Conrad reeled back, spewing and gagging.
It was the worst. Well, it was always bad, it could never be anything else, but this…
The worst.
It was… Dust. Plague. Despair. Nothing. Death.
Conrad finally recovered from the heaving, tears staining his face, taunting him with feelings all too human, and therefore all too cruel.
Calling upon all self control, all bravery, everything in him, blood and guts, Conrad peered down at the apoplectic figure that draped the floor.
Death.
More tears. Gasping.
He flitted the tips of his fingers against the sunken and stubbly cheek. There was no contrast of warm to cold. It was like touching his own countenance, an act he found himself doing nightly with a sense of repulsion and self-loathing.
Dead.
Just a step closer, just another peak.
Conrad's white leather shoe broke the stillborn silence with a terrible crunch.
A syringe, now shards. Conrad stopped, transfixed. He nudged the shards with his foot. Tried to give them shape, meaning, anything apart from what they really were.
Death.
He dropped to his knees and pulling the motionless mass to him. His eyes shifted over the scene. Limbs were askew. Mouth open, along with the eyes.
Those eyes weren't cruel. They weren't mocking. They were just dead.
Then the neck.
Oh, the neck.
Covered with Conrad's marks. They were old, very old. All healed over to scars.
Except the final one Conrad had left immediately after stumbling upon the scene.
Just an open wound.
It didn't ooze, didn't trickle down the thin and pale neck.
And the taste.
Dead.
He was gone.
Conrad steadied himself, still holding Worth in his arms.
It was a few months before anybody found the body.
He had locked himself in the basement of an abandoned apartment.
They had to admire how much effort he must have put into his tragedy, procuring a door that only locked from the outside, and finding somebody willing to lock it for him.
He had starved.
Simply sat until he wasted away.
Conrad left a note.
He had left his precious iPhone back in his apartment, the first indicator that something was terribly wrong.
When turned on, the background merely read;
"I will go with his dust in my mouth."