Coma ➷ Izzal

Chpt.2

As a child, Axl always feared closing his eyes. The impending darkness destined to come was catastrophic, a world that could hold anything he ever feared, or anything he ever wanted. However, the line drawn between the two was inevitable. Axl remembered comparing closing his eyes to death, as though the two were merely the same. He suffocated on those choked sobs each time he settled into bed, harboring that last bit of life before closing his eyes, dreading whether he'd ever come back.

But death, and sleep were two different concepts. Axl always woke up from these boundless dozing escapades, pleading for the next night to follow through as easily. He wondered when he lost sight of that dream; the dream of waking up to see another day. He wondered when he began to beg for life to pass him by, hoping that he could never wake from this encompassing darkness.

However, with Axl's luck, he wasn't dead or asleep.

He was instead caught within a world between the two, teetering on the edge of life, but succumbing to a seemingly endless dream. His mind had deserted his body, attempting to juggle between that fine difference. Rather than facing darkness, Axl was interfaced by a life like none other— one where everything wasn't as quite as it always seemed.

When Axl closed his eyes, he opened them to find himself stationed in the Hell House, the familiar scent of nicotine floating through the air and enveloping him with a suffocating warmth. The buzzing of music filled the walls, resonating through his head persistently. Empty beer bottles are thrown across the coffee table, opened packs of cigarettes lying around, and a brimming ash tray burning out a diminutive flame.

When he turns his head, Izzy is slumping back into the couch, a joint hanging from the corner of his lips, and his hands mindlessly fiddling with a sitar. Axl doesn't move, nor speak. Instead, he peers at Izzy for a long moment, taking in the image as though it could dissipate in the midst of time. Izzy's sable hair no longer shines beneath radiant sunlight, but instead appears oily in the dim lighting. Smoke billows above his face, fogging his semblance for a split second before it clears.

Axl could hear distant voices speaking from the next room, Duff and Slash ostensibly bickering in the kitchen. Although, when Axl leans a little ways from the couch, he sees no one.

"Has the smoke gotten to your head?"

Axl's attention wavers back to Izzy, and his voice is no longer filled with youth and childlike innocence. Instead, it's ragged and familiar, a tender rasp that Axl admired like none other. He watches Izzy's fingers glide along the sitar, and they're calloused and blistered, as though the singer had woken up in his reality.

"What day is it?" He whispered slowly, and Izzy shrugged nonchalantly, as though this was highly expected.

"Must be Friday, Steven's out with Adriana," he informs, and Axl feels a pit caving through his stomach.

Only months antecedently had he screwed Steven's girlfriend Adriana as a way of granting her leverage over their relationship. He feels a tightening in his chest, and the urge to breathe becomes more urgent. "Steven?" He repeats.

Izzy glances at him, quizzicality crossing over his face before disappearing as quick as it came. He pulls the cigarette from his mouth, flicking the butt of it before mustering up, "Did you fall asleep on me or what?"

Axl attempts to conceal his chagrin by lowering his head, scarlet hair falling over his face as he recollects the process of events. He wonders if in reality, Steven is cursing upon his body and praying he never wakes up. Axl doesn't feel deserving of his consciousness, in such a way that this mental incarceration he was condemned to was a punishment for his horrid ways of friendship. He leans over himself, elbows propping on his knees as fingers pull at his hair.