the boy who cried rebirth

TRIGGER WARNING!!! mentions of alcohol, razors, blood, suicide, and depression below! this is a little story about a boy who romanticizes his depression a whole lot.

i heard glass break on the roof and i ran up the stairs, leaving the others behind in a state of obliviousness. i stiffed up for the worst.

alien was staring at his bleeding, shaking hand like he did not understand how it had gotten that way. remnants of his wine glass were scattered around him like a glittering snow angel. i skidded on my knees to him, scuffing up my new jeans, and reached for his palm. he jerked it away last minute and stood up. his eyes didn’t look right. tight fear made the ground feel uneven. i staggered to my right and put him hands up against the cold door to steady myself.

"let’s jump off," he grinned wildly.

"you’re drunk," i choked.

"don’t worry. we won’t get hurt. we’re not real," he mused. his back was to me. the wind carried his words far away.

"we are," i begged.

he ignored me, his attention instead dead set on the ledge of the building. he stumbled toward it and i lunged at him, my arms around his waist, and i pulled him to the ground with me.

we rolled a couple feet toward the edge and my bare elbows scraped painfully against the concrete. he giggled instead of screaming, but when he sat up across from me he was frowning.

"why would you do that?" he wanted to know.

"let’s just go back downstairs, jude." his real name felt foreign and bitter on my tongue.

he shook his head like a stubborn child. “you don’t understand,” he muttered into his hands. “then explain it to me!” i whisper-screamed.

when he took his hands off of his face, his chin was smeared with his own blood. he didn’t seem to notice, or to care. “tonight,” he began, his eyes on the ground and not on me.

"tonight is the end of me. regardless of whether or not i jump, tonight is the end. i die tonight. i’ve thought about it a lot, of course. and the course of tonight’s events just confirmed it for me.

"i haven’t written a poem in two weeks. i was scared before that i’d hit my peak, but now i know it’s because i’m dying. i’m drowning. dying men don’t write poems! they think. and i’ve been thinking a lot lately.

"and when joss and harvey improvised the song tonight in the church, that was it. that was the final sign that tonight was the night. it filled the church so beautifully like pristine water into a swimming pool. i’ve never been baptized, did you know? i was never baptized when i was a baby. tonight i was. i was cleansed. i found god and i listened to what he had to say, and he said, ‘you’ve suffered enough in this body, you despicable fool. it’s time now to be reborn."

alien looked me in the eyes, then, and said something that horrified me more than anything else.

"i’m so happy, scott. oh, you beautiful b*****d. you beautiful fool. can’t you see how happy i am?"

and he began to cry and smile at the same time. a rainbow of emotions touched his face and i believed in him for a moment. i believed that he could walk off of that building and rise back up again a new man. a man much less broken than the one in front of me.

i stared at him dumbly and repeated, “you’re drunk,” in exactly the same voice as before. the words were stuck in my mouth and i couldn’t say anything else.

"no," he croaked, because the tears made it hard for him to speak. then he looked at me hard with his gray eyes, made a little bluer by the pinkness of the white backdrop to his pupils. i tried to meet his gaze, but he was making me too nervous.

"you don’t understand. i can’t expect you to. but i need you to know something." he put his hands on the tops of my thighs and curled his fingers, digging his nails into my flesh. i ground my teeth together to keep from whimpering in pain.

he sighed, and i saw his breath in the air and something in me wanted to take it in like a curling puff of nicotine. i was afraid it would be the last visible breath i’d ever see him from. winter’s end was so close. he was so close. i listened.

"nothing will ever be the same after tonight. okay? nothing. i’m disappearing as we speak. i want you to know that i love you, and that i never meant to hurt you. i never meant to hurt any of you. tell the others that. it’s in my nature to be a razor. it’s how i keep anyone from discovering the problems."

i understood nothing and everything he said. i almost feel like he’d said it all before, or like i was expecting it. alien stopped staring at me and when he tucked his hair behind his ear, i saw it in slow motion. such a simple motion. such a complex person. he looked awkward doing ordinary things. he was such a movie star. i felt bad for thinking so.

suddenly, he stretched out his whole long, slender body on the concrete. he wiggled out of his jacket and bunched it up under his head as a pillow. i asked, “what are you doing?” and he said nothing. i peeled off my winter coat and laid it over him, crossing my arms to combat the cold. he muttered a meek “thank you” as he fell into hibernation. i knelt down and kissed his cheek slowly, so that i would remember how he smelled in the morning. just in case he walked into the apartment smelling of something different.

i walked down the stairs back into the still warmth of apartment 45. the lights were dimmer and the music was calmer. they all had reached the part of drunkenness where they were leaning on each other, listening to joss read from his personal journal but not really listening at all. i kicked at angela’s foot and she looked up. some of the others did, too.

"alien wanted me to tell you all that he loves you and never meant to hurt you."

somehow, the room fell even more silent than before. joss looked annoyed that i had interrupted him. he cleared his throat and licked his fingers, turning the page. it rustled like leaves in the wind.

"is he tryin’ to kill himself up there again or somethin’?" harvey grumbled groggily. i collapsed on the couch and shrugged. "no. i don’t think so, at least."

harvey dropped his head back down to his chest. joss sighed, “he’s always writing eulogies for himself where he says things like that. he’s such a melodramatic baby.” and he went on reading.

i think i was the only one who felt bad for the boy on the roof, trying to sleep underneath a cold and starless sky. a couple of times i considered joining him, but found i was too reluctant to sacrifice my comfort in order to go check on him. i fell asleep with harvey’s garbled words on a loop in my head.

"is he tryin’ to kill himself up there again or somethin’?"

again.

how many times? and why? was it for art? was it depression? did he ever really mean to die? did he ever really want to?

he was the boy who cried rebirth. it was beautiful and terribly sad.

a song with just his name and the word ‘again’ repeated over and over sang me to sleep. 

alien, again again, alien again again again again alien again

it was an old song that used to play a ton on the radio, till everyone got tired of it.

pretty, dusty, overplayed, overwhelming.

Author's Note

some kind of feedback is always wonderful