12-27-2024, 12:55 AM
If it was cold, he didn’t feel it.
If there was wind, he didn’t notice.
If there were people, he didn’t see them.
He just stared, unblinking, as memories exploded across his mind like flashbangs tearing through a pitch-black room. Cayli’s laughter, light and sharp, when Natalie taught her to channel. The iron grip of his mother’s arms when he first came home, her sobs muffled in his uniform. Zacarías’s mocking voice, slithering through his mind. The shock of the knife driving into his gut—the wet, hot sting that followed. The smell of grease and burnt coffee from that diner off the Texas interstate. The bite of car battery clamps on his skin, electric fire crawling through his nerves. The way the wallpaper had peeled and curled in that crumbling hotel room, melting in the heat of his hallucinations. Barbed wire raking his arms as he scrambled across the border.
His parents’ lifeless bodies.
Cayli’s lifeless body.
Axel’s lifeless body.
The piles of bodies.
One memory bled into the next, a grotesque carousel spinning faster and faster until they all blurred together, yet each moment stabbed him anew. He could feel the barbs, smell the coffee, taste the metallic tang of his own blood. Just when his lungs finally forced him to gasp for air, the reel looped again.
Cayli—Mom—Zacarías—knife—diner—clamps—wallpaper—fence—bodies on bodies on bodies.
He barely registered Jared’s presence at first. The voice, low and strained, was little more than a whisper under the deafening roar of his memories. Like the muffled dialogue of a war film, distant and irrelevant. But as Jared’s voice continued, cutting through the haze, a fresh wave of guilt sank its claws into Jay’s chest.
This was Jared’s wedding. His friend should be inside, holding his bride, laughing with family—not sitting in the dirt, trying to talk down a broken shell of a man.
And yet, Jared was here.
The thought twisted something inside Jay, a sick and bitter knot of shame and fury. Jared’s kindness only made him feel worse, like gasoline on a fire. For some reason, his mind latched onto the memory of Nox. Maybe it was because Nox understood this kind of pain, this waking nightmare. Nox had walked through hell and come out the other side, scarred but alive. Jay had always thought that shared darkness made them friends.
But it wasn’t true.
He’d been rejected, forgotten, thrown away—like some unspoken rule had been broken. Survive the war, sure. But survive and try to live? To be happy, even for a moment? That wasn’t allowed.
He should have known better than that.
The guilt curdled into anger, and the anger churned with the grief, forming a storm so wild and vast he thought it might split him apart. His body trembled, his chest heaving with sobs he couldn’t suppress, his fingers clawing at the dirt beneath him as if he could ground himself, as if that might stop the movie playing in his head.
But it didn’t stop.
It just kept replaying, frame by frame, every broken, bleeding moment.
If there was wind, he didn’t notice.
If there were people, he didn’t see them.
He just stared, unblinking, as memories exploded across his mind like flashbangs tearing through a pitch-black room. Cayli’s laughter, light and sharp, when Natalie taught her to channel. The iron grip of his mother’s arms when he first came home, her sobs muffled in his uniform. Zacarías’s mocking voice, slithering through his mind. The shock of the knife driving into his gut—the wet, hot sting that followed. The smell of grease and burnt coffee from that diner off the Texas interstate. The bite of car battery clamps on his skin, electric fire crawling through his nerves. The way the wallpaper had peeled and curled in that crumbling hotel room, melting in the heat of his hallucinations. Barbed wire raking his arms as he scrambled across the border.
His parents’ lifeless bodies.
Cayli’s lifeless body.
Axel’s lifeless body.
The piles of bodies.
One memory bled into the next, a grotesque carousel spinning faster and faster until they all blurred together, yet each moment stabbed him anew. He could feel the barbs, smell the coffee, taste the metallic tang of his own blood. Just when his lungs finally forced him to gasp for air, the reel looped again.
Cayli—Mom—Zacarías—knife—diner—clamps—wallpaper—fence—bodies on bodies on bodies.
He barely registered Jared’s presence at first. The voice, low and strained, was little more than a whisper under the deafening roar of his memories. Like the muffled dialogue of a war film, distant and irrelevant. But as Jared’s voice continued, cutting through the haze, a fresh wave of guilt sank its claws into Jay’s chest.
This was Jared’s wedding. His friend should be inside, holding his bride, laughing with family—not sitting in the dirt, trying to talk down a broken shell of a man.
And yet, Jared was here.
The thought twisted something inside Jay, a sick and bitter knot of shame and fury. Jared’s kindness only made him feel worse, like gasoline on a fire. For some reason, his mind latched onto the memory of Nox. Maybe it was because Nox understood this kind of pain, this waking nightmare. Nox had walked through hell and come out the other side, scarred but alive. Jay had always thought that shared darkness made them friends.
But it wasn’t true.
He’d been rejected, forgotten, thrown away—like some unspoken rule had been broken. Survive the war, sure. But survive and try to live? To be happy, even for a moment? That wasn’t allowed.
He should have known better than that.
The guilt curdled into anger, and the anger churned with the grief, forming a storm so wild and vast he thought it might split him apart. His body trembled, his chest heaving with sobs he couldn’t suppress, his fingers clawing at the dirt beneath him as if he could ground himself, as if that might stop the movie playing in his head.
But it didn’t stop.
It just kept replaying, frame by frame, every broken, bleeding moment.
Only darkness shows you the light.