Rose Garden:
Your body feels weightless, almost as if gravity ceased to exist. Your eyes are closed, and a slight smirk is etched onto your face. You're floating in this dark abyss. There's no one there to be a nuisance to you. You've succeeded in blocking out all of the sounds of the outside world. You've created this barricade around yourself, and the miscellaneous sounds—the sounds of the living—don't exist.
Your body shivers subconsciously. The gentle pitter patter of the rain makes your clothes damp, but you don't mind. You continue to remain in this trance-like state until something manages to break through. Your cell phone vibrates rapidly on your abdomen, its vibrations tingling your stomach. It's uncomfortable, and you want it to stop, but you'd rather not move…not just yet. Instead of answering it, you briefly wonder how your phone is still functioning properly with it getting rained on. Eventually, the vibrations end, and you remain content once more.
For the first time in an hour since you've been there, you move your body slightly. In the process of doing so, a pale white rose inconspicuously transports itself under you. You didn't know; you weren't cognizant that the flow of the rain had pushed the delicate flower to its demise. You accidentally laid your body on top of the rose, disconnecting it from its lifeline—it's stem. In a matter of a few seconds, you had committed unintentional murder.
An immediate flow of tears is released from your eyes unwillingly, and you're reluctant to actually allow them to fall. It's unbecoming. Crying over a rose, in a giant garden of roses is ludicrous.
You take deep breaths to calm yourself down as you thread your lean fingers through your curly ringlets. Now that you've been interrupted for the second time, there's no need for you to commit yourself to the serenity of the rose garden. Your phone begins to vibrate once more, and this time, you feel compelled to answer it. You glance around you to locate the phone; it had slid off of you when you were fidgeting. Your fingers curl themselves around your cell phone, picking up various colored rose petals. Your thumb subconsciously glides over the 'talk' button and presses it.
"Hello?" you say, short of breath for some odd reason. The only thing you can hear through the connection is the sound of the microwave going off and the running of water. You remove your phone from your ear to check the caller ID, and you see that it was your older brother—Joe—who called you. "Hello?" you repeat again, just wanting some explanation as to why he isn't responding. "Joe, what's going on?"
He responds this time, his voice brittle yet thick with emotion. "It's—it's Kevin, Nick. He's leaving us. Oh, God, he's leaving us."
Your mind races at his statement. Your eldest brother—Kevin—had been in the hospital due to fatal sporadic insomnia. You didn't understand his condition at first, but understanding the word insomnia left you to deduce that all he needed was a couple sleeping pills. The doctors and your parents explained to you that even though this disease was rare, the twenty-two year old's case was abrupt and extremely unusual because this disease particularly generated within older people. You wondered why Kevin had to get it…until the doctor mentioned sporadic. But the word that heated your mind until the point where the doctor was concerned for your well being was fatal. You didn't speak for weeks after Kevin's initial diagnosis. Your eldest brother was past the point of no return, and since he was there, you wanted to go with him. If he didn't return, you couldn't either.
Fatal caused your mind to close off and cause you to be the way you are now: passive, indecisive, cowardice. Fatal is tearing you apart. Fatal is murdering your brother.
Your breath catches in your throat, and you can't seem to focus your vision correctly. Kevin. Dying. You'd never wanted to hear those words together, but in reality, they're coming true. You know that you need to get up and get over to the hospital to see your terminal brother one last time before he passes on. You know that's what you should do, but instead of doing it, you remain seated in the garden of roses and contemplate it. Your fingers move themselves over to a lone rose on its stem.
Your phone vibrates again, this time, not stopping. You see that it's still Joe calling you, but you choose to ignore it this time. Kevin can wait, you think. He's not going this fast. You think you have enough time. You keep telling yourself that Kevin's not going to leave you and Joe—not this soon—but you know that his life is gradually ebbing away from him.
Your fingers grab them thorny stem of the rose, and when the thorns pierce the pads of your finger tips, you slightly wince. Miniscule droplets of blood are present on your fingers now. The rain continues to fall, but now it's falling in an effusion, soaking your body. The disconnected rose is bending under the weight of the rain, but it's extremely hard for you to care now. You've already killed it. Why not let Mother Nature finish?
You crane your neck to see that your phone is now flipped open, and able to take calls. Joe's voice fills the scope. "Nick, he's gone. He left us a couple of minutes ago." Joe's tearful voice paused, and then it came back, anger seeping into his words. "Why weren't you there? Was whatever you were doing so important that you couldn't see Kevin? Seriously, Nick?" The next thing you heard was the tone signaling that the conversation was over.
You've sacrificed the last time to see your eldest brother alive for mere hours in a rose garden that will be there throughout time. With or without Kevin.
...
Review please? This is going to be a series of one shots with the title of them being the song title's Nick Jonas' album, Who I Am.
