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Chapter 2 – Birth, Death

Eddie Kaspbrak turned to Mr. Penguin, as if the stuffed animal was an adult who had all the world's answers, as if he was actually real. But he knew he wasn't, and knew he was getting too old to do such a thing. Being that his tenth birthday had been a massive four days ago, he felt embarrassed now, when the nurses came, as they regularly did; they might have noticed Mr. Penguin, disguised so expertly, beneath his pillow, and laugh at him because his best friend was a soft toy. And not love him.

They saw two dark shapes. One with a white outside, one without, through a vertical rectangle of frosted glass. The door held only that insight into what was happening in the corridor outside. That and the larger clear window to the right of it, which viewed onto the nurses station and elevator. He remembered the elevator, from his first meeting with the hospital; he was crossing the precipice between the living and the dead, and the almost living with the almost dead. The cords which hanged the elevator stayed tight, with gaining or losing altitude; when he stepped out of the threshold of it, over the heavy, floating drop, he hopped weakly as not to fall. But nothing mattered there, because that's where mom wasn't. He knew, just knew one of the dark shapes belonged to his mother, because he recognised the impressions her light, shoulder-length hair commanded, even though it now slept. Muffled and hazy. She was nodding, he noticed, nodding but shaking. Nodding like she had agreed to something she wanted to but could not say no to. Like if Eddie was asked if he wanted to die.

Sometimes it had felt like his voice was the only perfectly working part of his being, and he would exercise such a gift, as he was scared of it failing too. He sang lowly to himself, so only he could hear. He somehow knew that, if he was to die, his voice would be the last thing to leave him. Not mom. Not dad. His voice. It had always lied to him, which he loved it for, in the same way he loved his mother for it. Not savagely honest as his thoughts, but deceitful, when he hid beneath bed sheets and told himself he'd be okay after all. It seemed his voice knew, itself, that it was lying, so openly, not with any idea of clandestine activities, but continued in its ritualistic begging. It would perish, and in perishing, would become quiet until it became thoughts, and in its thought-form would be honest, and Eddie would truly hate it. And be truly dead.

He fingered the flightless bird's beak, feeling for something; perhaps vibrations of understanding, or words that could interpret what had been said outside their room. Or, perhaps, just to keep his small hands employed and keep them out of his mouth. He was ten years old now, after all. Across the room diagonally, to his three o'clock, his golden eyes moved from one side of the neat walls, along the perimeter of its whitewashed colour: scentless, joyless, and stopped again familiarly. Again, he saw the shape, the skeletal 2D model, permanently imprinted on a flat poster, but this time wondered if it was male or female. He stopped his quiet singing. She had no rude parts, he noted, and if she had, he would have looked away out of respect, or his own embarrassment. Moving Along their usual track, his thin eyebrows lowered onto the window ledge, as if for a rest, and stayed.

The window was a guillotine, which threatened to fall, if he ever reached over its threshold even slightly. He looked through the gap between the blade and the wood, through standing on his knees and arched toes, that separated his glassed life, and the outside death. Stretching his chest toward the shine of early yellow afternoon, the vibrations his heart made against his pyjama shirt increased, making it jump in even, quickening intervals, if seen from a motherly distance. Eddie's eyes narrowed in curiosity, then rose in curiosity. People. People's heads. Up. Down. Shown. Hidden. Shown. Hidden. Alive. Dead. Alive. He wondered how long each person had left to live. Ten years? One year? Five months? Two weeks? One day? And wondered if they would live any differently, if they knew, or if they'd want to know at all. Or if they were even living at all. The people's lifespans made him think of the lifespan of the flowers, near his mother, when they were sat with them all around them. A butterfly landed on a disposable coffee cup, then to lips, in a kiss and flew. Eddie wondered what coffee really tasted like, and if he would like it as he was older since he last pondered it.

Some coffee cost more than other coffee, and the people who bought the different types of coffee, walked in different ways, he learned by watching. The people walked, almost ranking themselves subconsciously in an orchestrated dance; some displaying their cup proudly like a religious icon, others hiding their cheap logo with a careful forefinger. If some coffee was more expensive, did that make it, congenitally, more delicious and more valuable? He wondered the same question about healthcare; if his parents had spent more money, but he have had a new heart by then? Would he have been normal? It seemed too much to hope for, but sitting there, on his knees and naked toes, he wished for a fortune to find his family – if only to test his theory – then desert them again. Because he knew there was a natural order to life; a good thing couldn't happen without something bad balancing it, and vice versa. But he knew that he was different, and hated how unfair it was, that his bad things far outweighed the good. Even though he had begun to manufacture his own good things, or, in other words: things he could control. Like what he would eat for dinner each day, when he could eat, and which books he would read when he couldn't sleep.

The choice of meal seemed rather unnecessary, because all the food tasted the same; but he loved the choice – enjoyed the delicious control it granted him. The choice of book, however, was necessary, because instead of filling his need for control, it took away the need. That was a complicated emotion for him to understand; without the need, there was no pleasure from the need being met. Yet he yearned for his books, for his needs to be snatched away from him, like his desperate heart's need for breath. Exactly like that, Eddie thought sadly and looked down at the creases his body broke upon the sheets, blocking them from being complete and balanced, and happy.

He looked again to the guillotine and noticed a sudden, tantalising gleam when the sun hit it just the right way, which reflected thoughts he had attempted to bury. That thoughts that invitingly said: 'I should reach over the guillotine. Maybe I won't die.' It was an optimistic idea, but Eddie was feeling anything but. He probably would die, if he ventured across the blade, but at least it would be a reaction of an action of his, and under his control; he could make everything in his life complete, even prematurely, as to have no controllable regrets – like choosing to leave a home now, rather than being evicted at some unknown time. He wasn't afraid of the mystery of death, or its answer, not when he saw the metal with its gleam. Not a guillotine death. What terrified him, what awoke him in the night, was that life would be snatched form him, by that bastard death – the death of his heart – which he knew was a bomb the doctors couldn't defuse. Even before he learned that information.

The gleam on the blade beckoned him closer; he fixed himself higher onto his small knees, to allow himself to almost be within kissing distance of the empty space between his and the guillotine's eyes, but not angled the right way to truly do so. He waited, turned back to the two dark shapes in the corridor, and away from the red light from outside. Still talking. Still talking about him. Not to him. Hiding from him. Hiding his death from him, probably, he thought bitterly to himself. With frustration, he sharply turned back to the guillotine and disobeyed his mother's earlier wishes of only standing, if she was here to protect him from the probable fall. His legs hadn't stopped working yet, he thought matter-of-factly, as he moved from his knees and dangled his legs over the side of his borrowed bed, knowing that they would stop working someday. And not an imaginary someday, but a someday to which he could work out the day of the week in which it would land – or fall.

As if testing the temperature, though he knew it would be warm, he placed but ended up pushing a single set of his toes into the floor, stripped of their sole, with more weight than had been intended, due to the weak balance he controlled over himself, and within his inexperience of doing such a natural task. Even while mostly sitting. He feared that, if he were to place his sole down, it may fall, and may snap his leg in two; not that that was very likely, he concluded, and pushed down the unpleasant thought with the bottom of his foot. From this position, he could have easily reached over the guillotine, if only just, but Eddie wanted to stand, to not die in his sleep. If it came to that. In the same calculated movements, yet different sue to the mirroring, he touched, more gently that time, onto the floor with his left toes – it seemed he was right-footed yet left-handed, he thought like a distraction – it was a cat touch, then their guardian met the floor too. For support, he held the ceramic basin which existed next to the bed, but more toward the wood than the guillotine, and pushed his small bones from the sheets.

He sweated most of the time, even at rest in his favourite place – the hospital's central garden – with his mother, when the winter chill had hit hardest and even the grass was dry and frozen, and all the flowers had been a long time dead. While is head was pressed gently against her breasts, her hand stroking his exposed to the cold, cheek, he felt the slightest recoil that was so quickly hidden, he simply believed it to be imaginary, but he knew her fingers had become wetted from the contact, and how they would then be at the mercy of the old air. His sweat was an uninvited guest, invading the precious moments he had with his mother. A thin, greasy sheet which she had slipped from and left the two further apart and left him feeling a notion of disgust over himself. He had forgotten the natural colour of his virgin hair; it was either wet from having been washed, or sweaty from after the act – both instances darkened it beyond identification. It was an uncomfortable symptom of his condition, which made him feel especially self-conscious in front of the nurses.

His sweat was amplified as he finally stood and saw his guillotine goal; it glued his pyjamas to his back, so indistinguishable, that the stained material seemed to be its maiden colour. He pulled frustratingly at it, to release the hug of the skin and shirt, like his own hug of mom telling him never to go near the guillotine; the skin came free, reddened slightly from the Sellotape's binding. If it truly was Sellotape, it would have, probably, taken all the skin away with it – he thought and gripped the material of his thigh with one hand, the other still attached to the wash basin – and still be hugging, and never be free. Releasing his leg first, then the sink, his hands reached closer to the guillotine's precipice; if it had meant death, he had already got his accounts in order, said goodbye. For every time he kissed his mother, he did so on the lips, as a goodbye, and because every time might, truly be, the last time. And he didn't want her to forget him, so he had kissed her on the lips. Even now, invisibly, through the frosted, cold glass that separated them. He saw again, her familiar shape, felt tears create multiples of it, allowing his eyes to grow more reflective, and therefore more valuable, then faced the guillotine again. His hands: like they were praying, or bound, leaned defensively forward, guiltily, as a convicted criminal, toward inevitability. His golden eyes were growing, like his quickening chest rose and sank again. He swallowed, tasted salt, cried, sniffed, saw more red light, then the gleam moved from the entirety of the blade, down to a slither of its point. The gleam was leaving; the feeling of knowing of being sure, was going. It seemed the gleam was being forced away by the door handle beginning to move, then stopped again. Eddie came away from himself and rushed, as best he could, back into the bed, and bac under the innocence of the sheets. He rubbed his face roughly, to erase the emotion that still stained it, then softly, like he was applying makeup. He had thought the intruder would come in, in that moment, but it would be four more minutes of loneliness first, and plenty time to compose himself – to return his skin back to the pale.

Mrs. Kaspbrak's fingers gripped the door handle, but not as Mrs. Kaspbrak, not as Clara, but as Eddie's mother – a role she assumed often – but this time she assumed the role of Eddie's mother at the scene proceeding a tragedy. That scene would have usually taken place more than halfway through the story and be followed by a happy ending; but perhaps the reason why she could play the part of Eddie's mother at the scene proceeding a tragedy, so convincingly, was because she knew the ending would not be happy. It was quite rare for a character and a player, as the same person, to have intimate knowledge of a story's ending. Usually, the player would spin an invisible web between herself and the character, to retain the crucial dramatic irony, even to the leeching part of themselves. Growing, like two plants growing in a small chest; as one grows, it steals resources from the other, and true harmony is an absolute impossibility. The stage Director, who had been the other dark shape stained across the frosted glass, had said with a hush, those cursed, final words in the corridor. Maybe he thought it would enhance her performance, or maybe he felt true pity for the character, which spilled into pity of the player, as he struggled to separate the two anymore.

Mrs. Kaspbrak entered the room. Her eyes raw and terrified, hiding down. Eddie noticed, but he didn't have the tools to excavate his mother's lies, so he chose to believe them. She took small steps toward the metal frame of Eddie's bed; if she pretended it was the bedframe she was going to, and not her son, then the journey might not have weighted her heart down as it did. She took small steps toward the metal frame of Eddie's bed, until even those small steps seemed to get her there. She regretted that she had not made them smaller, to allow her more time to apply her mask. She looked sorrowful and desperate, even now; even while looking, deliberately, into Mr. Penguin's shiny eyes. Even though her husband was still alive. Even though he had yet to be killed.

She searched the air for words to speak, swallowed nothing at all, scratched her palms, the rotes of her, three minutes ago, tears. She had not looked into Eddie's eyes. Not yet. Only into Mr. Penguin's black ones, then to Miss Cow's identical ones. She hugged up an idea in her mind and picked up the stuffed cow from the floor with one hand, like Eddie could have been, after he was prematurely born. Miss Cow was less than an acquaintance of Eddie's, but a close friend of Mr. Penguin's, apparently. Eddie always looked disapprovingly toward the cow and penguin together, as if they'd begun dating. Dating, which he knew the existence of from the lazy chatter between the nurses while they thought he slept. They didn't know about his difficulty in achieving sleep, or his nightmares if he ever achieved it. The fact they couldn't find is secrets, and expose them, almost broke his comforting illusion of adults being sinless, if it weren't for him embracing it. Eddie was disgusted by the mere prospect of dating, at his age. And terrified of being alone.

His mother's hand wrapped around Miss Cow's thorax, if she were a Miss Spider, expertly hidden like a ventriloquist's, and assumed the role seriously. Words always came more easily to her, if the words someone else's, she thought sadly to herself. Through neglect, Miss Cow's stuffing had sunken down into her abdomen, which made her top half hunch over her bloated belly. It looked like she was expecting, Mrs. Kaspbrak thought. Remembering her own pregnancy, she now understood why Miss Cow's voice had been birthed, so effortlessly, from her lips – it was because Miss Cow was a mother, too.

"Moo! I have good news, Mr. Penguin!" She had wanted to say great, but, even as Miss Cow, the word simply sounded out as good. The voice was high and animated, which she didn't allow her sorrow to betray. She spoke from the side of her closed lips, from the unmoving, dead mouth of the cow. Eddie looked to the 'talking' animal, unimpressed.

"Mom, I am ten years old now. I am too old to play with stuffed toys." Eddie replied woodenly, with his own dead lips, not with Mr. Penguin's, and with a certain maturity it seemed like he was feigning. He had made a clear, to him, distinction between keeping stuffed toys close, and playing with them. After all, mom kept things close to her, which brought her comfort; like dad's Castro cap – even at her old age.

Miss Cow ceased her puppet movements, her strung actions that mimicked a beating, failing heart.

"Yes. I suppose you are." Because mom's hand clutched still, to the thorax, it seemed like the words were coming from the animal's afterlife – begging and deflated – and not from her very human and alive, tongue. Eddie shuffled uncomfortably, in guilt; it seemed that he had sunken more into the bed – outweighing her in that moment. He felt the fresh sadness of the vibrations of her voice. It was new to him, like hearing someone's first laugh. Her face sure looked sad a lot, but her voice – never. He had to correct that, to repair the damage.

His little, grasping fingers sought to disguise his hand as skilfully as mom had, onto Mr. Penguin's body. Corrupting it, or purging it, of its former identity, he took a virgin breath.

"Qu-Quack!" Did penguins even quack? "Wh-What's that, Miss Cow?" His voice, stretched even higher than usual, rose and fell in self-consciousness. He had played the part of Mr. Penguin many times before, but never as a ten-year-old. He, also, wasn't as well-versed at playing other characters, besides himself, as his mother was.

She half-smiled to herself, after hearing Eddie's squeaky pretending. She grabbed Miss Cow again, even then unseeingly by him, and spoke: "Moo! We all get to go – Moo! – " He stopped breathing and listened for the next word, not allowing even his air intake to mask it, like a crocodile looks for movement before the kill.

"Home." Mr. Penguin's face dropped.

Although she usually lied about when he would truly leave; that time, by the sheer graveness of her happy tone, he knew there was something fatal about it, and how she had finally told the brutal truth. She had always kissed him, after a lie, and kissed him even after that truth, which signified to Eddie that was a lie hidden within. He was older now, ten now, but still too young to know that lies were kisses; some used to greet, some used to leave, and some used to delay the inevitable. And some used to mark death.

It was one week later, when he left his borrowed room.

He was simply crossing that precipice between being hanged and being free, in the elevator, then stepping over the threshold out of it; though he was really crossing the precipice between the living and the dying, he thought, and left behind their identities hidden. Eddie Kaspbrak never returned to the hospital. Not with his heart still pumping.