A/N: Done as a request for one of my favorite artists on dA. This took quite a while to write, but I find the result to be my saddest work to date. Completed to the inspiring tune of Coldplay's newest album, 'Mylo Xyloto' - especially the songs 'Up in Flames', 'Princess of China', and 'Up With the Birds.' My first Stenny, finally.
Kenny's POV
People have never understood me. In their defense, I never really gave them a chance to, but it's not like they actually wanted to understand, anyways. To them, I would always be just another wide-eyed ruffian child that they just couldn't care less for. My name, my story, my life, didn't mean a thing to them. I was simply another one of 'those kids.' It was ironic, since 'those kids' like me took on the form of many. People didn't like us, but we were always there. Behind buildings, on park benches, in orphanages, wandering about streets. 'Us kids', we were everywhere.
And nobody noticed.
That wasn't entirely true; it was more along the lines of either ignoring us altogether, or casting back a glance that was something of pity. I didn't want their pity. I didn't want anything from those who couldn't understand even if I ripped back the hood I always wore to scream the answer. I wanted to be left alone. The hood was a trademark of that, in a way. It was a splendid disguise of bright tangerine cloth that kept those who were inclined to spare me a second glimpse from seeing me. From really seeing me. The me who had been the punch line to every one of God's jokes for eighteen miserable years. It kept me hidden and deceptively safe for all of those years. Nobody had ever seen that broken side of me, because it was never the side that they wanted. The least I could do was give them the happy, smiling me that they wanted.
I didn't break until I was eighteen, and he was nineteen. And break is hardly the word for it. Our final night and day together were like a car crash. There really is no other way to describe it. I'd always maintained a false peace with myself, pretending that everything was okay like I said it was. But, after that, I couldn't pretend anymore. Everything had crashed, and I had nobody left to pull me from the wreckage. I knew it would eventually. I just never expected Stan Marsh to be the perpetrator behind it. He wasn't some tremendous force. He wasn't a hurricane, or a tornado, or an earthquake. He just was. Stan. Boring. I'd known him for most of my life, and knew that he had less to say than I did and probably just as much to hide. I guess I didn't know him as well I was thought, actually, because I would've never seen what happened that night coming in a million years. We might not have been overly close, but Stan himself probably never expected what happened to happen. Things like that made him grow the lopsided smile he'd worn the entire night, and I should've known then of his inner malice. Then again, though, I found things like what went down that night something to giggle about behind my parka and netted hands.
Silly me.
I'd seen that smile of Stan's before. He wore it like I wore my hood, and perhaps for the same purpose. Sometimes, at the bus stop we waited at every morning until the day Stan bought a piece of shit sedan for us to carpool in, he'd turn to me while his bestest buddy Kyle was busy with one of his reading assignments for AP god-knows-what, and tell me a dirty joke or story of some kind. They were never very funny, but, as I said, sex to me was hilarious. I was well-acquainted with the subject, after all. Not like Stan. Word was his girlfriend Wendy Testaburger had broken it off with him at the start of high school, before he was able to get a fuck in. None of us were surprised. I was always sure that Stan was really pining after Kyle; which I later found out to be true, though I had the misfortune of learning it on the same evening of the crash. Actually, I never thought that on my own. It was Eric Cartman who convinced me of the love affair lurking behind each small, teasing grin Stan and Kyle shared, which a plentiful few.
Eric convinced me of a lot of things, like to go to that party. I never wanted to, but it didn't matter, because Eric wanted me to, and that was that. You didn't say no to him. He was, in a way, the Kyle to my Stan, only about twice the size with twice the volume, twice the bitchiness, and a hundred times the Nazi. Jew Kyle didn't approve of the bloody swastikas that were sometimes blatantly sewn right onto the front of Eric's shirts, but Eric hardly gave a fuck. To him, Kahl was just a stupid kike, Stein was his pussy lover, and I, Kinny was his unwilling best friend. Eric had a strange way of classifying people like that. We were all below him, except sometimes me. I was the only one who'd seen him cry, on several occasions, all during which he found ways of choking me in his agony. I didn't mind, because it was what Eric wanted. Whenever he did, it was around the time Death and I were due for another courting. I guess that's why people couldn't understand me, the boy who never died with a best friend whom he let walk all over him. And it wasn't just Eric who walked all over my one hundred and three pounds with incredibly ease. It was everybody. There was this misconception that I just didn't care. They never asked otherwise, though.
Stan walked all over me, too. On that night. The night of that damned party that I went to just because I was told to. I didn't even want to go, but I did. I didn't even like Eric, but I listened to him. I didn't want this or that, but I did them, anyways. It was my nature.
And people couldn't understand that.
People couldn't understand having no voice, no place in this world, at all.
I was a few months shy of nineteen the last time Eric convinced me of anything and the last time I saw Stan. I might as well have been ten, since I'd never quite moved past that mentality. It was Christmas Eve, and cold as Hell snowed over outside. And yes, I was outside, because being outside on the porch was better than sharing another minute of my time with my hated family. The house behind me was anything but merry, even during the 'most wonderful time of the year.' On my sixteenth birthday, my mother had finally kicked my father's drunk ass out, and in the immediate summer I made the decision that I would abandon academics altogether. Nobody cared what I did, since it was obvious that I was no shoo-in for law school, like Kyle, or holder of infinite scholarships, like Wendy. My parents certainly didn't care. My friends might have. They never swung by to tell me, though. It was my assumption that they'd all gone their separate ways for college, but I'd later learn that the whole of the senior class – myself excluded, of course – had gotten accepted to a university in Denver. They were an hour's drive away. I dropped off the face of the Earth and nobody gave a shit.
I think they were relieved.
I'd spent the entire day outside, from the moment I woke up to the moment that Eric's heavy footsteps could be heard approaching from down the street. The slurred sound of my mother and brother fighting in the kitchen had died with the sun, as usual. It wasn't an hour more that I'd been filling my overflowing ashtray with the latest cigarette carcass that Eric came trudging up the sidewalk. It wasn't a good thing, but above all else, I found it a little strange that he was visiting me. Earlier, his uninvited intrusions were as daily as the screaming behind filthy walls. Eric liked me, you might say. He liked me in a sense that I didn't care either way what he had to spout about, whether it be that a certain Jew was burdened with what was, hopefully, a lethal ailment. That Buttahs had undergone another beating at the hand of his black-hearted father. That Stein and Kahl were plotting the homicide of the condemned teacher who'd inked F's on the tops of their English assignments. That he wanted me, Kinny, to join him in the dissection of the whatevah that had died at the end of my block. Or something. Something like that. Something dirty and dark and wrong, because that's all anybody involved with the parasite Eric Cartman knew how to do. He was an addictive narcotic that gained all while we got nothing. Even when he perished at the wrong end of a shotgun two years later, he'd still manage to drag his unfortunate fiancé down with him.
I would be dragged down by then, too. Not by his hand, though. No. That would've been awful. Worse, maybe. Worse than what struck me down at the party. I could blame Eric for that, but it would be a wrongful accusation. I was the one who had agreed to go in the first place.
I always did. I always said yes, or at least bobbed my head as some indication that I hadn't passed on while he was rambling. I never had much of a choice, anyways. I knew that Eric didn't enjoy back-talk. He liked talking plenty, but only when it was him who was doing the talking. Not like the obscene things that Kyle mouthed off to him, or the constant grumbling of Butters Stotch whenever he was unfortunate to be tangled up in Eric's web. I'd always pitied that kid Butters, who was too young to know better. The only reason I say web is, once, for ninth grade English he wrote a poem comparing an 'unknown male' to a spider: toxic, predatory, and wholly hellish in its greedy, vampiric nature. Eric fractured his jaw for that. And then told me about it.
But that was a while ago, back when I still lied to myself about school, and back when the fights in my kitchen were split between three people instead of two. More than a year ago. Then I deserted school, and Eric's visits abruptly deserted me. I had wondered from time to time throughout those fourteen months that we were apart what Eric had been doing with himself. Nothing good. What exactly, I would never know. He didn't tell me. It was around five when he came crunching up the icy sidewalk to my house. Due to the biting cold, he had that crimson coat he always wore buttoned up to his throat, and it looked a lot bigger on him than I remembered. Drugs curbed even his appetite, I guess. Or so I'd heard, somewhere on the junior year wavelengths. I didn't believe that Eric would turn to drugs, though, because drugs were something of weakness. And, while he enjoyed others' weaknesses, he hated his own. Like I said, I never heard a word from him of what he actually did for the year we were apart. And he didn't ask me. There wasn't much to say either way, I'm betting. Neither of us cared enough to establish the fact.
Several seconds passed before Eric finally sneered a hello in that unusual accent of his – I was surprised that it still existed – poked a finger at my shoulder, and said something about how thin I was getting. And I was, down to about five feet and six inches of ninety four pounds. I don't think Eric liked that I was so gaunt. But instead of asking, I just met his deadened stare with my own, a slight smile touching my face. It was a bit of a relief to see him again, until he had to go and reopen that fat fucking mouth of his to inform me of a party at the house of Clyde Donovan…a party which we were, apparently, attending. It was as simple as that. No cautions led up to the statement, and no objections were raised against it. I muttered something of a yes, and we were off.
Eric was like that. While not overly easy on the eyes, he was quick and concise with the cutting way he wielded his words. In two sentences, he could convince somebody to cut out their own heart. Which, indirectly, is exactly what he did to me.
If only I'd known.
Because, as much as I supposedly don't care, I do care when things break. And things broke that night. They broke and the pieces were lost and I was left behind, like always. Forever.
I never should've gone to that goddamned party.
The Donovan residence was on the other side of town, an inconvenience compared to the railroad that used to separate us. Christmas in South Park was a brutal thing to endure, so I froze my ass off the entire walk while Eric was nice and toasty in his loose cashmere sweater. He did all of the talking, mostly about the state of his warped household. These days, he told me, it wasn't in much better condition than mine. His mother had gone missing about two months ago whilst out with a client, which didn't seem to concern Eric terribly much. He said some other things, about how our peers were, but I wasn't paying attention. Either way, seeing them again would be like encountering the ghosts of my past. Eric and his loud voice couldn't change that. I just wanted the night to be over as quickly as possible. But what I wanted, and what clusterfuck always managed to go down, were two very different things.
The party was certain to be unsupervised, as Clyde's late mother and father had been dead since our sophomore year. They had died in South Park's rendition of a conspiracy, leaving their tremendous wealth at the mercy of their only child. And he hadn't failed to sink all ten greedy fingers into his new riches within weeks of their passing, and invest in a smorgasbord of upperclassman keggers. Parties always meant no parents, no limits, generally no shirts, and no giving a shit. Being Christmastime, various crimson and emerald streamers were strung up around the house in a petty attempt to stay true to the tradition, but were quickly being torn down and trampled over by the guests. Everyone was either sipping down one of the available poisons, or stocking up on them. Eric drank in the sights without much interest – unlike my own wide-eyed ogle – and was quick to hunt down my female replacement, Wendy, Stan's ex. I didn't know that they'd gotten past their differences until the moment she flounced, with the chest she loathed thankfully flouncing with her, to Eric's side and pressed her lips against his. But even more so, right away I noticed that he was less interested in her attempts at conversation than in calculating how soon he was allowed access to the contents of her magnificently tight tank top. Her coy, lopsided smile assured in due time, and I may have joined ringside, had I been in any other mood than agonizing with my "broke-ass self."
More of Eric-talk. He made a point of telling me so, before clapping me on the back in what was almost brotherly affection. Maybe. At a distance. But then again, I didn't know affection, so all I got was pain. That was all he did before bidding me a quick goodbye, and ushering Wendy to some unknown location in the house. Later, I actually found it rather kind that he'd left it at that. Eric knew me. He knew when I was upset. I appreciated that. I shouldn't have, but, really, I did.
That was, after all, the last thing I heard from the forever-moving mouth of Eric Cartman. I honestly don't know what happened to him after that. Something deep within me knew that, after this party, he and I would never speak again, as there was nothing left to say and never had been much to say in the first place. The scoop around town was he'd proposed to his ebony-haired harlot a short time later and snatched her up to the west coast for an extravagant, seaside wedding. Eventually, two winters after my final glimpse of Eric in the flesh, I'd turn on my TV to learn that Wendy Testaburger, barely twenty years old, had been found strapped to a chair in her hotel room, sporting nothing but stiletto heels, with a bullet path cut cleanly from temple to temple. The perpetrator was found, as well – one Eric Cartman, age nineteen – out in the hall, slumped against the wall where his brains were spattered, the sawed-off end of a shotgun in his mouth. It was declared a murder-suicide, and a week later I was called to California to retrieve the four hundred thousand dollars cash that Eric had left behind for me, his darling Kinny. The subject of his untimely breakdown thrived off of the chattering of the South Park townspeople in a seven-month aftermath.
It didn't surprise me to hear that he'd put a bullet in his head. It made sense that Eric would do something like that. Pity, though. I'd grow to miss him and his wicked mannerisms. He told such devilish secrets. He knew all of the wrong things to say, and make them sound horribly right. What a shame that the world had to lose such a treasure.
Without Eric, I would have been stranded amongst the people I once thought I knew. But there was no time for that. Because, it seemed, the instant he vanished, a real riot ensued. The mass of pulsing, sweating, vaguely dancing bodies before me went crashing through the sliding back door almost in-time. Half of them only donned one article of clothing, and the temperature couldn't have been more than five degrees, but the chill didn't seem to register with them. I myself was only in my threadbare parka and a pair of stained boxers – I hadn't had time to chance to change – and, even indoors, was prickling with goosebumps. I don't know why. I was never terribly sensitive to the cold. Maybe I was just weird. Likely. Or maybe my body was trying to warn me ahead of time of what lay a mere doorway to the left. Either way, I paid no mind to it, when I should have. I should've left then, like I wanted to. There was no reason for me to stay. But even my own mind couldn't interpret all of its wants. Instead of fleeing the scene, I got taken right along, and decided to follow.
I didn't see who opened the back door. Was there really any reason to? It was probably just a trap pulled off by some male graduate who wanted to see the effect the cold had on the many barely-clad chests of the female class. I staggered with the current, swept along effortlessly by the crowd surging in a bottleneck toward the open door. Watching from my darkened stoop, I cast a withered glance at the tiresome teenage drama beginning unfold on the sprawling lawn. The girls were giggling as their drunken boyfriends tried to fondle them, and some were going as far as running, making their miniscule breasts jiggle as much as they could, and making the boys spill their drinks. It was already black out by then, obstructing the ability for them to find whatever coordination they had left in the darkness of the yard. Normally, I boded well with the dark, but only when that dark wasn't also the breeding ground for a clammy, tangled crowd the likes of which I was already tired of before age eighteen.
Within seconds, thumping bass started up from some hidden speakers, rattling the windows. Clyde must've had too much to drink, because he soon started up the idea of plummeting completely naked into the pool from the roof. His jump was a success, as was the one made by the only person I'd ever seen him hang out with, Craig Tucker, who followed suit and made the crowd howl with laughter by managing to flip them off the entire trip down. He cracked into the water feet-first, but recovered fine, and proceeded to clamber out without bothering to cover up. The sight of his ivory, birdlike body dripping with pool water just whipped the mass into a bigger frenzy. I might've smiled, if it didn't terrify me how nonchalantly he was sloshing toward Clyde, who was doubled over with laughter. If anybody was weird, it was those two. Even Eric didn't need to convince me of that.
The next jumper was less than successful, though. He wasn't somebody I recognized, but he had a big enough effect on me for somebody I'd never known. His failure was what drove me to that table. That table. Where there were more drinks, and a very pissed off Stan waiting. I should have known. Stan was never pissed off, ever. I was more distracted by the events at hand, and the bottle in his, to really notice, though. How I found myself standing pathetically against the table, I don't remember. But it happened somewhere between the jumper missing the pool by about two feet, his calves snapping clean in two as he landed, his scream of pain rising above the frenzied chatter, and me receding away for a drink of water. Somewhere in there. People started to flow past me again, so, instead of conforming to see the bloody injuries of a stranger, I backed away until I bumped into one of the many refreshment tables. And almost him, too.
Stan was somehow standing right beside me without even noticing me. I was never noticed, but, in this instance, I'm guessing that he was more focused on the current shot he was about to down. The first thing that occurred to me about him was, for somebody so young, how absolutely old Stan looked right then, in the great shadow of the Donovan's yard. With one hand bracing him on the tabletop, another pushing through his sweaty mop of dark hair, Stan's edges appeared well-worn. He threw back another straight line of tequila, this time straight from the bottle, and the move reminded me terribly of my parents. That should've concerned me. But it would take me a few moments longer to move past how absolutely spent he seemed. Like me stripped of my hood. The wear and tear was so open that it made his hands shake. Or perhaps that was just the booze. The exact same convulsions had plagued my brother when he first started to weaken to the insanity of our home, and stopped once his weak blood work had opened up to the biting acquaintance of alcohol.
But that was something he had tried to hide in the first few months. Stan didn't even care who saw the tumbler trembling in his fingers, or who heard the obvious curses he'd spit every time he spilled even a drop. Somewhere, sometime during our separation, he must've found himself. I myself still hadn't. I never would. Not after that night. And definitely not after this. No.
He didn't say anything for a while. I had another wide opportunity of escape, but instead chose to watch him drink that entire thing. It was strange to see him swallow it down so passionately. I'd never taken Stan as a big drinker. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe the quake of his hands was an indication that he was still new. Maybe this was just a onetime deal. Maybe it had grown in the year that I was away. That's all Stan's drinking was. Just a big fat 'maybe.' The kid was still howling while people ignored him by the time Stan wrenched his gaze from the tequila in his fist. Or what was left of it. His eyes jarred me to some extent as they connected with mine. I could clearly see the fractures outlining the cold blue spheres, and wanted desperately to ask what he happened to him while I was gone. Wanted to. Didn't. Never did, as there was no point. He wouldn't have told me. Stan was like Eric. He wouldn't tell me what happened to him for that past year because he didn't want me to know. That way, I could only wager how bad it was, which was impossible with somebody as naturally blank as Stan. That's word for him. Blank. Eric might've been able to read him, read into what was so bad that it cracked the pretty dark blue of Stan's eyes, but he was nowhere to be found. So I was left alone, guessing.
I'm terrible at guessing, or thinking, or anything at all. Terrible.
Stan spotted me, gave a horribly off-kilter smile, and slurred his words tiredly how good I looked. That's how I knew that he was smashed. Because I didn't look good. He should've sighed and asked where the hell my pants were. He didn't. He just smiled and watched me in a way that I couldn't seem to see, even though it was right there in front of me. I kind-of, sort-of, not-really smiled back. I didn't know how. Whatever expression I sported in return, it just deepened Stan's own grin. Setting the empty bottle on the table, he retrieved another from the mess of them beside us. A long-necked one of vodka, with frosted glass and an either Russian or Czech name that I couldn't pronounce. Once I saw that, I figured we would be getting drunk together. Let's just say that my current situation made the liquid death at arm's length a hell of a lot more appealing to drink. But only I ever drank any. Stan didn't take another sip. He was drunk enough already, or at least drunk enough to be excused from what he was planning to do from the moment he saw me.
Stan immediately offered it to me with a new, teasing grin that I'd never seen from him before, and I snatched it up like the starving child I was. I was doomed from that moment on. I never noticed the bottle's broken seal as I pressed the cold head to my lower lip and sacrificed my last virginity to the poison that gushed into my mouth. The thought of whatever else was occupying it besides vodka never even occurred to me. It tasted awful, but I drank straight through the bottle. I didn't have to; the weight loss had worked against me, lowering whatever inherited tolerance I had significantly. Three sips, and I would've been flying. I drank the entire thing, though, without ever having the thought of what else could possibly be occupying the bottle besides vodka cross my mind. I would've never expected Stan to do that. He was even more like Eric that I imagined. And just like with Eric, I should've seen the inevitable end at the conclusion of things. I never did, though. I really am the devil's fool. Because, from the moment our eyes first met that evening, Stan's followed me for the hour after that I remained conscious. And I still never saw it. I thought he was just happy to see me. There has never been a greater lie than that. He didn't even call me by name that evening. I'd soon find out why.
Stan was happy to see me the way a lion is happy to see a gazelle. I wasn't his specific target, but I was definitely prey enough.
I'd never had alcohol before. Parents like mine taught you to hate the sight of a brandy bottle emerging from a cabinet each night. It had a bitter taste, potent, but that was really it. I felt nothing as the booze edged down the crawlspace of my throat. I never felt a thing that night. It wouldn't be until the next morning that I felt something, and it wasn't a hangover. My father used to mutter whenever I asked that he drank for 'the kick.' But it wasn't the alcohol that kicked me, with its rumored 'heat.' In the end, the only thing that kicked me was me, for being so fucking stupid as to drink it in the first place. I didn't have to. I could've walked away. Again, I wasn't even sure why I was there. These things hardly mattered anymore, anyways. I'd drunken it. That was that. It tasted funny. That was that. I felt nothing. That was that. Like Stan had wanted. And that, sadly, was that.
The intoxication didn't wash over me until about thirty minutes later, about ten after I finished the thing. I was still gripping the table when that happened. They say that drinking harms everybody that comes in contact with it, not just the drinker, and that's the damn truth. Not counting what happened afterwards, by the time the drink had circulated enough through my shrunken, blond body, I could scarcely breathe. My blood alcohol level was .21, possibly even higher, considering that was what I blew the next morning when a squad car had stopped me wandering aimlessly down the dirt road alongside Stark's Pond, and given me a Breathalyzer. I blew that .21 then, nearly twelve hours after I'd had the first and last drink I'd have in my life. But when the officer asked how much I'd had to drink, I responded with a slurred 'Fuck you,' the first thing I'd said forever. Because I honestly wasn't sure. I lost count of the number of times I tipped back the contents of the bottle. I wasn't paying attention to it. I didn't care. It's hard to, when all I could do was avoid Stan's intent gaze, drink for no reason, try not to puke, and try even harder not to pass out.
Stan seemed quite pleased by my obvious discomfort, though I miscalculated the purpose of his haphazard smile by a mile. As I wheezed and shuddered to draw breath into my withered lungs, he reached over and gave my arm a gentle tug. When I looked up again, eyes watering, I saw that we were suddenly heading for the house. I didn't see what was really important, but I did see that nameless jumper again, now passed out and possibly dead in the pool of his own blood. I'd end up the same, minus the blood, in a matter of minutes. Not that I knew that. The music felt unbearably loud all of a sudden, causing me to end up with my free hand over my left ear. I think I muttered something about how fucking noisy it was. Something. Stan never heard it. He didn't stop for anything, even when I threatened to stumble in my drunken stupor, or when I kneeled before the stairway railing on the way up and emptied my stomach contents over the banister. He just couldn't get me into that room fast enough. Earlier, out on the lawn, right before he snatched my wrist he had coughed up some excuse. I can't remember what it was. Didn't matter. He could've said anything, and I would've gone alone with it, as that was my very nature.
I wouldn't have said no. I couldn't say no to anything. I never had.
The room was dark, so I wasn't sure whose it was. Regardless, Stan tossed me into it, locked the door behind us, and didn't waste a second getting me barricaded against the closest thing he could find: the door. It chafed against my back as my jacket rode up, and he flattened himself against me, sharing air, atmosphere, and bits of my broken soul in an instant. All I could think was, in a panic, how he might crush me. I didn't think about what he was about to do me, or how painful the wood was digging into my spine. I could only think about how Stan was much heavier than my scrawny ass, and could easily crush me if I was careful. But, just as I'd my entire life, I never said a word during the thirty minutes that followed. I heard my voice goading me in my ears, screaming, mostly. Stan said plenty; calling me the wrong name, and growling out the occasional curse that I'm assuming was out of pleasure. Like I said, though, I felt nothing. The slither of ice-cold hands up and down my flesh didn't register. His breathing, ragged and damp in my ear, couldn't be heard. Nothing made it through, not even what he was doing to me. Just that it was wrong.
He knew it, too. And he cared even less than I ever had about that. He had his merry way with me against that door in an unfamiliar room, with a possibly dead boy out in the yard below us, with half-naked babes sprinting around and their drunker-than-shit beaus chasing after them, with Eric nowhere to be found, with my own screaming pounding in my ears. I would've covered them again if I could. Instead, I just lay like a corpse beneath him for the half-hour that might as well have lasted an eternity. I died a little bit more beneath each greedy pass of his hands, which still quivered. I felt that. I felt the slowing of my heart as I began to slip into a sleep that would save my life, even though there was no point, as I couldn't possibly get any deader. Stan gave me nothing that sex promises, only everything that it can take away; my innocence had been robbed the moment he led me to that room. The moment I took that first drink.
The last thing I heard was Stan, sighing into my shoulder, and breathing out the name of his best friend just as the darkness was merciful enough to claim my corpse. It occurred to me then that Eric Cartman had told at least one truth in his life. I understood then, also, why Stan hadn't bothered to greet me on a first-name basis. It wasn't because I wasn't deserving of it, like Cartman, as we so kindly dubbed him. It was because calling me 'Kenny' would have ruined his fantasy. It terrified me that I knew this.
Shame the dead can't talk. Or else, maybe, I would've corrected him.
Maybe.
From it, I would be left behind. Because something strange happened then, just before I felt my head loll to the side and my world collapse into dark. Held against that door, with Stan muttering the wordless embraces in my ear and violating me without me even knowing, I felt an odd sort of comfort that most should never feel from such a thing. I knew full well that the 'Kyle' uttered with such lust, such affection and desire, wasn't intended for me, but it inspired a newfound comfort all the same. I'd never felt comfort before. Ever. So how I knew what it was seemed almost like instinct. Again, it was so unexpected Sober, Stan was nothing remarkable, a background character like me. Drunk and he was something else entirely. Nobody understood me because, even though I was already dead, I couldn't die for real, and had a best friend I loathed, and did things that I didn't even want. But, for once, I wanted this. They didn't understand how anyone could find comfort from, in lack of better words, a rape. Frankly, I didn't even understand. I just wanted it.
Of course, I never got it.
I fainted, finally, with that low 'Kyle' lingering in my ears, able to overcome the muffled shrieks of my conscious. When I re-awoke – which I'd later wish I never had; could I have just stayed dead this one time? – it was morning. I still had no idea whose room I was in, or comprehend exactly what had happened there. My boxers were strewn by the door, as well as my parka. My body had been dumped carelessly, strewn against the sheets that remained unbroken beneath me. Stan's voice was chanting in my ear. The love. I was so sure, as I stretched and spread the bruises on my body, that it was meant for me. He wanted me. Somebody cared. I wasn't going to be alone anymore. It's really quite amazing how young I was at age eighteen. Truly. For one, pathetic moment, I allowed myself to think that someone had finally noticed, when it was the very opposite. I think I just wanted to believe that Stan saying the name of his best friend so warmly was how he felt for me because…I wanted somebody to feel anything for me. Not pity, but an actually concern.
Stan promised me something that I would never get from him or anyone. I woke up that morning with every intention of holding onto that false comfort. He'd have me searching for it for years after. It's selfish, really. He got everything from me that night, just as everybody had always had the scale tipped in their favor whenever I was involved. And I was left emptier than ever. I wish I'd realized that earlier before I'd decided to throw on my boxers and traipse out to the kitchen in search of him, the first grin I'd had since childhood stretched on my uncovered face. I left my parka behind in that room. I didn't go back to get it when I did finally find Stan. When I was left alone for real. When I crashed so hard, so fast, that I never recovered. I felt no loss with that jacket. I wouldn't have worn it again, anyways. There was no point in trying to hide anymore. Stan taught me that I was a waste of space and breath. I'd been howling for eighteen years and nobody noticed. It would take everything I didn't have to get them to. I already knew that, but Stan reminded me of that the best.
He reminded me of how fragile it all was – how everything could just…crash.
And crash it did.
When I got out to the kitchen, it was more trashed than I was. There were bottles scattered every which-way, with Craig and Clyde collapsed in a heap over a lopsided table. Outside, I could see the jumper hadn't moved an inch since last night. Now I was positive that he was dead. And so was I, as soon as I spotted Stan. He had his hand on the backdoor, and grimaced when I said hi almost shyly. He didn't half-flinch, gain a look of unease. He full on grimaced at the sight of me. I doubt I looked that great, though I hadn't anticipated such disgust. He, meanwhile, looked ready to head out. That was odd. I had thought he'd want to stay, maybe go out for breakfast or cure his hangover. But no. Those were old thoughts, ones that died within my mind the instant he stated that he was leaving. That was all. He was leaving. Deal with it. I could've grabbed my chest to keep my fluttering heart from flying straight out of its cage, had I been able to move at all.
I wanted things. I did. But I never got them. What I wanted most of all was somebody beside me at the end of the day, somebody who truly cared and could guide me. That somebody was not Stan, not my parents, and not even Eric. That somebody did not exist. More than anything, though, I wanted the comfort that Stan promised me. But he broke that promise. He let it crash and burn, and ignored me when I went up in the flames, screaming. Like everyone else, he left me. Alone. I got that, at least. I was finally alone, a man with his troubled thoughts. Ironically, that's how I'd been since I was born. Alone. And that was how I was when it all came crashing down permanently, when I truly realized that I couldn't die, because I'd actually been dead all along. Nobody had stayed behind to see me cry that day. I was always just that boy, skinny and blond, that no one cared enough about to notice the tears that were always there. That I was not okay. I could blame it on the drinking, on Stan, on Eric, on my parents, on anybody at all. But that would be wrong. Because, in the end, it was my fault. I'd never said it. I didn't say what I had needed to say just once in my life.
I didn't say no.
I felt the tears long before I ever heard the impact of glass on glass, metal and metal. There was a tremendous blast within me. Crash. I crashed.
Stan had never looked so soulless when he tilted his head at me, shaking in the wreck, and dealt the final, shattering blow: 'Merry Christmas, Ken.' Merry Christmas, Kenny, not Kyle. Then, he smiled. He'd gotten what he'd wanted, after all. I was right there. I never saw it. I never said no. So he just smiled and chose not to notice me. Just like everybody else.
And then, he casually strolled out the door, breaking me for good.
I never saw him again.