Happy Halloween everyone! Just a little one-shot ghost story for all the PruCan fans out there. Yes, I love 'em too.
Enjoy!
I do not own Hetalia!
Remember Me
The first thing Gilbert realised when he woke up was, apart from his first name, he remembered nothing.
He woke in a bedroom that had a masculine style and with a black, white and red colour scheme but none of it was familiar. He went into a state of panic at first. Where was he? Was this his bedroom? He could not remember.
After taking a few moments to breathe and calm down, he got up and dressed, not knowing if the clothes he was putting on were his or not but they seemed to fit. He went to find the bathroom, locating two guest rooms and stairs going down, telling him that this was a house rather than an apartment, before he found the room he was looking for. A decent enough bathroom with a large shower and bath, two sinks and a toilet. On the sinks were a toothbrush and razor each and in the cabinets above the sinks were two sets of toiletries. If this was his house, he did not live in it alone.
He looked in the bathroom mirror and saw a white haired, red-eyed man staring back at him. So that was another piece of information, he was an albino.
After using the toilet and getting freshened up, Gilbert went to explore the downstairs and to find the house's other occupier but the house was silent. It was also decorated for Halloween. Spiders, bats and fake cobwebs hung everywhere and candy sat in a plastic cauldron by the front door. So he had some idea of the date. The living room, like the bedroom, was masculine as was the dining room. There were pictures scattered throughout the house of him and other people, confirming that this was indeed his house. There were pictures of him with a blonde, slicked back-haired, pale blue-eyed man, sometimes with another man with auburn-hair, a curl on the left side of his head and amber eyes who always looked very happy. There were others of him with two other men, one with long blonde hair and deep blue eyes along with a brunette with eyes of forest green who had his arm around a man who looked similar to the auburn-haired man but with darker hair and eyes, a curl on the right side and a disgruntled expression.
Then there were the photos of him and another blonde. He had chin length hair with a curling strand that stuck out and he had violet eyes. His face had a soft, gentle expression that contrasted with the other man who sometimes photo bombed the pictures who looked like the violet eyed man but had shorter hair with a cowlick, sky-blue eyes and an enthusiastic expression. Gilbert wondered if it was the violet eyed man's brother because there were pictures of the two, sometimes with another blonde with green eyes and the biggest eyebrows in creation.
The kitchen was filled with high quality cooking appliances. The refrigerator filled with food and beer. The cupboards contained crockery, tinned food, dry goods and maple syrup. Gil could not remember if he had every tried maple syrup and concluded that maybe it was a favourite of his mysterious house mate.
Gilbert decided to go outside and find a neighbour who might be able to help him and tell who he was so he made his way to the front door and opened it.
Mist swirled beyond the door like the clouds had come down to the ground, a pure white that he could not see through at all for any distance. He took a couple of steps out into it but could still see nothing. After a few more steps he looked back at the door and realised with horror that he could not see it. In a blind panic, he ran back in the general direction he had come from but the door was not there. He tried a different direction and ran for a distance but he still found nothing but mist. He ran around in a panic.
'Where's the door?" he chanted the panicky mantra in his head and eventually fell to his knees, exhausted.
When he looked round he found himself on the floor of the house just inside the front door.
He got up, slammed the front door and stood with his back to it, panting and trying to bring his heart rate back down to galloping. Obviously, going outside was not an option. Mein Gott! He needed a drink!
Mein Gott? That was german. Was he german? Or from a german speaking country?
Whatever! He still needed a drink and went back to the fridge to get a beer.
He cracked open the bottle and took a big gulp. Ah. Awesome! He turned and came face to face with the violet eyed man from the photographs. The transparent violet eyed man.
"Remember me," he said, quietly in a canadian accent. Gilbert nearly jumped out of his skin and dropped his beer. He bent down to pick up the bottle and stood up to face his surprise visitor.
He was gone!
Gil looked around. He was sure he had not heard the door so where did he go? Gilbert began to search the house.
The violet eyed man was nowhere to be found.
Gil picked up a picture of himself and the man he had just seen. They had their arms around each others shoulders. The violet eyed man was smiling and Gilbert was grinning and making the peace sign with his other hand. They looked happy and comfortable with each other.
Was his mind playing tricks on him? Seeing the pictures and anxiety over his amnesia conspiring to make him see things? He decided it was. Not surprising really. And the mist could simply be a particularly thick fog. All he had to do was wait for it to lift.
In the meantime he would to try contact someone on the phone. He picked up a mobile phone that sat on the mantle above the fireplace.
No signal!
He found an office study with a land line and a book of phone numbers. The first number he found was under B, a Ludwig Bielschmidt. He picked up the phone.
The line was dead!
That was too much of a coincidence!
Gilbert spent the next couple of hours looking for hidden cameras, microphones and special effect apparatus, convinced that he was the victim of some sort of reality show set up, although that did not explain the amnesia. But he found nothing.
There had to be an explanation, some reason for all this. No way could someone just turn up, say 'remember me' and disappear without trace.
Like a ghost!
As the day wore on, Gil got no nearer to an explanation. The fog was as thick as before and showed no signs of lifting. He convinced himself that the whole 'remember me' incident was an hallucination. He made himself some food and sat down to watch the television but there was no signal so he drank a few beers and finally retired to bed.
"Thank you, Gil," the violet eyed man said as they drove home. "It's been a great day."
They were heading home in time to hand out candy to the local trick or treating kids and then they would have the rest of the evening to themselves.
"It's not over yet, ~~~~~~," Gilbert looked over at the man in the passenger seat with a look of hunger. The violet eyed man blushed as Gil grinned and looked back to the road.
"What the hell's wrong with this dumbkoff?" Gil exclaimed as a car in front of them weaved in and out of the lanes.
"Are they drunk?" the violet eyed man asked as the driving became ever more erratic.
"Gott knows!" Gilbert huffed. "But there's never a cop around when you..." Suddenly the car in front swerved out of control but span out of their way and for a moment, Gil thought they had escaped danger but the car continued swing round.
And slammed straight into the passenger side of their car!
Gil shot up, suddenly awake from the nightmare, gasping for air. He laid back down, taking deep breaths to calm down, thinking about the dream. He had said the violet eyed man's name in his dream but he could not remember what he had said. He blew out a huff of frustration and then he turned on his side.
"Remember me!" the see-through violet eyed man lying beside him plead.
Gil shot sideways off the bed and hit the floor. He took a few shaky breaths and then tentatively looked over the top of the mattress.
The bed was empty!
Gilbert looked around the bedroom but there was no sign that anyone had been in. His heart thumped so much it was threatening to break out of his chest. He dressed as quickly as possible and left the room at the earliest moment.
After once again trying the phones and T.V and finding them still out of commission, Gilbert began looking for a way out. In the attic he found climbing rope and went down to the front door. He tied one end to the door handle and the other around his waist and he walked out into the mist.
He could not see his hand in front of his face but with the rope to lead him back he continued on, hoping to find some sign of other dwellings but he reached the end of the rope and still had not seen anything. He searched both left and right but still found nothing. It was like his house was in the clouds.
"Hello!" he shouted. "Hello!"
"Remember me!"
He finally saw something other than mist but the sight of the violet eyed man with the clouds visible through him had Gilbert frantically following the rope back to the house. He practically pulled himself through the door and slammed it shut. He staggered to the kitchen, grabbed a beer from the fridge, cracked it open and took a big swig. He sat down at the kitchen table to catch his breath.
"Remember me!" the violet eyed man said from the other end of the table. Gil jolted so badly he upended his chair and fell backwards. He got up off the floor and got as far from the figure as he could.
"Who are you?" he demanded as he saw the man was still there. "What do you want?"
"Remember me!" the man begged. "Remember me!" And then he faded away. And Gilbert awesomely fainted dead away.
"Heart rate's dropping," a nurse called, urgently. The beep of the heart monitor was slowing down.
"Get me 5cc of epinephrine," the doctor ordered. "And get the defibrillator ready." Medical professionals swarmed around the figure on the operating table. The doctor administered the dose and they waited as they hoped the heart rate would become stable.
The heartbeat line on the monitor stopped jumping and a continuous beep sounded from it.
"He's in cardiac arrest!" the doctor announced and seized the paddles on the defibrillator. A nurse pulled back the shirt of the man on the table and applied pads on different parts of his chest. The doctor put the paddles on the pads.
"Clear!" he ordered. The nurses and orderlies stepped back and the doctor activated the defibrillator. The patient arched off the table and fell back down. The continual beep continued.
"No response!" The nurse said. The doctor ordered the defibrillator to be charged again. When it was charged again, the doctor got ready to give another shock.
"Clear!" he shouted and everyone jumped away. The patient jolted up and fell back down again but the monitor still beeped continuously. They tried another three times, all ending in failure. Finally they called it in.
"Time of death, 19:47 pm," the doctor ordered as the nurse pulled a sheet over the patient.
Gilbert woke up on the kitchen floor. How unawesome! He sat up, pondering both dreams. He clearly knew the violet eyed man and they were close. It was also clear that they had been in a car accident in which the violet eyed man had died.
Was that why he could not remember anything? Had he been injured? He did not remember the hospital if he had been.
The ghost (Gil having accepted that now) of the violet eyed man kept saying 'remember me'. Was it his lack of memory that was holding the spirit here. Did he need to remember the violet eyed man for him to rest in peace?
But what was it with the mist?
The ghost clearly meant him no harm, he simply wanted him to remember. So he needed to find a way to jog his memory.
He began to look at the pictures again, search for letters and try to find photo albums. Anything from his life before.
He found more photographs and, while they showed more people, he could not remember any of them. Surely he must have some correspondence somewhere. He could find nothing of that nature in the study. In fact, for a study, it was surprisingly light on paperwork. He probably did everything on-line so maybe his letters, bills and such were in his computer files so he booted up the computer but it needed a password to access the files, a password he did not remember.
He banged his head (awesomely) on the desk in frustration.
"Remember me," he looked up to see the violet eyed spirit who looked at him pleading.
"I'm trying, mein freund," he replied. "But nothing's coming to me." The spirit pointed to a sideboard. Gilbert looked toward it and frowned. He could not see anything but a few books and some object d'art.
"I don't understand," he said.
"Remember me!" It had to be significant so Gil got up and went to check the sideboard. He looked at the books but there was nothing that seemed to have anything to do with them. The ornaments yield nothing either. He turned back to the ghost.
"There's nothing here," he insisted. The ghost continued to point to the side board.
"Remember me!" Gil was ready to scream in frustration when he realised the spirit was pointing not at the sideboard but at the floor beneath it. Gilbert got down on his knees and looked underneath the sideboard. At the back, there was the back of a picture frame. Gil reached for it and pulled it out, stood up and turned the picture frame around.
It was a plain silver frame and in it was a picture of himself and the ghost as a living person. They were dressed in white suits with flowers in their lapels and they were cutting a wedding cake. Gilbert's eyes glazed over.
It was their anniversary. Gil had thought it was awesome to be married on Halloween and he had a big day planned as a surprise for his husband after which they would come back and wait for trick or treaters like they always do. He could hear him coming down the stairs so Gil hurried from the study, knocking into the side board and their wedding picture fell and slipped down the back.
Gil remembered the picture frame falling but he was in a hurry and decided he would pick it up later.
Gil was in a haze of pain as the emergency services moved around their car while the paramedics were trying to tend to them. The fire chief was calling for the cutter to take the roof of the car off.
"Pulse is weak," the paramedic looking after him said. "Possible internal bleeding. I need a neck brace here!" He shone a light of each of Gil's eyes. Gil squinted as the light hit his left eye but he did not see it so much with the right.
"Right eye, unresponsive," the paramedic reported. "What about the other patient?"
"He's gone," came the response. "He must have died on impact."
Gone! No! Not his Birdie! Gil whimpered with a pain that was not physical. The sound of the cutter could be heard biting into the metal of the car as Gil's consciousness began to fade.
Not his sweet, gentle Matthew!
Matthew! The ghost's, his husband's, name was Matthew Williams-Bielschmidt.
And he had died on the highway.
"Clear!" the doctor ordered one last time before he sent the shock coursing through Gil's body to try to restart his heart. His heart remained unresponsive and they recorded his death at 19:47 pm. Gil woke in the home he had shared with his sweet Birdie. In that moment on the highway when they said Matthew was dead, he had not wanted to live his life without him, did not want to remember losing him.
So he blocked out all memory of Matthew! And died with no recall of the man he loved!
Gil turned to Matthew to see that his husband was now solid.
"Birdie!" he gasped. Matthew smiled his sweet gentle smile.
"You remembered me," he said, softly. Gilbert took his Birdie into his arms and kissed him. Matthew moved his arms up around Gil's neck and hugged him tight.
"I'm sorry!" Gilbert apologised. "I can't believe I forgot you. That was so unawesome."
"You remembered me," Matthew repeated. "That's all that counts." Gil took his hand and pulled Matthew into the living room.
"Let's see what else I remember," he said as they stopped in front of the photographs and pointed to the photo bomber. "That's your brother, Alfred!" Then pointed to the green-eyed blonde, "And his boyfriend, Arthur!" Matthew nodded.
"That's my brother, Ludwig," Gil pointed to the blue eyed man with the slicked back hair and then pointed to the auburn-haired man. "And that's his boyfriend, Feliciano!"
"That's right," Matthew encouraged him with a squeeze of his hand. Gil turned to the last group of people.
"That's Francis, Antonio and his boyfriend, Lovino, Feli's brother," he said, then added. "He's usually bad-tempered and foul-mouthed." Matthew chuckled. Gil sobered.
"We died!"
"Yes," Matthew acknowledged. "I was waiting for you. I could not go on without you, Gil, and you could not go on until you remembered your life with me. Our love for each other was our acceptance."
"Acceptance for what?" he asked. Matthew took a tighter grip on Gil's hand and pulled him with him to the front door.
"I'll show you," he replied and he opened the front door.
The mist was gone. Instead light streamed through the door and bathed them both with warmth and love and as it seeped into their souls, elegant wings with beautiful, white plumage grew from their shoulders and light glowed around their heads. Gilbert looked at Matthew in wonder.
"Awesome!" he breathed.
"Come on," Matthew said. "Everyone's waiting for us." Gil bent down and picked up the cauldron of sweets that had gone undistributed.
"I'm sure there'll be trick or treaters in Heaven," he joked. Matthew smiled back.
And, hand in hand, they walked into Paradise.
Sorry if I messed up in the hospital scene, I don't know much about medicine or hospital protocol. I looked up Epinephrine and apparently it's like adrenalin and used in cardiac arrest. I hope I got it right or, at least, close. Gilbert's time of death is not random so a virtual cookie to those who can guess its significance!
Hope you have or had a spooky Halloween (depending on when you're reading this)!
Hasta la Pasta!