Basil smiled tentatively as the stranger held his hand. They were sitting on a bench together, relaxing as the sun shined its warm rays on them. The golden light served almost like a spotlight for the stranger, giving him an angelic look. He was beautiful. At that moment, Basil was sure that he could happily spend the rest of his life simply staring at him. He wanted to study every detail of his face, to be able to close his eyes and reconstruct an exact replica of their body from memory alone. Maybe he should have brought his camera to preserve the moment.
The stranger simply stared forward passively, giving no hints to any thoughts or feelings that may have been running through his head. Basil didn't mind, of course. He was used to this. The soft warmth that he was feeling through their joined hands was more than enough communication. It told him that this was ok. That they were happy. That no matter what, they would be together. "I-I'm… I'm glad that you're here."
The stranger turned to face him, tilting his head slightly. As they made eye contact, Basil could feel his heart jump in his chest as pink dusted his cheeks. The stranger smiled at that, though only slightly. Basil couldn't help but internally gush at how cute he was. The way his messy, tousled hair gave him the perfect "Just got out of bed" look, his deep, dark eyes that were just too easy to get lost in…
He froze. Eyes?
He blinked and the stranger was still staring. Only now, a large diagonal gash appeared on his right eye. Blood gushed out in pulsating intervals, pouring through the wound in a sickening manner. The trail of blood flowed down his face and dripped down to his pants, staining it red. Beneath the stranger's still expression, he could sense it. Fear. Basil was scaring him. Though he remained silent, Basil could still hear the resounding question ring in his ears: "Why?"
Strong, vile sickness rose within him, threatening to make him pass out as his vision was suddenly plagued with dizzying nausea. The bench he was sitting at vanished, only to be replaced with a ledge. Basil found himself sitting at the ledge before a very long fall. Waves of nerves and anxiety enveloped him as he looked down, shuddering. The end was nowhere in sight.
Behind him, he heard a door open, then close. He looked back to see him. Barefoot, in a hospital gown, and with a white bandage over his right eye. Basil's heart lurched in his chest as he began to walk towards him. The look on his face told him that the stranger didn't see him at all. He looked completely blank - his one remaining eye seemed devoid of any thought or emotion, resembling a dull marble more than anything.
Paralyzed.
The stranger eventually reached the ledge. There, he stood so close to the void that even a gust of wind could have sent him over. Basil, still sitting next to him with his legs dangling over the abyss, looked up. He was looking down at his hands, which were shaking, though only slightly. Despite everything, Basil felt a touch of sympathy.
"Say something."
"I'll follow you. I won't let you leave me again." Basil said, his voice calm and collected. It was the voice of someone who knew exactly what was going to happen, and what he would do, with no regrets of what was to come. The stranger didn't react as Basil stood and took his hand. Despite everything, his grip was comfortably warm. It was amazing how that feeling of comfort softened the situation. It told him that everything was going to be okay, that no matter what, they would be there for each other. Maybe they could even apologize to her.
The stranger jumped.
Basil followed.
They were dead.
Aubrey could only stare as Basil kneeled down and began watering his plants, which were all obviously completely dead. It was kind of jarring to see, the prosperous garden that was once so colorful and fragrant, was now a graveyard of weeds and blackened petals. Despite this, Basil didn't seem to care, or notice. He simply hummed to himself as he applied mulch to the soil and sparingly sprayed pesticide at the dead flowers. Skinny brown stems that resembled sticks were stuck to his gloves. It made her feel sick, for some reason.
"What… What the hell happened here?" Aubrey finally asked. "Basil, all of your plants are dead."
"Can you pull some of the weeds over by that flower bed?" Basil asks, pointing at a row of wilting tulips. Overgrown weeds had ravaged it, almost seemingly consuming the flowers altogether, which were left with dry, brittle leaves that looked like they would snap off at the slightest touch. "They've been appearing a lot recently. It's been a pain removing all of them."
"Basil. They're dead." Aubrey repeated, slightly raising her voice. "Look at them!"
He looks away from her. Slowly, and with trembling hands, he puts down his watering can. In a robotic fashion, he took off both of his gardening gloves and placed them neatly next to the watering can, picking off the dead stems and thin twigs stuck to it. "W-What do you mean, Aubrey? They're fine. They… they just need some care, that's all."
Aubrey frowned, unconvinced. "Basil. I'm obviously not as knowledgeable about plants as you, but they looked burned. Or like someone watered them with acid."
He didn't respond, electing instead to continue facing away from her.
"Basil."
"..."
"Basil! Come on, talk to me."
"S-Stop... Please." Basil said quietly.
She felt her blood freeze as he finally turned to face her. He looked almost unrecognizable from just a few minutes before. His eyes were completely bloodshot and had dark, heavy bags under them, as if he hadn't been sleeping at all. There was a shaky, obviously forced smile plastered on his face that looked like it would collapse at any second. Beads of sweat dripped down his face as he stared through her lifelessly. "I'm sorry. You know, I probably shouldn't have dragged you into this. I think I can handle this myself. You can leave now."
"What? Basil, seriously, are you okay?" Aubrey asked, taking a step closer and trying to ignore how he flinched at that. She couldn't help but feel guilty though; Did he still see her as a malicious bully? If so, it wasn't as if she could blame him. She really needed to find a way to properly apologize to him.
"Yes. I-I'm okay. Please leave." Basil said bluntly.
"... No. You're clearly not okay, actually." Aubrey decided. She couldn't say that she was too surprised about this. No matter how normally he acted, she just couldn't shake off the suspicion that something was wrong. There was just no way. All of the sudden, Aubrey felt grateful that she hadn't gone home after all. Basil… he needed help. This was her chance to do something right for once. "Come on. We're still friends, right? You don't need to be by yourself."
"I'm okay. I'm okay." Basil closed his eyes and started muttering. His fists were closed so tightly that she was afraid that he might burst a vein. "Just leave. Leave me alone. Leave me alone."
"I'm not gonna leave you alone."
He stood up, eyes snapping open. She backed up a little as he glared at her with wide eyes. There was a sort of unhinged look in him that made her think for a second that he was about to attack her. "Shut up! Why aren't you listening? Leave me alone! What was I thinking, trying to be nice to you? You hate me. You… No, everyone hates me. The only thing I'm good for is gardening and even that's gone wrong."
Basil feels STRESSED OUT.
"Just leave me alone. Please, j-just…" Basil shook his head and ran his hands through his hair, leaving behind bright red streaks. His palms were bleeding. Badly. He barely even noticed it though - It was just another layer of pain left for his brain to try and process. Everything in his body had begun working overtime. He felt it. Something. It wanted control. It wanted his body back. It hated him for ruining everything. "I'm fine, okay? I-I'm fine. I know what it looks like but really, I'm just a little tired, that's all. That's all! I didn't get much sleep last night. A-And… it's… fine. I'm fine. I'm okay. Everything's okay. Y-You don't need to pretend like you care. I know we used to be friends, but..."
He began backing away from her, stepping on the beds of flowers and talking faster and faster all the while. His eyes were on fire. With every step he took, the sickening crunches under his feet grew louder and louder. The sound of it was disgustingly painful. He could feel each broken stem, each torn petal, each crushed plant. He was stepping on corpses. Crushing the dead bodies of Sunny and Mari. White tulips and lilies of the valley. Pictures flashed in his eyes. A picture of Mari, hanging from the tree. An eye looked out from under her hair. It was bulging, seconds away from exploding. A picture of Sunny, body broken, with red cracks dancing along his skin and laying listlessly on the pavement. Blood poured out from his opened wounds, wounds that he caused.
Aubrey was just staring at him with what looked like regret in her eyes. Why? What did he do wrong this time? He tried so hard. He did so much. Everything was to make things better. To make things right. And yet, the exhaustion wouldn't leave. Something wouldn't leave.
He cringed as he felt his eyes begin to water. He felt it. Something. It was behind him. It was annoyed. Disappointed. He knew what it wanted. Pain, sickly pain, beyond anything he had ever felt began circulating through his body like poison. Somehow, he managed to choke out a short laugh. It was a broken, raspy sound that physically hurt his own ears. "E-Excuse me. I just need to go to the bathroom."
"Wait."
"H-Huh?"
"Basil. I'm sorry. For everything. I… I shouldn't have bullied you. I shouldn't have blamed you like that." Aubrey said. "That didn't help anyone. It just made things worse. I-"
"Stop. STOP IT!" Basil screamed. "Just leave me alone! I've told you so many times, just leave me alone! I don't care about that!"
Aubrey's hand shot forward and grabbed his arm. She was crying too, and she looked absolutely pissed at herself for it. "No! Like it or not, I'm not going to leave!"
"Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up…" Basil sobbed, punching her with his free hand over and over again. This didn't last long as eventually, Aubrey pulled him closer and embraced him in a surprisingly gentle hug. The physical contact made him feel like he was choking. Everything hurt. Everything burned. Each individual muscle in his body kept tensing and untensing and it just made everything blurry and he was so tired and it hurt so bad and why the hell couldn't he "stop that shaking I can't move so STOP IT"
He couldn't do anything except stand there and take it.
Basil stood in his restroom and stared at himself in the mirror. Despite everything, Aubrey permitted him (why do I have to get permission to use the bathroom in my own house?!) to be by himself in there, though only after some insistence. He strove to look only at himself, and not at the two shadowy figures just behind him. He was, to put it lightly, disheveled. Dark, deep bags hung under his eyes, dragging them down and highlighting the absolute, undeniable exhaustion that plagued his entire body. It hurt to move; At any moment, he was sure that he could collapse as the weight of literal days of no sleep sat on him. It was almost impressive how he had managed to stay awake for this long, but he had experience with sleep deprivation so it wasn't all too bad.
Well, that wasn't true. It was bad. In fact, Basil was very, very sure of the fact that he might go insane, that is, if he wasn't insane already. He almost laughed at the thought, but the reality of the situation crashed down on him hard enough to choke out any humour he might have found at the moment. For one, the tremors plaguing his body had gotten severe enough to the point that he was struggling to walk, speak, write, or really anything that required motor function. He imagined that if one were to drink ten cups of coffee within the span of a minute, then it would be a similar experience. In fact, he wished that that's what he did, as at least then he would have some sort of energy, no matter how depraved or manic it was. It was all Basil could do to not faint right then and there.
He opened both of his hands, lifting them up to the mirror. Back at the garden, he'd pressed his nails down hard enough that he was drawing blood. He even got some of it in his hair, which honestly was just annoying to wash off. His hands didn't hurt too badly, but they were still bleeding by the time they were inside so he bandaged them up. For some reason, he couldn't get used to the sensation caused by having fabric wrapped around his hands so tightly. It was just… strange. Itchy, kind of.
"Basil… I'm sorry."
He froze as Something spoke. All of the sudden, he didn't like that he could see his reflection. His terror-stricken eyes. His thin, wiry hair sticking to his forehead. Shifting his eyes downwards, he started repeating a mantra to himself; "Everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay."
It was an endless tumble of repeating words, mixing and jumbling with each other as he whispered to himself. They became meaningless sounds, falling on top of one another to form incoherent sentences being said for nothing but the slightest feeling of comfort, no matter how fake it was. If he focused hard enough, he could lie. He could pretend that it was okay, that he wasn't on the verge of a very, very long drop. It didn't matter that his fingertips were numbing, or that the room was becoming darker and darker at every passing second.
"BASIL!" Aubrey shouted from just outside the door. "What are you doing in there?!"
He yelped, jumping and turning around so fast that he might as well have gotten whiplash. The silhouettes of Something lingered for a half second, and then vanished completely. Her voice was so loud that it effectively tore through the trance that he had set upon himself, leaving behind a confused and slightly panic-stricken Basil who was still recovering from a mini-heart attack.
"Basil! It's been like thirty minutes, did you fall in or something?"
For a moment, he could only stand there and stare at the door like a deer caught in headlights, completely unsure of what to do. Maybe if he ignored her, she would give up?
"Don't make me break this door down, or I'll-"
"A-Aubrey! Calm down!" Basil quickly opened the door only to find Aubrey gripping her baseball bat menacingly. He tried not to imagine what sort of property damage she was capable of as he awkwardly scooted past her, carefully avoiding eye contact. "You scared me half to death…"
She scoffed and lowered her bat. "Yeah, well you were in there for way too long. What were you even doing? You didn't even flush the toilet or anything."
He stopped and gave her a confused look. "W-Were you just... standing out here and listening the whole time? That's… kind of weird."
"Weird?!" Aubrey asks indignantly, face turning red. "I was just worried about you, okay?"
"Worried?"
"Well, yeah. You looked so tired that you might have passed out and cracked your head on the floor or something." She frowned. "You should take a nap or something. Seriously."
"Aubrey… Y-You don't need to worry about me, really!" Basil said. Despite his exhaustion, the idea of taking a nap was repulsive. Besides, how could he sleep when every time he closed his eyes, he could feel them? The two Somethings, manifesting above him, staring down with their unrelenting gazes? "I'm really, really sorry for worrying you, but I f-feel much better now. You don't have to stay here… It's getting late anyways."
Aubrey glanced through a window; give another thirty minutes or so and it would be pitch black outside. After some contemplation, she nodded. "I guess it is late. I want to see you again tomorrow though, okay? I'll be here."
"Um… okay… I-I guess."
Turning on her heel, she gave a wave as she walked away. "And get some sleep! You look like a zombie."
"I-"
Before he could respond, she was already gone, the door closing behind her. The words died on his lips as he looked around, suddenly aware of the air around him growing cold. Already, it had become too quiet.
Stifling a sigh, he went to the kitchen and grabbed the plate of food lying on the countertop that had been wrapped in plastic. Polly's cooking - She'd prepared it earlier for him before going to sleep. It was still warm. He promptly unwrapped it and scraped it into the garbage. It wasn't out of distaste or malice, rather that he was simply not hungry. That, and if Polly saw that he wasn't eating, then she would start getting worried. He tried not to feel guilty about wasting it.
At about the pace of a tortoise, he made his way into his room and closed the door behind him. He sat on his bed and wrapped a blanket around himself. It made him feel a little better, but ultimately it did nothing to repress the heavy atmosphere settling down to choke him.
There, with the Somethings behind him, he waited for morning.
Aubrey watched glumly as Bun-Bun lazily nibbled on a straw of hay, carefully picking a glass shard out of her hair. When she came home, she was greeted by her mother hurling a beer bottle at her, narrowly missing her head by inches and showering her in broken glass. Frankly, she was lucky that she didn't get cut. Her mother had started shouting at her for coming home so late; she wasn't sure whether or not to be glad she even noticed her coming home at all. She had run to her room before her mom could throw anything else at her, scrambling up the ladder to the attic while fighting off the angry tears that had sprung to her eyes.
She grabbed a handheld mirror and gave herself a quick once-over. Satisfied that she wasn't going to wake up to a puddle of blood, she made herself a note to remind herself to sweep the floor of the glass tomorrow. With an exhausted groan, she collapsed into her bed. She would have changed into pajamas, but she was down to her last few sets of clothes; every other piece of clothing she owned was either too dirty or too ragged to comfortably wear. These days, whenever she wanted to clean her clothes, she would have to hand-wash them in the sink and even then, she had to be frugal with her water usage. Their laundry machine broke about a month ago, and she didn't have the money to get it repaired. In fact, they barely had enough money for the water and electricity bills.
She wondered half-heartedly if she could ask to borrow someone else's laundry machine. Just pop up at Kel's or Basil's or Kim's or whoever's house with a laundry hamper full of clothes and go: "Hey! I don't have a working laundry machine and I can't afford to get it fixed because my deadbeat mom lives on welfare checks and food stamps. So, can I borrow yours?"
… Nah.
To make her living situation worse, people were starting to ask questions. I mean, who wouldn't? She was a teenage delinquent who ran around town doing stupid shit all day while her mom stayed indoors. The fact that the pile of trash outside their house grew more every day didn't help matters. Even at church she would have to ignore those hushed whispers of gossip from everyone around her. If she was lucky, she could find a secluded area to sit at. Most of the time though, the church was packed enough so that she would have to sit next to someone.
Though she supposed she somewhat deserved all of the gossip and nasty side-eyes. Not only has she spent the last few years being a general nuisance, but she managed to rope in several other people along with her antics, the worst of which was relentlessly harassing and teasing Basil whenever he showed his face in public.
She cringed inwardly at that. God, what a jerk she's been. Was she still mad about him defacing that photo album? Maybe. Was she mad at herself for doing things that were way worse than anything Basil's ever done? Definitely.
There was no denying that Basil had turned into a nervous wreck ever since Mari died. She only questioned how much she had to do with that transformation. The way he looked at her sometimes, almost as if he were expecting to be shoved or screamed at… It used to give her a sense of wicked satisfaction. Almost as if she were committing an act of rightful retribution. Now though… it only made her heart twist up with guilt. She hated that feeling with every fiber of her being. She supposed that was part of the reason why she felt so inclined to try to help him through Sunny's death.
"Sunny… Damn it."
She shivered and curled up into a ball, hugging her knees to her chest. She only considered herself lucky that she didn't see his body, unlike Hero. As soon as he saw that Sunny was missing from his room, he took off running to look for him, shouting at them to take care of Basil, who was lying on the floor having what could only be described as a complete mental breakdown. She heard the news from him later - It took him an eternity to push out those three words: "Sunny jumped off."
Aubrey thought that her world would collapse that day. She barely remembered anything else that happened besides the soul-crushing sensation of regret. Regret that she couldn't stop yet another friend from comitting suicide. Regret that she didn't stop and thought to herself that hey, maybe someone should keep an eye on Sunny for when he woke up. Regret for nearly every damned word she uttered to him since he came out of his house.
"After you move, promise me you'll go outside more often, okay?"
She wiped her eyes as she began crying freely. What a pain.