They are black and awkward as they swirl around him; their hands fluttering and touching him softly. Apathetic, sympathetic, not quite empathetic. Something like pity douses him, bitter and stale.
Her coffin is small and the roses atop it are wilted.
"Brennie, what do you think happens when we die?"
Her pale, slender fingers drag gently across his scalp as he lies against her chest, eyes closed contentedly. He contemplates her question and she waits patiently for his answer.
"I guess I've always had the vision of a castle built from clouds: with spyglasses in the windows so I could keep an eye on my living loved ones below," he murmurs, a little abashed.
She does not laugh. Instead, she kisses his forehead. "My gentle Brennie," she sighs. His eyes remain closed but he smiles affectionately up at her, a warmth like sunshine in his belly.
"Charity, what do you think happens when we die?"
She is silent for a long time. Her fingers run on through his tangled hair and her breathing beneath him is deep and slow.
When she speaks, her voice is husky and parched like breath from the raw throat a sun-bleached and dried-out carcass. "All I see is black."
When it rains, he is not grateful. Precipitation falls on the flawless mahogany like a thousand crystalline tears and on the umbrellas it is hundreds of tapping corpse fingers. Caught by strong wind and tossed against his face like hard stones, it does not hide the fact that he cries for her: it only howls along with him.
The restless ocean rolls tormentedly against the battered shore, roaring and clawing furiously at the weary sand. The sky is bullet black, riddled with growing thunderheads and streaked by fingers of lightening far out to sea. The wind claws at Brendan's hair and tosses hard rain like stones against his bared skin but he walks on regardless. He knows that she will be treading through the gale, oblivious to the frenzied weather. She'll be cold and her nose will have gone rosy at the very tip, like it always does when she becomes chilled.
He doesn't want her to catch a cold.
He finds her not far up the beach: she is wearing her favourite white dress (the one she wore when he first laid eyes on her - how he'd fallen in love with her so rapidly, so powerfully) and a pair of black gumboots. She stands knee deep in the icy water, huddled against the battering wind and rain.
She does not speak when Brendan comes to stand beside her and drapes his damp jacket over his shoulders: she stares ahead at the writhing horizon.
He takes her hand and her fingers are limp and dead. "Charity, what are you doing out here?" he asks her gently.
After a moment, she turns to meet his eyes and her cheeks are tear streaked.
"They say that drowning is peaceful," she whispers.
Beneath that bolted lid she will be dressed in white: the colour of purity for representation of the soul that has left her body. Her face will be powered and her mother will have woven daises lovingly through her corn-silk hair. Those hands that had touched him, those fingers so warm, will lie inanimately by her sides. Brendan closes his eyes and he sees her, twisting and spinning about in his head, sweet and delicate as the song of a bird.
"Do you see the moon?"
"It's daylight. You can't see the moon in the day."
"Don't sound so scornful ,Charity. Look, follow my finger. It's there, above that cloud. Do you see?"
"…I see it."
"I told you, silly."
"It looks so fragile up there in the sky. Like it should be swept away by the wind."
"Like a sliver of tissue paper."
"Why is it that I can only see the beautiful things before me when I'm with you, Bren?"
The wonderment in her voice both warms his heart and chills his blood and he pulls her close against him so that he may feel the beating of her heart.
He wonders if they covered the shot wound in the side of her head. Is her face still intact? He prays that her features will be unmarred, even in death.
Was she smiling, when she pulled the trigger?
He thinks so.
"I hate the smell of hospitals, Bren."
Her hair hasn't been washed in days and it lies lank and white on her plump pillow. She is too skinny and the bandages on her wrists smell acrid from the antiseptic on her scabbed wrists beneath.
"I know you do, hon. Here, I bought you a muffin."
Her smile is like honey and she takes the muffin from him, biting hungrily into it. "Thanks."
"That's okay. Charity, can we make it a barter-muffin?"
"…Brendan, what the hell is a barter-muffin?" She quirks her left eyebrow and a dimple forms on her right cheek. Her bemused face.
"Like…a swapsies muffin. That muffin from me for a promise from you." He swallows hard and stares at his big hands twisting clumsily in his lap. He blinks rapidly so she does not see the moisture in his eyes.
But she does, so she places the muffin to one side and runs her soft fingers down the side of his face.
"Of course, Bren. What will I promise?"
He meets her eyes and stares hard into them. He knows that somewhere behind those eyes lies curled and grinning a darkness that is separate from who she is, its eyes shining greedily with its insatiable hunger for her torment.
"Never hurt yourself like this again. Never ever. Pinkie swear."
Her own eyes tear now and she leans forward to kiss him sweetly, her tears falling on his cheeks.
"Never ever," she agrees. "Oh Brennie, I'm so sorry."
"Don't you say that," he whispers against her trembling lips. "Don't you ever say that to me."
Because if she was to apologise for every time she harmed herself, for every time that she bled, she would never stop telling him she was sorry.
He remembers her skin, like silk beneath his gentle fingers.
The scent of her hair.
The taste of her lips.
Her laugh.
Her eyes: like the ocean, flecked with silver.
The way she had danced with him in the cold light of the moon that night while the night things watched on, in awe of her presence.
"I love you."
"I love you, too."
The way she'd told him that. How there'd been such promise in her voice.
"Don't you leave me. Don't you dare, ever, Charity."
Her voice is singsong. "Never, never ever never." She giggles and grins at him and in that instant he lets himself believe that she's okay. Tonight, the monsters are sleeping deep in her head.
When she sees the content in his eyes she leans affectionately against him, twining her fingers into his shirt. "Never, Brennie."
He is husked out and empty: torn apart and never to be mended. For he knows that she wished to fulfil that promise. There had been truth in those cerulean eyes that night. And yet he no longer feels the pull of her presence on this earth: only the beetles squirming beneath, waiting for her pretty corpse to be joined with them.
And they dance around him; apathetic, sympathetic and not quite empathetic - spilling tortured and twisted verses of sadness that lick at his heart like the cold, furious ocean.
Somewhere deep within, his own monsters stir, and awaken.