For a brief moment, Mark couldn’t remember the moment when he pulled the trigger.
It was dark. He thought he’d gone blind, or maybe woke up in the middle of a blackout. But it turned out he’d screwed his eyes shut like he was bracing for impact.
The moment he opened his eyes, he remembered everything. He found his body in a bloody puddle on his bed, dead and limp with the gun beside him.
He couldn’t hear or feel anything.
The sight of his head blown apart should have made him vomit, but the feeling of sickness never came. He couldn’t feel anything around him, numb to even the stifling air of his bedroom. Like there was nothing there for him to feel.
Nothing to feel except for the grief of knowing that this was his end. That this was probably how his best friend also went out before he ever had the chance to turn that friendship into something more. His afterlife could have been painless, if not for…
…Wait, so where was he, then? If Mark was here, then where was Cesar? Back at his house?
That’s when he could hear the quiet sobbing.
There was Cesar, curled up into himself in the corner of the room. For some reason, his cries were the only thing Mark could hear. The old AC unit was silent. There was no ticking of the clock on the wall. He stole a glance at it; it was moving, but he couldn’t hear it.
Only Cesar was left for him.
Mark approached and sat beside him, leaning his back against the wall. Did Cesar know that he was here?
“Hey, Ces. Can you hear me?”
Cesar untucked his head from the rest of his body. His face was drenched in tears, but there were none of the other signs that the man had been crying. No red puffy eyes, like there was no blood running through his veins.
Made sense. He probably didn’t have flesh and blood any more. Neither did Mark.
Cesar looked at Mark like a deer in headlights. “Mark? Is that you?”
The boy glanced between Mark and the body slumping off the bed.
“Oh,” he said, defeated. “So that did happen. You really did die.”
“Guess I did. But why are you here?” Mark asked. He wished he could just reach out and hold Cesar’s hand. Would he find that weird?
“I just wanted to save you, so I followed you here too and I just… I couldn’t do anything. I screamed so loud, but you couldn’t hear me,” Cesar said. His voice cracked and his words were shaky. Mark couldn’t help but wonder how that worked if they were both dead. “I’m sorry, Mark. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t help you.”
Mark scooted closer and pulled Cesar in so he could lay his head on his shoulder. Mark couldn’t not comfort him somehow, not after the man just watched him suffer for days only to blow his brains out in the end. But what was he supposed to tell him? Cesar was always his stronger half. He’d never even seen the guy cry before. Was he supposed to tell him that there was nothing he could do, or would that make it worse?
“You did everything you could,” said Mark, resisting the urge to run his fingers through Cesar’s hair. He wondered if it would feel as soft as it looked. Cesar went back to sobbing, pressing his face into Mark’s sleeve. “Thank you for trying.”
He sniffled and moved to snuggle into Mark’s chest.
If he still had blood, he knew his face would be flushing red until he looked like a tomato. But if Cesar was all that he could feel in this empty life after death, then he’d let himself feel him. Mark didn’t know how he’d react, but he wrapped his arms around the man, holding him closer than they’d ever been.
There was no warmth, but there was comfort.
Mark’s hand climbed up to stroke the hair on the back of Cesar’s head. It really was soft… he thanked God that Cesar didn’t question it, because he just wanted to keep touching him like this.
The two stayed wrapped around each other for some time. Looking up at the clock, Mark noticed that much more time passed since waking up dead than he thought. Not only could they no longer feel the rest of the world around them, but there was also no sense of time. Sometimes hours felt like minutes, and sometimes minutes felt like hours.
Cesar lifted his head from Mark’s chest, and Mark watched him slowly turn to look at the corpse they were still sharing a room with.
“Don’t look at that,” he snapped, and Cesar listened. “You don’t need to be upset by that. It’s not me anymore.” If Mark was being honest, he was also a little self-conscious about how his old body looked. The last memory anyone is going to have of him will be of the gunshot wound in his head and his blood staining the sheets. He moved to stand up, and Cesar followed. “Let’s go somewhere else. Since you’re here, it doesn’t look like we’re bound to anything.”
The door was still open from Mark’s encounter with the last thing he saw before he took his life. If anything in this world was truly cruel, Cesar had the worst of it; he had to watch that monster wear his skin and make a mockery of his memory and was forced to watch it do what it did to Mark. Mark felt like his pain paled in comparison.
He brought them to the living room downstairs. A few things were knocked out of place, but at least there were no festering bodies of their former selves.
“What do we do now, Mark?”
Nothing. He knew that if they weren’t going to be let into heaven, there would be nothing for them in the afterlife. He didn’t want to say it out loud, but Cesar seemed to understand what his silence meant.
There really was nothing left for them now. Their friends and family among the living were out of their reach.
Mark sat down on the couch. There was no softness in the cushions underneath him, which didn’t even sink under his weight like they used to. He felt the throw pillows and ran his hand up and down the smooth fabric in an attempt to feel something from his past life. But he only got the otherworldly feeling that his hand was touching something, but he couldn’t perceive the texture of it. Everything he touched felt the same.
Except for Cesar.
Neither of them felt warm, but they could still feel each other’s skin and hair, their tears, and seemingly also the clothes that they died in. Nothing about them was real, but they could touch those “not real” things, while all the “real” things were worlds away.
“Guess this is all there is. I wonder if we can sleep,” Mark said, laying himself out flat along the length of the couch. “Want to join me? We can find out together.”
It was risky, but if there was ever a time to let himself be closer to the person he loved, he only had now. And the rest of eternity, apparently.
Mark knew Cesar could probably hear how nervous he sounded, but he didn’t point it out and willingly climbed onto him and cuddled against his body anyway. Mark wondered how his own body would feel right now if he were still alive. Would he have butterflies in his stomach? Would he find himself aroused by this? Maybe just the warm calm of having his beloved touch and hold him? Not that he’d ever get to know that now. He’d just have to accept that this at least made him feel happy. It was better than drifting in this empty world alone.
Cesar’s cheek rested against his chest. “I never got to tell you that I love you, Mark.”
Mark held Cesar tight against him so he couldn’t look up and see the tears starting to flow for the first time since waking up here. Did he really just come out and admit it that easily? Just like that? And Mark was afraid to hold his hand.
“I love you too, Ces.”
“No, I mean like—”
“I know what you mean. I mean it that way too.” Mark felt himself breaking down more when Cesar started shaking and sniffling again. “So… since when?”
His voice was muffled against Mark’s shirt. “Forever. You?”
“Same.”
Cesar forced himself out of Mark’s grip so he could crawl up and nuzzle into the crook of his neck. His tears were wet against his skin. The older boy then fell silent; asleep, he hoped. For the first time since they entered this bleak afterlife together, he looked like he was at peace, curled up against Mark’s body. Mark wondered what their life together could have been like. Would people accept them as they are, or would they have to fight for their place in the world? Could they have gotten married someday and grown old together? Would they sometimes fight, but make up later with gifts of flowers and chocolates?
Days passed like minutes while Mark grieved for all the things they would never experience together.
Suddenly the front door was kicked open, but it didn’t make even a single sound even as shards of wood scattered across the room and collided with the walls and furniture. An officer with a flashlight stood where the door once was. The man was shouting, but Mark couldn’t hear a thing. The flashlight scanned back and forth across the dark room, passing over the two boys once or twice. But the officer didn’t see them. Mark leaned back with his head against the armrest of the couch while the officer trudged up the stairs to meet his past self. At the same time, Cesar began to stir.
“You awake, Ces?”
“Yeah. I can’t sleep.”