Get Out Your Damn Umbrellas

Chapter 9

Tunnel vision. Those were the words Dan had once used to describe to Phil how he felt on black hole days. It was like his mind's eye had tunnel vision, like he'd forgotten how wide the world is, how full of life it can be, and he couldn't see beyond the bleak concrete prison in his head. He'd been here plenty of times, but it had never been this bad before.

Dan hardly knew what to do with himself most of the time. It used to be such a relief to be able to take a break from work, to not have to go anywhere or do anything. What was different now, though, was that couldn't go anywhere, and he couldn't do anything. He was trapped. Trapped in the apartment, trapped in his room, trapped in this body, this body that no longer felt like his own.

Whether he was asleep or awake, he couldn't escape the memories, their voices in his ears, their hands on his skin, marking him, hurting him, using his body like a worthless plaything. It was as though he was still being held captive, like they had never left.

Of course, Phil was there now too. Amidst the constant nightmares and flashbacks, in the dead of night when Dan woke up screaming, a soft, gentle voice and delicate hands reached to him through the darkness. Phil's calming presence had always been something Dan took refuge in when he wanted to hide from the rest of the world. Now that he needed that more than ever, though, he found himself trying to stay hidden from Phil. Not out of fear, but out of shame.

As the long, empty hours of countless days passed, Dan got the sense that Phil was waiting for something. For things to get better, for life to go back to the way it was, for Dan to finally open up and talk about what happened to him. Dan wondered how long it would be until Phil was tired of waiting.

The London air grew warmer at the start of April, though the ever-present veil of clouds still blocked out the sun. When he couldn't stand to be in his bed, Dan sat in the shadowy corner beside his desk beneath the darkened window. The first few times Phil found him there, he brought Dan a blanket and a mug of tea and then stepped away to give the boy some space. Then one cold morning, after Dan's hunched, shivering form was enveloped in a thick layer of soft wool, he heard Phil ask a question.

"So, um, is this the new existential crisis position?"

Dan blinked and swallowed hard, willing his voice box to work. "Sort of. Lying face down on the carpet doesn't really feel safe anymore."

Out of the corner of his he saw Phil's hands fidgeting nervously. Then after a pause the older boy sidestepped towards the window and eased down to the floor a few feet away from him. "How's it working out so far? Contemplating any big life questions?"

"No, just... thinking."

Dan hoped desperately that Phil wasn't going to ask what he was thinking about. The answer to that question wasn't a happy one. Instead, Phil responded, "I know you probably don't feel like talking right now, but I'd still like to sit here with you for a while, if that's okay."

"Sure," Dan muttered. It was typical for Phil to do this when Dan was having an existential crisis and lying immobilized on the floor. He'd come sit beside him to keep him company. Every time Dan insisted that he didn't have to, that it must have been incredibly boring to have to babysit him like that, Phil assured him that he was perfectly content just to be with him.

Things weren't that easy now. Sitting in comfortable silence simply wasn't possible, not when there was so much Phil wanted to say but didn't know how, and there was so much Dan knew he should tell Phil but couldn't bring himself to. Inevitably, after sitting quietly for a few minutes, Phil spoke up again.

"I was always kind of impressed by long you could lie still and just think." As he talked, Phil rested his chin on his knees in that endearing way he always did. "Though it did worry me sometimes. The longest one was about five hours, remember? After we decided to watch that Cosmos Space Time Odyssey show with Neil deGrasse Tyson?"

Dan squeezed his eyes shut. "That was a mistake."

"Yeah," Phil murmured, rubbing the back of his neck. "I probably should have tried to talk you out of watching that, but we both thought it looked interesting. You seemed okay during the first episode, even when that guy was talking about the massive scope of the universe. Then episode two..."

They'd had to stop watching halfway through the second episode. It started off with a scientific explanation of how natural selection causes variations in the physical attributes of different species based on which offers the best advantage for survival. Then the show went on to give an example. Polar bears.

Two bears were on the screen. A brown bear and a white bear. In a side by side comparison, it showed the two bears hunting for food. Due to the white bear's fur color it had the advantage of camouflage, and so the white bear was able to bring food home to its cubs while the brown bear walked home with nothing. The brown bear looked so goddamn sad it made Dan feel sick.

After a few seconds of sitting there in horror, Dan screeched at Phil to turn it off. Slightly startled, the other boy grabbed the remote and switched off the TV as fast as he could. Phil asked if he was okay, but Dan barely heard him. He stood up from the sofa in a daze, stumbled into the hallway, and collapsed unceremoniously face down on the carpet.

The next five hours were a bit of a blur. When it starting getting late, Phil warmed up some Chinese takeaway in the microwave for dinner. He tried to get Dan to eat a few bites, but Dan only whimpered in response. Eventually Phi gave up and brought the boy a pillow and a blanket to help make him more comfortable. Then he laid down next to him on the floor for a while.

When Dan finally spoke an hour later, it was with the voice of drowning man. "I hate that despair exists. It's sort of an anomaly, really. Reactions like fear and pain have a purpose. They're survival mechanisms that warn us when we're in danger to keep us from getting ourselves killed. When you experience too much fear and pain, though, you end up with this awful feeling that you're not going to make it, and sometimes... it gets to the point that... you don't want to make it."

Sitting across from him under the window, Phil rubbed his eyes as he recalled the memory. "It scared the hell out of me when you said that," he whispered in a hushed voice. "I honestly didn't know what to do. I got up and started pacing around trying to think of something that would help. Then I finally came up with an idea that was sort of ridiculous."

The idea was a perfect example of Phil's imagination at work. It would have been better if he actually had any skill at drawing, but he gave it his best shot. He returned to the hallway with his hands covered in black and brown marker and showed Dan the picture that he drew. There was the brown bear and the smudged black outline of the white bear. The white bear had brought food to share with the brown bear and his family. They were mostly a bunch of misshapen blobs, but Phi had somehow managed to make them look happy. Miraculously enough, it made Dan smile.

"You didn't make fun of me for it," Phil said, still reminiscing. "You just lay there looking at it for a long time. Then you said something else. You said that love was also an anomaly, that it made sense from an evolutionary standpoint for biological creatures to form emotional bonds to help the species survive. Then it became something else. Having someone who cares about what happens to you, who is willing to do anything to help you keep living, it gives you the hope to believe that you can make it. We're able to love because we need to be loved, but it turns out that love is the one thing that makes surviving all of this worthwhile."

Dan tugged the blanket tighter around his thin frame. "Is there a point to this story?"

Phil leaned forward, gazing at him intently. "The point is that I know you're not all doom and gloom up there. Your mind is an incredible thing. You just need help sorting things out sometimes."

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Dan looked away and stared out the window.

You don't want to know what's going on inside my head.