This is for my Auntie Barb, who I love very much and who I just found out a few minutes ago is dying of lung and brain cancer.
Breathless
Gregory screamed and fell to his knees, cursing the world and everyone in it. He was about to yell out a few curses at God, but the irony choked the words out of him. The bastard deserved all of his hate, but it was just too much of a reminder.
"Fuck this shit." He whispered, laying on the ground and staring blankly at the grass in front of his face as the rain fell around him. "Fuck god, fuck the world, fuck all these stupid people who go on as if nothing happened, as if my world wasn't just shattered. Most of all, fuck you Christophe."
He laughed, a manic sound that would have sent chills up the spine of anyone listening. It was not the laugh of a sane man, nor one that had anything to lose. Gregory was broken, completely and utterly so. His heart had shattered days ago, stopped beating the second he heard. But somehow his body carried on.
Why? Why was he still here? Why was he still breathing? Why was he still alive when…when…
He let out a choked sob, hitting the ground weakly. He didn't want to be here. He didn't want to be alive, not when Christophe wasn't.
Of all the things for him to die from, of all the fucking things. It just wasn't fair. He had survived guard dogs, bullets, knife fights, and even a few explosions and those little death sticks he had loved so much is what finally brought him down?
Mole shouldn't succumb to something like cancer, it just wasn't right. The invincible Mole had lost the last and most important fight of his life.
Gregory banged his fists on the ground, screaming until his voice gave out and his lungs were burning. He felt horrible that he could even scream. There at the last Christophe could barely manage to talk, let alone scream. And now…now he couldn't do anything.
It had started in his lungs, no surprise there. He had been smoking since he was four and his whole life he'd always had one of those death sticks in his mouth. Christophe and cigarettes were like peanut butter and jelly, one without the other was just wrong somehow.
Then it had spread to his brain, which had been even worse. If it had just been in his lungs he might have had a chance, but all his talk about God hating him must have been true. Because it spread to his brain and he was basically a goner. The doctors had given his seven months to live and he had spent most of it in agony. He was constantly coughing things up, the hormones from the tumors making him twitch and heightening his sensitivity to heat and cold.
They had started chemo to prolong his life, even knowing he would die anyways. His hair had started to fall out and he was constantly nauseous, sick, and tired. He had grown even more irritate than usual, snapping at everyone, even Gregory. But the blonde had stuck by him till the end.
He had looked so fragile and pale under the thin hospital blanket and the harsh fluorescent lighting, not anything like his Christophe. The dark circles under his eye, always so apparent before, were even more so now. The veins were easily seen under his paper thin skin and he was naught but skin and bones.
He had smiled, right before it happened. His first smile in months and the last before he left this world. He had smiled at Gregory and in his raspy voice, pausing between every word for the breath that was so hard for him to draw, said, "I…love…you…" Just before closing his eyes and dying, leaving Gregory with a sense of complete emptiness and a flat lining heart monitor.
Gregory had whispered to the empty room, knowing that Christophe was long gone and if he heard him at all, it was from Hell.
"I love you too, Christophe."
On a happier note, though the knowledge brings me no joy, this story is exactly 666 words long.
I've never claimed to be an anti-smoker, or even a non-smoker. But I'm quitting as of now and you should too. It…it destroys you. It destroys your family and it destroys everyone you love. Cigarettes are evil, they're taking my Aunt away and I hate them…I hate them so much.