The End of the World

by My Holocaust

The first time the world ended, it was when Evan was six years old. TallGothxRedGoth

The first time the world ended, it was when Evan was six years old, and his parents were getting a divorce.

At that time Evan was hardly old enough to spell the word Divorce, let alone understand the concept. He worried about the color of his lunch box, learning how to read and write, and running home from school fast enough to catch the end of Thundercats. But the word loomed over him like an omen, and even though he was hardly old enough to understand it, it would be the first of a long line of incidents that would teach him about how fragile the world was.

The Divorce- The Big D- made the sky fall, made his favorite crayons break, made him only see his dad every other weekend, and to Evan was responsible for just about everything that made his life unfair, unkind, and unhappy. Every time he fell off his bike he blamed his dad for leaving, and when he learned that his father hadn't left on his own but rather he'd been booted from their house by his controlling and cheating wife, he blamed him for letting her kick him out anyway. The first time Evan failed a test (a spelling test), he blamed his mother for making him choose at which house he had to spend his birthday. Even as a small child Evan knew these accusations were uncalled for, but it didn't stop him from thinking them or for using them as an excuse whenever he was feeling angry and needed a reason for self-pity.

Evan knew plenty of kids who had divorced parents, but none of them were like him. The Other Kids had an abundance of friends and went to boy and girl parties with no adults; The Other Kids had the keys to their parents' liquor cabinets and all the teachers liked them even though Evan never once saw them turn in homework. They were smart even when they were stupid and gorgeous even when they were ugly, and Evan couldn't understand why he wasn't anything like them. At the ripe and experienced age of twelve, Evan was the epitome of everything that is socially wrong and awkward; he wore black shoes with his black pants and silver cross necklaces with his white buttoned shirts, and dyed his hair black to match his black coats. Evan didn't follow a single trend, simply because he made the conscious effort not to. Whatever was 'in' in the books of his peers was in the 'out' box where Evan stored his fashion and mentality. When it was cool to wear polo shirts and sniff girls' panties, Evan was at home reading about Anton Levay and trying to talk to spirits on his brother's Ouija board. For as long as she could remember, Evan had been weird; an add ball. His world ended because of the Divorce, but it had also begun again because of it.

The world ended again when Evan was thirteen. It was a holocaust that left the earth the color of granite; of charred wood. And this time, at this socially, physically, mentally awkward state of pre-puberty, of girls and cars and budding sexuality, there was no naiveté, or denial, or blame; when the nuclear bomb went off Evan had nowhere to point his finger and no one to be mad at, so the stinging pain was acute and throbbing and never ending, like a hornet's curved black thorn pinned directly into his stomach. When Evan was thirteen, his older brother died, and he was sure the world was over.

Riley died in his bed. He was fifteen; older than Evan, learning to drive. As Evan got older he would realize that he would never know if Riley had ever kissed a girl, or had sex. He would never confide in his brother and his brother would never confide in him. Evan wanted to shake his fist at God, who caused his splintered family so much pain, but as time went on his belief became feeble; his faith caught polio and eventually died. With the small strength he had left in his body Evan couldn't bring himself to believe that there was something as horrid and malicious as a force that would stop a good student from ever going to college, or take such a loving person from a brother who needed him. Riley's death became the reason that Evan wore black and grew out his hair; it was the reason he hollowed out his insides and curled up inside himself. The only place he felt safe was in the cavity that he had created just above his stomach.

Evan went to school by himself. He sat alone at lunch by himself. He made the decision to isolate himself until he no longer had even a single friend. He worried about his parents and his future. Sometimes he worried about everything at once, and sometimes he convinced himself that nothing was important. Then he didn't worry about anything.

When Evan reached his junior year of high school and the things that he cared about had been shaved down to a pointed sliver, the world ended. It ended when Evan met Dylan.

Dylan was like Evan. But he was not like Evan. Dylan was thin, the hair sticking out of his scalp black and red and sharp, like he was the embodiment of a Tim Burton character. Like Evan, he made a point to avoid even the vaguest of social situations; hydrophobic in a hydrophilic environment. His yellowing teeth made suggestions about the health of his personal life and his dark purple shoes made snickering comments about his sexual one. Evan would find that both he and Dylan had hungry, gnawing addictions to tobacco and both of them disliked most everything. But the difference between Evan and Dylan, Evan thought, was that Dylan had no reason to be the way he was. And Evan did.

Dylan had a nice family. He had a nice mom and a dad who worked and came home for dinner at the end of the day. Dylan's parents weren't Divorced- in fact, they seemed to really like each other, which was a concept as foreign to Evan as extreme poverty. Aside from the fact that they occasionally teased their son, Dylan's parents were actually pretty good to him which caused Evan a great bundle of confusion, but not quite enough to stop Evan from liking him quite a lot.

Evan and Dylan liked the same music, had the same opinions, and had the same weird little hobbies. And after a period of time, where there was one you were sure to find the other somewhere close by. Dylan was the Chris Turk to Evan's John Dorian; the Wayne Campbell to his Garth Agar. They were two pseudo-subculture peas in a Goth club pod. Dylan was the first thing that Evan had sincerely cared about since his brother died; a goldfish he actually wanted to feed, not one he'd forget about a let float belly-up.

Dylan slept over for the first time after several months of kind-of-friendship, and for Evan it was the first person he'd had even set foot in his house since he was twelve years old. The only thing Evan remembered about having friends spend the night was that there was food involved, and other than that it was a confusing and nervous experience. He worried that his house was too modest, that he was too uninteresting to spend an entire night with, and that something oddly homo-erotic would happen and he would be back to being solo again.

Adjacent to his room was another, and the door was open just a sliver. The light was off. As Evan lead him to his bedroom, Dylan gestured to it. "Who sleeps there?"

Evan said without looking, "My brother."

Standing on the outside of the doorway to Evan's room, Dylan asked, "I never knew you had a brother. Where is he?"

Evan lied and said, "College."

They sat at the end of Evan's bed, leaning against the mattress, looking through Fangoria and Girls and Corpses magazine, talking about negative things in the harsh yellow light of Evan's lamp. He extended his long legs, stretching them.

"So you and your parents get along pretty well, I've noticed," he said. Next to him, Dylan shrugged.

"I guess. As much as you can, I suppose."

There was a pause. Dylan was looking at the band posters on Evan's wall.

"I have something to tell you," Evan said suddenly. He picked at his fingernails. "My brother isn't at college."

Dylan glanced at him. "Oh?"

Evan gently shook his head. "No, he…he died."

Beside him, Dylan furrowed his eyebrows. "He died? When?"

" 'bout three years ago. He had some sort of aneurism that no one knew about and he died at home." Evan wanted to turn around and look through his open door, towards the direction of Riley's room, but didn't. "In his bed."

Dylan twisted his body towards Evan. "Hey, I'm sorry. I wish I'd…"

He shrugged. " 's not like there's anything you could have done about it. I think I need to…I don't know, be a little stronger about it. It's been a long enough time."

"Well, that's not something you just get over. Were you and him close at all?"

Evan blinked, his black eyelashes touching his skin before he bit his lip, as if suppressing a smile, and said, "Yeah. Yeah we were."

There was a paused before Dylan said, "Tell me about him."

It came out, slow at first like a tiny tumbleweed bumping over blades of grass and little, grey pebbles. Riley was a nice guy. Everyone found something in him that they liked. He played soccer. He and Evan used to go to Chuck E Cheese's, but then Evan started getting too old and the people who worked there wouldn't let them in anymore. The words and memories kept coming, until a small river had formed, where warm water bubbled over big rocks and it picked up and carried small flowers along its surface. Riley made friends easily, something Evan had never been able to do. He was teaching Evan about girls. He was the hand that Evan held when his parents offered none. Riley was the person that Evan learned from, and wanted to be. The river flowed and gushed through Evan's eyes. He wiped his sleeve on his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he apologized.

Dylan shrugged. "Don't be." He waited for Evan to gather himself and asked softly, "So he was…really important to you."

Evan nodded. "Yeah, he, um, was just…everything. He was the thing that sort of kept me cemented in place. I miss him. I miss him a lot." He covered his eyes with the palms of his hands, hiding them.

"Hey, don't worry about it," Dylan said. He noticed a box of tissues and reached for them, pulling the paper from the top and handing it to him. Evan took it. "If you don't wanna talk about it, it's okay. I was just curious, I guess."

"No." Evan shook his head. "It's okay. I've just never talked to anyone about Riley before." He wiped his eyes off on the paper and balled it up, throwing it.

"Everything changed after he died. I never see my dad anymore. He might send me something on my birthday and I might- might- see him at Christmas, but that's it. And my mom's just…she's not a mom anymore. She's just a woman. She's a woman who doesn't even know what she's doing. It's like I don't have parents anymore. People complain about their parents, but I want them. I want a mom and dad! I literally…I literally have no idea what it's like to have people who love me." Evan's eyes began to water again and he clenched them shut, squeezing water between his lids. "Riley was…Riley took the place of my parents after the divorce got real bad. And now he's gone. It's like everything I had was just picked up and thrown away. It…it changed me. Riley dying…"

Evan bit down on the knuckle of his index finger. He was breathing heavily. "Riley dying changed everything but it…it made me weird. It made me hate everybody. I just can't believe that…my brother died and we had to find him, laying in his bed, and then there are all these people who will never feel anything like that! They have everything they need but I will never speak to my brother again! I will never hug my brother, or play fight with him, or have a single person to support myself on for the rest of my life."

He sputtered, unable to control his body, seizing with overwhelming sorrow. "And I…will always be weird! I will always be the weird kid who is unbearable because he doesn't…have anyone to balance him out!" He wiped his nose on the back of his black sleeve, nauseated by the slimy clear trail of mucus, and Dylan handed him a tissue from the box beside Evan's bed. He cleaned off his nose and said, "My parents don't love me because…when Riley died, he took everything. I know my parents look at me and think, 'What the point? He'll die, too.' My dad doesn't hug me anymore, and it's because Riley died. My mom doesn't want me around anymore, and it's because Riley died. And I can't…" A big, hot rush of tears stained Evan's cheeks, dark trails of oil in the yellow light. "I can't…bring myself to love anything because Riley died and took that with him, too." He sniffled, whimpered like a child, overcome with longing and pain, and leaned his arms on his knees, burying his face in them and crying with his whole body. Dylan curled his fingers around the carpet as if unsure of what to do with them.

Evan grasped at his own hair, wishing he could rip it free from his scalp. "I hate…I hate what I've become. I hate that I'm this selfish, mean thing."

Dylan opened his mouth, paused, then said delicately, "You don't have to be."

Frustrated, shaking his head, Evan returned, "I can't help it. I don't want to be this way. I just…can't."

"Well…what do you mean you can't? You can do anything with yourself you want. I mean, like…Evan. You're really smart. You should…like, take responsibility for your actions. You can say, "I don't like this about me" and then not do whatever you don't like." He had turned his body towards Evan, who had returned to wiping his nose on his jacket's sleeve, the old tissue crumpled in his hand.

"Huh?"

"Well, like, just…" Dylan crossed his legs and winced, thinking. "Just…Okay, obviously what has happened to you isn't your fault at all. But, that doesn't make it anyone else's fault either. I mean like, your brother died. He didn't choose to die. I mean, I didn't know him but I just think he probably loved you a lot. Leaving you and hurting you most likely wasn't something he was trying to do. So, yeah. The consequences of him passing away have rippled outward, so to speak, and hurt you in a bunch of different ways. But that doesn't make those things his fault."

Evan sniffled and sat up slowly, leaning his back against the end of his bed. "No, but…these things, certain things happened because Riley died…"

"Yeah," Dylan said. "They happened after- something big like that is going to affect a lot of people in a lot of different ways, but it doesn't mean that it's anyone's fault. Like, it wasn't anyone's fault that Riley died and it wasn't anyone's fault- yours or your parents' or your brother's- that what happened after ended up having a really negative effect on everyone."

"I don't really…I don't understand what you're getting at."

"I mean like…" Dylan waved his hands in small circles as if trying to generate a more elaborate thought. "…I just…Okay, like this: You said the relationship between you and your parents started to disintegrate after your brother passed, and it was because Riley sort of took everyone's ability to care and patience and everything when he went. Well, just…I mean, I just think he didn't do that. When he died it really hurt all of you. But instead of turning to each other to soothe that hurt, it just seems like you and your parents became really isolated and withdrawn. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just the way things played out. Riley didn't plan that, and even Riley dying didn't really cause that. You guys all made your choices on how to react and this is what happened. So…I don't know, I guess the point is that there's no real force or reason for you to not be able to change yourself, because the reason you are the way you are right now is because of…well, yourself."

Years of stubbornness backed up like a traffic jam inside Evan's head. "I can't. I can't just be the way I was…like before Riley died." His eyes were red.

Sincerely, "Why?"

"It…it's hard. It hurts." A pause. "It sounds stupid when I say it out loud."

"Well…" Dylan exhaled through his nose and chewed on his bottom lip. In the light his hair looked especially sharp and dark, prominent against his pale face and almost out of proportion on his thin body. "I…I don't know. I'm here if it, you know, gets too hard."

Evan blinked to himself. Tears stuck to his eyelashes. "Thanks." Then, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be."