The Weight of Us ｡ Peter Parker [3]

25 - Illusions

When I woke, I couldn't breathe. 

Green smoke coated my limbs and felt trapped inside my lungs. My hands went to my throat, clawing at my skin which twitched like bugs were hidden inside my bloodstream, wanting to dig and fight to the blue sky above. Sinking to my knees, my eyes found a slice of moon hanging over my head and finally, through the green fog and the headstones, Calvary Cemetery rose up around me like towering skyscrapers. Caked in dirt and cobwebs, my eyes found a familiar grave, dead flowers placed between blades of grass. 

The smoke eased, my dry coughs fading away like they were fake and I reached my fingertips to the named carved into the hard marble. Colton Parsons. 

Under my knees, the ground started to rumble and a hand struck up through the dirt. My screams bounced off the headstones, echoing throughout the cemetery like they were stuck on a spinning record. I scurried away, heart thumping loudly in my ears. A shoulder followed the hand, then a head. Flopping around like a fish on dry land, the decaying body sprouted up through the earth and his eyes snapped open. "You killed me."

Colton Parsons, a dead body, covered in dirt and blood and bugs, wiggled towards me, arms carrying his half skeleton body towards me. My tears were rivers, brimming with waves and cracking open my chest with a razor sharp sword. "I'm so sorry," Through my sobs, my heart broke. "I'm sorry."

His smile allowed tiny snakes to sliver from his mouth and I attempted to crawl away, my hands and knees sinking into the dirt. Colton's body followed me, his hand yanking my ankle and dragging me back to him. His hands were cold and hungry. "I died because of you!" His words played on repeat inside my head and slowly, or very quickly, his voice changed. He didn't sound like my brother. "You should have died in that car accident."

My knees fell through the dirt, the grass, the deep earth and I fell downwards until my body hit a new surface. Calvary Cemetery vanished like shattered glass, and now, I sat in a car. New York streets blurred through the windows and Colton sat in the driver's seat. He was arguing loudly, the music from the radio too loud to hear his words. I wiped away my tears with my sleeve, suddenly feeling safe with him alive beside me. This felt too familiar, almost like a dream that I could not touch in the daylight. 

The music fell away as white headlights appeared in the windscreen. My bottom lip trembled, the car stopped at a red light in the deepest part of Brooklyn. Colton was staring across at me now, not paying any attention to the road. His words were incoherent, just words that maybe meant something all those years ago on a fateful Halloween night. 

"Colton!" A hurried cry sounded from the back of my throat, but the car slammed into us before I could try and save him. Glass shattered against my face as the impact shook the car, spinning us in tight circles. From above rain had started to pour, but the rain was red. Thick and strangled with a nightmare which I had never escaped from. 

Tears were fresh in my eyes again, my shaking hands reaching for my brother's body that was awkwardly slumped against the steering wheel. Glass littered his hair, his mouth parted like he had died trying to say something to me. The blood rain whooshed into the car, rising too quickly and through my sobs, I realised if I didn't move, didn't leave him, I may just drown. Maybe I deserved to drown in his blood. 

I shoved my shoulder against the door, slamming my hands against the glass. My screams were not my own and slowly, they faded into an echo. Through my panic, I managed to push open the car door and I fell through the gap, only to keep falling deeper into the sea of hot blood.

When I stopped falling, I stood in a darkened corridor. Lockers lined the space and as a bell rang out somewhere in the distance, the space broke with students. Packed with familiar faces of the children at Midtown High, they pushed me around like a bobbing buoy in the restless sea. Up ahead, I saw them exit a classroom, giggles on their lips. I pushed towards them in a mad hurry, seeking their comfort and love. "Mary Jane! Gwen!"