A/N: ^_^ More editing!
We made it to the house after what felt like a marathon run on a road of hot coals and broken syringes.
"You, know. It's amazing how many textures of pain a human body can feel. I had almost forgotten…"
Count yourself lucky.
"I might like the variety."
There's…really nothing I can say to that.
"I need something. An ax or baseball bat."
My memory was foggy. An ax should be around here somewhere…near the shed or in that one stump…
We stepped from the gravel road to the wet grass. I sighed somewhere in my mind at the cool texture. It was short lived though. His frown painted my face as even the cool wet grass began to burn.
"There!" Jonah reached through me to rip the gleaming ax from its home in the wood. We steadily approached the house.
Hey! Hey wait! Put it down and then talk to them. Put it the fuck down! Wendy…You're scaring her.
He continued to move purposefully towards the kitchen entrance.
Look at her face, Jonah! She's afraid of me. You're making her scared of me. Fuck!
"There's no time. She locked the door…"
She'd be crazy not to! Do you know what I look like right now?
"Like a dead boy?"
The anger I felt in that moment shocked him. I forced myself through the pain until I was present in my own body again. Until I was positive that the only one holding the ax was me. I began carving away at the door. Wendy shrieked from inside and I worked faster. The kids were beginning to cry… and I imagined… I imagined the dead descending upon them. The cadavers smothering their screams and stealing their breath.
Don't. Don't fucking touch them you motherfuckers!
I moved through the threshold and forced my way to Wendy and Billy. But at the last moment… Words failed… What words were there for a moment like this?
I had to show them.
Raising the ax above my head I brought it down again and again. As the wood-paneled walls splintered and cracked, you could see them. The bodies…
Wendy and Billy. They saw, but they probably wouldn't understand. Not until later.
The house was impatient, creaking, moaning, and I felt the spirits all around, thrumming with hate, malice, anticipation…. They still wanted me.
Matt, hurry.
I grabbed them both and half dragged them through the room.
"Get out. You have to get out of the house. You can't be in here!"
I locked the door behind them and felt Jonah's presence begin to spread, taking over. I leaned against the locked door of my tomb and peered out from the window, counting. One, two, three…. And then again.
One.
Two.
Three.
One more to be sure…
They're all out, Matt. They are safe. Now help me!
I nodded, moving again to pick up the ax. One wall, two walls, three walls, four… Bodies tumbled lifelessly, like rubber dolls one after another.
Chairs and tables lay splintered in the corners of each room.
The formaldehyde is flammable. They won't burn without more of it.
It only took a second and we were down there in the heart of it all.
I was positive that the "unseeing" spirits' eyes were fixed upon us now.
And their gaze was as real as a physical touch.
The shuddering, shaking of my body was outside of both our control.
I ripped the door open and shattered an entire shelf of the bottles of formaldehyde.
They came crashing down with an aged, toxic smell.
It startled me, but Jonah had taken over.
We were outside of the room in a second, grabbing a wooden basin, and in a moment's span had filled it with the remainder of the bottles.
And a pack of matches.
"It begins and ends here." I couldn't remember who said it, or who struck the first match. As it fell, I had the terrible fear that it wouldn't light, that it was all for nothing. Months of living in fear on the brink of death in a house full of spirits desperately vying for revenge on anything living...or dead.
I was gone.
Deep somewhere inside myself, I knew it was time. And I felt hate for the dead things trapped here and even more hate for the ones who had imprisoned them in this house.
"Matt. Matt, come back."
The anger gave me power.
I opened my eyes and we were in the dining room, now trashed and littered with half-decomposed bodies. A match was in my hand; I looked at it in wonder. I could hear the cracking and roaring of the fire in the basement, and the hissing gas in the kitchen. I knew this was it.
"Here, Matt. This is the last room…. I won't do it for you. You have to make the decision."
As if we could run now…Everywhere burning and no windows left.
My hate for Jonah overwhelmed me and I could feel him pressing back against the walls in my body.
I focused on them, their lid-less eyes and grey-black corpses. Jonah was trapped in a moment of silent agony as he relived the memories of Aickmen, of himself carving into these corpses, digging them up from hallowed ground, desecrating their bodies, calling their souls back to this world, keeping them here….
"Don't they look familiar, Jonah? You helped him do this, after all…"
Jonah was on his knees inside me, begging… No. Not begging for me to stop.
But, willing, hoping, wishing for me to light the last match.
With one, last look, I did.
It's kind of beautiful how quickly a fire can spread, especially when it's one you've trapped yourself in.
You see, it doesn't really give you a chance to change your mind.
All I could do was help it grow faster. And faster, until the heat made my body burn.
Like the cancer and the chemo and the fucking symbols carved into my fucking body.
Burn. Like the smoke in my lungs and the stones still stuck in my feet.
This was me, burning away from the heat that was cooking me from the inside-out and the outside-in.
I wanted the fire to consume everything, just like it was consuming me. And the bodies standing all around with their sightless eyes and pitiless stares.
Those eyes that saw eternity.
And all I could think, sinking to my knees was, "At least you had the chance to live your lives… Even if they kept you locked in here… I'm 17, 'barely started…"
They reached down and laid their hands on me like iron bars made of flesh. And because the pain was everywhere already, it didn't hurt the way I wanted it to.
They were comforting me…
The embrace of many arms around you at once, somehow made everything hurt less.
And I could feel Jonah there, inside me.
With me.
This is us. Burning away together. "Until the end."
It's just the beginning, Matt.
It's not so scary anymore. Not the way I wanted it to be.
Because you can hate what you are afraid of… And you can fear what you don't understand.
I stayed there until the darkness came.
The last thing I remember thinking:
"At least I lived at all."
She was sobbing over me as I stood above my body and many others. Firemen, police, neighbors, my siblings, my father, my mother, and myself…
Jonah and I stood side by side. I looked away from it all, towards him.
No, not standing. Floating. A genuine out-of-body floating.
"Why aren't you passed-on?"
Jonah just smiled at me. "Because I'm one dead boy possessing one still-living boy?"
"Really?" I'm still alive? I didn't feel much of anything, not physically and not emotionally. Not until I felt him take my hand…
It was a shock more than anything. "How could my body even survive in the first place?"
Jonah smiled. It was a sad, small smile… "Your mother loves you very much."
Despite everything, warmth overwhelmed me as I gazed down on her absolutely hysteric, sobbing form. I felt so loved…and even a little guilty for it. I squeezed his hand, "It's alright, Jonah."
He looked at me and I could tell that he was taken back.
"Oh, right…" He smirked, "Well, I should be used to it by now…" His thumb brushed the back of my hand reassuringly. "Aickmen… I thought he was my guardian angel, sent to save the poor, depraved orphan who talked to dead people… But, that's—" Not what reality had in store for me….
He laughed, fisting a hand over his right eye looking like he'd rather rip it out than spend another moment in the past. "It's amazing how many textures of pain a human heart can feel."
"Jonah…" And Hell, with everything that happened to us, I just... didn't think, and without realizing it I moved to embrace him. "I know. I know."
"Yes, you're the only one." His arms opened up, but it felt as though I was tumbling through dead space.
He laughed even harder, but this time it sounded genuine.
"Like this, Matt…" He wrapped his arms around me and I pulled him to my chest. We stayed like that.
"Lots of practice?" I smiled as his head nodded gently.
"Lots of practice."
"So…what are we made of right now?"
He huffed. "I have no idea."
"It… It feels good to be here." He blinked and looked up at me questioningly. "I don't feel any pain anymore…"
He frowned, retracting, turning away from me. But I didn't let go of him. How could I? For the longest time I was barely able to receive a hug, let alone return one… I didn't, I didn't want to let go.
I had already given up so much…
His hair tickled my face and my palms felt hot against his chest.
"You will feel pain, though. Any time now, you'll feel it. Because I'm returning you to your body."
"What do y—Argh!" It came upon me in the blink of an eye, but I didn't let go of him. I held even tighter, if possible.
The pain… was unbearable.
It was the same old pain, but this time it felt brand new.
Bare, naked, raw.
"Nnngh!" I moaned, gasping, trying to form the one question we were both asking. I had doubled our forms over, holding on with all the strength that I possessed.
"'Why,' Matt?" His arms settled over mine around his waist. "I want to ask you the same thing… Why is life so unfair? After I died, I had accepted it. I had decades to accept it. But, why is it…that you now make me wish for so many things? Impossible things…"
I felt my head dip forward between his neck and shoulder, no longer able to support itself. We were spirits, no longer floating over anything. We were sunk, me into my body and him into the ground. And my arms refused to release him.
"Jon—ahh!" He was freezing now. As cold as death, while I was still burning alive…
He removed an arm and pushed against me.
"P-please!" I was grasping for something, anything, because it felt like I was falling. And the pain didn't feel any less distant.
"No, Matt."
He leaned back for a moment as though he wanted to stay.
"Your body's not big enough for two souls. No body is."
Don't leave!
He smiled and pulled away completely. I sunk further into my body, feeling as though I were being buried alive in quicksand. He was sinking, too. Down into the earth, more and more quickly. His two, cool hands hit my burning face and soothed it numb. My eyes widened as he leaned forward, and the cooling sensation blossomed again from where our foreheads touched.
I stared into two, sad blue eyes.
"Am I your friend, Matt?" He whispered, breath cool upon my skin and in my lungs as I breathed the words in.
"Yes." I could feel his grip beginning to slip as we sunk further into our resting places. Losing you.
"It hurts, Jonah."
"Here?" A thumb brushed against my bottom lip and I closed my eyes.
Let him. Let it happen.
His mouth covered my own and moved gently, until I could no longer feel my lips… Until I no longer felt anything at all…