Timeless Snow ✓

Ch. 9 - Rest in...

The bathroom was the only place in Chocia's that was truly safe from prying eyes, even if the door didn't lock for safety reasons and had a slanted slit cut in the door to prevent an edge to hang yourself with. You compensated for the lock by simply sitting behind the door that opened inward. Even if someone tried to walk in without knocking you'd simply have the excuse that you were pushing a pull door while they were trying to enter. Lame excuse but people never expected much out on the clinically insane.

Crossing your legs together you tucked your feet under opposing knees as you cradled the phone close to your chest. You swiped your thumb across the clock screen that held no pin number or access code. He had nothing to hide, nor did he leave his phone alone just in case a coworker was to grab it. 

The first thing you were greeted with was a memory. Taehyung's cellphone background was a picture he took many years prior. Your cheeks perked as your lips grew thin with an infectious smile. It was a picture he had taken one cold winter morning. It was the first time you had stayed the night at his place. That morning was burned into the walls of your brain, a cherished memory that was reluctant to fade and for that you were grateful.

Laying on your stomach on his bed, your arms folded in front of you and your head rested on top. Taehyung climbed atop your sleepy frame and showered you with affectionate kisses all the while proclaiming how much he loved you and adding insult to injury by telling you how beautiful you looked to him. You never felt beautiful, but you couldn't call him a liar no matter how bad you wanted to insist that his eyesight must be crappy if he thought that. Tossing his phone in front of your face he had told you he'd prove it with a picture and snapped the shot before you could protest.

He kept this picture of the two of you all these years, constantly changing his phone's wallpaper every week this was just the one he chose that week. He kept a stockpile of pictures of you and him, some of just you. Despite this, his background photo was always the two of you. He drew comfort in seeing you two together and being reminded of the moments you cherished together. God, he needed to get an 'unimaginable boyfriend' award. Shaking yourself from your nostalgia you quickly opened an internet tab and let your fingers type away furiously fast.

Christopher Horn

It took a few seconds to load, hospitals had the worse reception. Seconds felt like minutes when you were at risk of being caught for doing something unlawful. With a sigh of relief, Google sprang to life with a splurge of links. You pushed your finger up the screen as you looked for anything of interest. Fuck, there are so many duplicate names in the world. After a minute of fruitless searching, you noticed a link to a social media profile that seemed promising.

You clicked on the photo's section to give it a once over. It took less than a second for your breath to spike. A familiar head of bushy brownish-red hair and a raggedy beard took you back. This was the man you saw in your dreams. He was real. You switched to look into his biography section and scanned through a medley of information. He was thirty-seven and as expected he wasn't an old acquaintance from school. It didn't list where he lived or worked. His bio was relativiely bare.

Closing out of your analytic search of his personal life you went to the page's updates. Scrolling down the first post available wasn't written by him, something he had been tagged in. Your eyes hovered over the name of the sender for a moment. Lidia Horn Halbert. Lidia was his ex-wife, a good start! Next, you looked at the date. Your eyes froze on the year...

The post was twenty-six years old - where things really saved that long on the internet? It was surprising the page hadn't been deactivated yet. This was the age of technology and they always said nothing was ever really erased from the internet. The message was long, but it was your first step into answers.

"It's been a year --" The message started which instantly sparked curiosity as you moved the screen up a bit more to continue your investigation. "-- and I still miss you every single day..." Maybe the break-up wasn't on her end. That didn't explain why Christopher seemed upset to lose her if he was the one to leave her?

"I don't think this will ever get easier, and that scares me. Why did you have to leave? I ask myself that question all too often. I wish you were here to see the world turn with me. There's a void on the planet that no one can ever fill. It scares me. Part of me is still angry that you left and I feel guilty because of it. I wish you could have held on just a little bit longer... I miss you."

What the hell? Quickly you scrolled down, and as you did it became all too apparent what happened to Christopher Horn. He was no longer alive. There was a flood of 'Rest in Peace' messages that decored his now barren social media page. Friends and loved ones sharing their remorse for the loss. If he was deceased, how did you know him? Why could you recall a vivid conversation with him if his date was dated for twenty-seven years back? You were only twenty-five. He died two years before you were even born.

After a definitive search. You found he had lived in North Carolina, you had never been to that state. Was there a trip that you took with your family that you had forgotten? Then again that wouldn't explain the dates displayed. There was no feasible explanation as to how you knew a man that died well before your conception. What was his cause of death? Suicide...

Sliding the phone down you let your palms descend into your lap as you stared aimlessly at his default picture. This was him, there was no doubt. Every detail that you could recall of him was displayed right there on that digital photo, all the way down to the freckles that littered his cheeks like rain on pavement.

Flipping the phone over you set it down on the tile floor beside you as your hands raced to your head. You laced your fingers into dull brunette locks as you curled up in your place on the floor. The creeping darkness was setting in. That lingering ping of insanity that lurked behind the corners of your soul was making its appearance. It wasn't possible that you had ever spoken to this man yet your mind played tricks on you nonetheless, trying to fool you into believing a dilution of something that was only a fabric of your imagination.

That's all this was - that's all it could be. You really were crazy...