A Snowflake Fell
A/N: Well, this is just a tiny, little thing about Kenny, who's always had a place in my heart, though he's recently expanded it into a sort of duplex thing, so apparently he'll be staying for a while. So this is some introspective!Kenny, hope y'all enjoy.
Must recommend, though, A Snowflake Fell (And it Felt Like a Kiss) by Glasvegas. Obviously it's where I got the title from, but if there ever was a song that fit Kenny...that's the one.
Warnings: The only reason this is rated T is because it's somewhat dark and morbid, really, there's nothing too bad here.
Pairings: ...none. Probably just shot myself in the foot with that, huh?
Disclaimer: Yes, bow down, this is secretly Matt Stone/Trey Parker...lol that's a disturbing pairing. D:
Kenny McCormick wakes up to white.
Always, always to white.
At the same time that it encompasses everything fully, dispelling all shadows, it is also blinding. He wishes he could see the things the white light reveals in the darkness, but by the time his eyes have adjusted he never sees anything except for his bedroom ceiling - cracked plaster and posters of girls with fake smiles (among other things) and bands he doesn't even really like.
It isn't so much waking up as it is coming back.
From Hell to...well, he won't even go for the obvious joke there. It's more of a fact really.
And he wakes up, comes back, and opens his eyes to find the same place he left behind. Always the same place. Things exactly where he left them. Everyone where he left them. All his friends, or lack thereof, asleep, somewhere across town. Fully expecting him to be back the next day. No worries in their mind about Kenny. Anger and sadness gone, or, maybe, it was never there.
Kenny wouldn't know: he's always dead by that point.
Some days it really is all too much, and he simply closes his eyes and falls into a restless sleep.
Other days, it doesn't matter what he wants. Something about coming back to life rejuvenates him. Like so much electricity coursing through his veins, he finds himself unable to sleep, wide awake and, what's worse, with a plethora of energy to burn off.
On days like those - days like today - Kenny McCormick takes a walk. He usually doesn't have to get dressed, or rather he doesn't bother to change out of the clothes he died in. It doesn't matter though, they aren't stained in his blood or anything as morbid. They're simply the clothes he was wearing when he last died and, just like his own body, they show no sign of that.
He never wakes up exactly at midnight. His life is dramatic, but it isn't a fairy tale. He isn't Cinderella, but he can definitely see the resemblance. He wakes up early enough, however. At two in the morning, sometimes three, no one else is awake. It truly is as if the rest of South Park is sleeping while he walks around, shrouded in their ignorance of the world outside, where Kenny feels like the last man on Earth.
Kenny never feels cold outside. Perhaps he's adapted after all these years. Maybe it has something to do with his habit of dying on a regular basis (more regular than anyone else, at least). Or maybe he simply always has been this way. Kenny can't remember if that's true or not, but he's glad for it, regardless.
Glad that he can walk around in the middle of the night or early morning and not feel the biting cold.
Yet, every time someone touches him they quickly jump away. Because Kenny doesn't feel it, but he's cold to the touch and getting colder every day. Like something dead and gone. Not of this world.
Kenny hasn't had anyone touch him in years now. But he doesn't want anyone to touch him anyway, it's hard to be reminded of what you are. Harder still to accept it.
And he hasn't.
He has never quite accepted what happens to him, never figured out why, even though he always wonders. Not just why it is he has to die, but also -
Why the hell is he even here?
Kenny leaves his house silently, not that it would matter if he made noise doing so - his parents don't pay him much attention these days, it's not like they have anything to worry about. He has a one-track mind when it comes to the question of where he's going. Not so much a specific answer, but: over the railroad tracks. Away from the place he tentatively calls home. To the other side of town where the snow is a little more pure. A little more white. A little more beautiful.
He doesn't care if anyone sees him, if they happen to be up doing something so late, or so early. Because no one will ever say anything to him about it. No one will ever -
Well.
What Kenny wants to think is: No one will ever care. But that's not right. There are a few people who would care. To most people he's simply that McCormick boy, but he has friends who know him. Better than most anyone. In some ways, better than he knows himself.
But no one who would be concerned.
Walking around town at two in the morning - it's exactly something Kenny would do. It's just not something anyone will even question. Even certain people who, sometimes, worry too much for their own good, wouldn't think much of it.
And, so, Kenny walks, and if anyone sees him, they never say anything.
He, as always, finds himself thinking, why the hell -
But he never has an answer. So maybe there isn't one.
Somehow that just makes it all the worse. Because if there isn't a reason, then doesn't that just make his entire existence meaningless? Kenny supposes everyone must think about this at least once. But he thinks about it always, always and...it's just not the same for anyone else.
He has too much time to think.
And too many things to think about.
He takes whatever route through the small mountain town that he feels like. Sometimes, he doesn't pay very much attention. Wrapped up, as he is, in his thoughts. And, sometimes, he finds himself at the cemetery behind the church. The one where he was buried once, long ago, and probably never will find himself in again. Which is fine, as far as Kenny is concerned. He doesn't like the cemetery, doesn't like the idea of it.
Full of its headstones and etched in names and dates, rotting bodies six feet under the ground and dying flowers that lay as forgotten as the people there.
All of it calling out to him, like an old friend, beckoning him ever closer - to where he knows he will end up sooner or later. Not in the graveyard. But in death. And, so, whenever Kenny finds himself standing there, at the entrance of the cemetery, like some sort of confused vagrant, he leaves quickly. Scared that he's inviting death to come for him earlier than it means to.
Though, he's a bit beyond being scared at this point, the very idea of being scared of something that has happened to him so often is almost laughable.
No, death doesn't scare him. The future does, just because he isn't sure of what it holds, for him, at least.
Everyone else seems to know where they're going or, if they don't, they're great at pretending.
Kenny has no idea.
He has no idea if, maybe, one day, he'll just die and everything will end. He had no idea if he'll simply never die. He has no idea - about anything. He just doesn't know.
And that scares him.
The dying doesn't, as terrifying and as gruesome as it can be at times, it doesn't scare him at all.
Certainly, he avoids it, if he can. He has no death wish, even if seems like someone has granted him one. He does not want to die, but, at the same time, he isn't scared of it.
It's something that he, and he alone, feels. The presence of death, ever over his shoulder, evoking not fear, but impatience and discomfort. Wanting it just to over with this time and hoping, though he knows it's futile, that when he comes back the next time it will also be the last time, and he won't feel so cold.
Sometimes he wonders if he won't just, someday, become as cold as the town he lives in, melting seamlessly in with the atmosphere so that he is nothing so much as a permanent fixture that no one gives but a passing glance.
In the years ahead, the years to come, he thinks, it's a possibility that all of his friends - everyone he loves - will all die, one by one and Kenny will be left, cold and alone and forgotten, simply because, for as many times as he has died, he has never truly stayed dead.
Other times Kenny wonders if, perhaps, the only way to end it all is by his own hand. If he makes the choice to die, will that change anything?
But -
Kenny doesn't have it in himself to do such a thing. It's selfish, and Kenny, for all his faults, isn't selfish. He's never been able to be such a thing, he's never been given anything to covet or keep to himself. Everything he has belongs to everyone else, his life, his death, himself. None of it is his to take away from the world.
And that, more than anything, makes Kenny stop, where he is, on the side of road, to stare down at the ground. It's early February, so the snow is somewhat deep, hard and packed, with a layer of ice underneath that cracks in a satisfying way with every step he takes. Funny, that. It makes him realize that, if nothing else, he's at least here, he has some impact on things, even if it is purely physical.
Or maybe he stops because he has no idea where he's going, no idea where he is, for that matter. On a road, in the quiet, colonial house-infested suburbia that is South Park, yes, but for the life of him he has no idea where he is. And of course he knows that he'll end up back home at some point, he always does. But in the purely metaphorical he can not begin to imagine where he'll end up today. He never can.
It's then that the snow begins to fall, silently like it is wont to do, and Kenny looks up at the sky, beautiful despite all its grey, and a snowflake (unlike any other, no two are alike) falls unto his cheek, melting almost instantly, proving that, though Kenny is cold, the snow is still colder, and he is, for all of his deaths, alive in ways that the frozen precipitate cannot mimic.
The snowflake - the only kiss that Kenny will ever, truly, receive, and the only one he will allow himself to be given.
A/N: That turned out to be way, way more angsty than I expected. Incidentally, this is my writing style when I'm not experimenting with other things. I love third-person, present tense. It gives the illusion of being right there, but still has the detachment of not being completely entwined and trapped in one person's head. I do weird things with it.
Despite the fact that Kenny's whole death situation is done in jest on the show I don't think I've ever laughed once when he died. Okay, maybe when Kyle kills him with a chainsaw (Kyle's a murderer, lulz) but, really. This is just me, once again, taking Kenny's situation to the extremes and making him totally emo about it. And, honestly, if anyone deserves to be emo, it's Kenny.
So, hope you enjoyed my crappy little oneshot that's one of the few things I've been able to finish in months (due to both writer's block and next to no computer access).
I appreciate reviews more than anything, it always breaks my heart to see someone favorite something and not review, but whatever floats your boat. I'll just say it short and sweet: please review, guys, it'll make me happy, and with school starting (senior year...ew) I can use all the happy I can get.
See you around, tweek.