As the train pulled away from the station he wondered for a moment if this was the right decision. He could feel the soft blue light from his ipad touch the side of his face and in that moment, he knew he could never be happier with anyone else.
Call it fate; call him crazy. Either way, he knew he was crazy-in-love and nothing could stop them now.
He plugged his headphones into the jack on the ipad and opened his music. The gentle notes of Jason Mraz's I Won't Give Up reached his ears. The sound vibrated up his spine like the fingertips of a lover. Every hair on the back of his neck stood on end out of anticipation for the next day.
The pastel colored light reflected in his eyes, and he could see the depth of something he didn't quite understand. The sensation of pure joy Tumblr gave him, he couldn't describe it with any soul word he knew. It was simple, and concrete. Flakes of something soft and warm clouded his head. It was like snow, but it was glowing inside.
He chuckled to himself, not sure what to feel exactly. It was a mix of something foreign to him, opening his sight in a way he still couldn't see. One thing for sure, he was definitely nervous. Hell, he hadn't even gotten a ring yet.
But that was okay because Tumblr understood. From the way the lines on the screen moved in an attempt to refresh itself, the website revealed it wanted this too. The wavy layers of color were like a pulse, moving so much more quickly than normal. Since the website didn't have the aid of a live brain connection he knew that this love wasn't just chemical.
A small blurb of red broke through the blue of his screen and he'd realized he'd received a message. With a speed he wasn't regularly capable of he opened the message and read it to himself. It was a love note. It read a small sonnet of the sender's own design, carrying that same simple warm feeling he couldn't explain. It was Anonymous, just like the other letters he received from his dear love Tumblr. He assumed it was the program's default since it couldn't exactly post as Tumblr itself. That and his darling was quite shy.
He smiled a small contented smile and replied with a short loving blurb of his own, as he had every time over the past couple of weeks. He hit the submit button with the tip of his index finger and as the page loaded everything felt perfect.
Tomorrow they would be married. Tomorrow would be the start of forever. Forever feeling this way. It was like falling through a cloud and letting the scent of pine soil and fresh air soak into his skin.
Everything, everything was perfect.
The page was slow to load itself after answering the call of his love, but he could wait. He had all the time in the world. Looking out the window he could see that the day had broken through to darkness. Forms passed beside the train, just shadows on the edges of this sanctuary.
Feeling the flakes settle in his chest, tight and comforting he turned back to the ipad, and his heart almost stopped.
The screen displayed a simple phrase, only three words in length; hardly a sentence.
DOWN FOR MAINTENACE
The words were cold. An icy stab in the eye, his sanctuary invaded.
He was still for a moment, paralyzed by the curve of every letter, the hardness of the lines. When he finally came back to himself it was like he'd been hit with an asteroid. The stinging pain, smack dab in his throat, swelling and crawling with the legs of a poison spider.
Frantically he tried his best to refresh the page. Again and again, over and over until his finger nail split from the force of his blows; his finger bruised and bent in a way that made it unrecognizable. He didn't stop, even when the blood began to flow from his quick. He could hear the simultaneous CRACK when the screen gave in at the same time as his entire world shattered.
He stopped himself, for the first time noticing the crystal drops of his panicked worry falling over his cheek bones. The screen was black, with a lightning strike of rainbow where the glass had split. He tried to murmur a protest, but the screaming in his brain was so loud it drowned out his tongue. Small toy soldier's drums thrummed in his ears, like a thousand butterflies flapping their wings. But the butterflies were horrid ugly moths that ate through the fabric of his lace love.
So that was it. That was how it would end, with his light in ashes and his head up his ass. There was nothing he could do. They say, that when applying CPR to resuscitate a victim, it's helpful to break the sternum. In this case, like with the chemical love, Tumblr was not a regular person and the resuscitation had done more harm than good.
It was all. His. Fault.
The dust from the wings of the moths swarmed his lungs and filled every crevice of his being. It coated his throat dry, choked and sandy. The dust coagulated into stone, gravel sinking like pebbles in a pond. He felt stuck, the pit of his stomach churning the gravel into fine paste that hardened and dried into cinderblocks. They weighed down on his chest, the cavity full of the pained memories he used to know as the haze of something beautiful. He was stuck. So stuck he couldn't even sob.
His senses just lurched to a stop, just in time with the train on the tracks. They'd reached a junction, and the conductor's voice came over the car-box's intercoms. To Matthew it sounded like the voice of every adult ever in A Charlie Brown Christmas Special. He was sure that what the man had to say was important, but he couldn't focus. Outside, the shadows of demons foul and bloody were creeping up on him.
He tried to shoo them away, cradling the broken vessel of his beloved in his arms. They were strong, stronger than he was in his state of immediate grieving. He looked around the car-box for the other passengers, begging, pleading with his eyes, "Help! Somebody, help please!" Instead, he found no body there. Where had they gone? Were they ever really there? If so, where was he?
He couldn't hold them off much longer. He would never let go of his sweet Tumblr, no matter how the dark forms, frozen in touch, scrapped and tore at him. He wasn't about to give up everything he held so dear if he knew he could protect what he had lost. He had lost it. Lost it once, and he wouldn't allow it to happen again.
Just as he thought it impossible the tables turned, and a bright white light shone outside of his window. It lit up the frame and the monsters of his conscious cowered and slithered back to the recesses of his mind. Looking out the pane he could see his own reflection, a face haunted and worn with heartbreak and loss. Outside he caught a glimpse of the rest of the train's passengers outside huddled in a group, the conductor flagging them away from the track.
A loud blasting sound beat down the drumming in his ears and the screaming in his brain. For the second time that day he felt a crashing impact. This time, it was worse than a truck. Pins, like the itch of fiberglass, dug under his skin, hauling full force through his body.
For a moment everything was silent.
It lasted only a moment, but it could have been forever. They too, could have been forever.
When the sound returned to his ears the world screamed like a skinned cat. The sound of car hoods being peeled back, like the flesh of an apple being cut into a pie. Every vein seeped his physical pain, but all he could feel was the crushing sensation of the last shells that stuck in the ballistic of his fractured paradigm. The ceiling was caving in, sliding sideways and upright instead of upside and down. He hugged the object of his affection close, its carcass melding with his.
His fight or flight response tried to seal off every aspect of his current situation by replacing it with his happiest memories. Gif after Gif twirled and danced with whimsy. Every little love note that Tumblr left him in his ask box, every scroll of the screen.
He stumbled back down the aisle in-between the battered seats. The car-box shifted sharply to the left and with it the curve of a metal beam swung toward him. He turned his back to shield the ipad from the imminent impact and smiled, one, last, time.
A crippling pain shredded at his lower back, slicing clean through flesh and bone. He folded in on himself, tired and quiet. The world seeped away from him all so fast that he wasn't sure if it was actually him, running liquid down the cracks. The last image in his mind's eye, the bit that frayed and squiggled, resembling the refreshing lines on the ipad screen, beating with the pulse of his one true love was the iconic Tumblr T. It reached for him with its comforting fields of blue. It put him at peace, and in acceptance, he died.
THE END
REALLY, GAME OVER.
GO HOME.
GTFO
Matthew jolted awake in his bed, cold sweat pouring from his face, goose bumps littering his arms. He didn't make a sound. He hunched over, nausea growling at the lining of his stomach. He shook his head once, twice and rubbed his temples.
After a minute or two of recovery he glanced over to his side table that housed his ipad, glasses and a half empty bag of pickle flavored potato chips. The ipad cover was open and the screen was dim with sleep. Through the light grey film of the tablet's hibernation mode he could see the one and single app he had displayed for use. Tumblr.
He grimaced sourly and ruffled his own hair back in place. Laying himself back down and rolling onto his side, he swore vehemently to himself to lay off the Tumblr and Pickle Chips from now on. Especially right before bed.
What crack is this? Good question. I'm not sure. My happy little crack love story turned to tragedy. Not cool beans mang.
Oh hey, I don't own Hetalia, or Tumblr. That's for the cool people. 8I
