"No, stay right there. Keep your eyes fixed on me."
The room had grown stagnant since he had left. Nothing had moved; I certainly wasn't going to move anything, less the almost still tangible presents of him in the room were to leave with the deconstruction of his stuff. The pictures containing neither of our faces were still hung about the flat, the bullet holes in the wall still gaped at me from where they had been blown through the plaster one night, and the decrepit skull that our land lady so hated still stared at me with hallowed eyes, the only thing not turning their cheek to anything I did anymore.
"This phone call...It's my note."
Because no one thought to scold someone in grieving. No one thought to reprimand someone whose world suddenly crumbled around them in one fluid, painful motion. Everyone thought to pity the man who had watched his bet friend commit suicide as he jumped from the roof of a hospital building.
"That's what people do, isn't it John?"
I still had the recording of our last phone call saved to my phone, though I didn't dare play it back if I could help it. I had to be strong, I was an army man after all, I had seen death before, it was nothing new. I had seen blood, I had seen gore. So why, why couldn't I get over the image forever trapped in my mind of alabaster skin stained red, and eyes of cerulean that stared strait ahead, seeing no more.
"They leave a note."
But no, I could only let myself be weak so often. Only on nights where my loneliness punctured me like a rib into my lung, squeezing the breath from me until I broke down, gasping.
"Good-bye John."
I would never allow myself to listen to it during the day either, when appearances were meant to be kept. Only once night shrouded the windows and blocked out prying eyes of the day would I find the only recording saved in my phone, and play it over and over again. It wasn't to hear the suicide note that he had left me as a phone conversation, not to hear his regrets or his good-bye. It was just to hear the voice of the man once so alive, and pretend, just for a while, that he was still living.
"Oh, please, there's just one more thing. One more thing.
"One more miracle, Sherlock, for me.
"Don't. Be...
"Dead."