Note/ Contains death. this chapter is from Max's point of view with some bits o police interviews. max's POV is looking back from the future.
Chapter 24 In Death
"We need to know the exact specifics, how did you find the body?"
Max shrank away from the police officers around the table and felt as his mother tightened her arm around his shoulders.
"Let me try again. Lets start from the beginning. What were you doing in the house…"
When we were little Tala and I had been friends. I don't mean best friends, I didn't have a best friend until I met Tyson when I was eight. But still Tala and I were as close as two young children that lived down the same road could be.
Our mothers used to take us to the park together, we started nursery school together and later primary school as well. We laughed and painted and when we drew pictures of our families we always drew each other in there as well.
As we got older things happened and we drifted apart. I met Tyson and Tala…well Tala was always a popular boy, until Kai came along anyway…
Still, even though we weren't close anymore didn't mean I wasn't upset about the way his family and life just fell apart when Kai entered it. And that day…
That day, the day I found the body, I think I had gone to that house to end it.
I wasn't going to kill Kai. I mean I thought I was at the time but I have never even seen a dead body and I just don't think that I have that kind of thing in me. I couldn't even get up in front of everyone and sing karaoke at Tysons last birthday, let alone stand up in court and convince a court full of people that Kai was evil and had to be stopped. (Not that I'm shy, I just don't perform well to large crowds…verbally I mean)
Nobody answered when I knocked but the door was open so I let myself in. I'd seen a woman that I think was Tala's aunty leave in a hurry only moments before, without even bothering to close the door after her. I wondered what Kai had done to make her run away like that. It had to be Kai; after all it always was.
When I walked inside the house was like something out of a horror movie. All quiet and still, you could almost smell something different in the air. I searched the downstairs carefully, almost expecting a psycho killer to jump out at me any time.
The stairs creaked as I climbed them causing my heart to leap into my throat and choke me. I was so scared, even though nothing had really happened to make me that way.
At this point I was still planning to kill Kai. Which was stupid considering I had no weapon or plan on exactly how it would happen.
I didn't know which room Kai was staying so I checked all of them. Wondering how I would even know which was his if the house was empty and what I would do if I found it.
The last room I checked was Tala's. It had been his since we were children and I had always been jealous of the size (They had knocked down the wall between the front bedroom and the box room.)
The body lay at the far wall and even before reached it I knew that it was dead. Everyone describes death as different things but I found it smelly. They never mention that in books or films, they never explain just how much blood can smell even before it has dried. The body had not been dead for long.
I am not ashamed to admit that I vomited until my throat felt like it had swollen to twice it's size and been scratched with sandpaper. I crawled towards the body more to get away from my sick more than anything else. I was becoming used to the smell and was overtaken by morbid fascination.
In death I realised I could see all the things about him that I couldn't see in life. His skin was pale like the moon and looked as fragile as wet paper, his lips plumper than most boys but still masculine, his eyes were like glass more crimson than the blood staining the wall behind his head.
In death I could see every inch of Kai's beauty that I had missed in life and part of me mourned him then and still does. Imagine a perfect porcelain doll cracked and slumped boneless against the wall, glued in place with red ink. There was such intense beauty in his desolation that I lost myself in him, in the dark bruises that stained his face to the flakes of dried blood that clung to his hair.
I just sat and watched him until the noises from the street below woke me. Then I called and ambulance and when they said they would be half an hour I called Dr Green as well. I don't know why I bothered, except that I didn't want to be alone with it any more.
I wondered where Tala was.
"And he was dead when you reached the scene?"
"Yes. I did try some basic resuscitation but it was far to late. I called the death and waited with young Max for the ambulance to come and take the body."
"Did you try to stop the bleeding?"
"By the time I had gotten there his heart had already stopped and been stopped for some time. There was no need to do much."
"Did 'Max' say anything while you waited that would lead you to believe he knew anything further about the case?"
"We didn't really speak. He was suffering from mild shock."
When Dr Green had seen the body he collapsed. His knee's just could seem to hold his weight and then he was crying.
I had forgotten that he was one of Kai's men. I had forgotten almost everything except the almost smile on Kai's dead face.
Sometimes that face still haunts me. My wife will look at me in bed and her face will be his, my child will smile at a joke and then…
Kai cursed us all with his life and his death. Dr Green killed himself less than a week later.