes. He looked up and a dark figure tried to pull him up, the man in the bat suit. Jack gasped and punched the man into his face as soon as he could, getting free from his grip and falling down into a vat of chemicals.
"Jack!"
It burnt. It burnt so bad. Why wasn't he dead? Jack opened his eyes, he was still floating in the big vat of green death. He swam up to the surface and gasped for air. Everything was dark, no one was left in the building. Jack climbed out of the vat and stripped to his underwear, rubbing his arms in the hope to get the chemicals off his body.
He walked to the dressing rooms and looked around, there weren't any spare clothes left for him. He took some deep breaths before walking out of the building.
It was cold outside, so cold it made Jack's skin tingle. He looked at his hands and only now realized how pale he looked in the moon light. It was late, very late. Not a person was outside, all stores were closed. The only lights in the street were street lanterns and two tiny lights in a window of a party store. Jack walked closer to the store and looked through the window, he saw a mannequin wearing a pink and green suit. He knew this store. He always went here for Halloween, he knew that his size was small enough for only those stupid suits to fit him.
