Chapter 5: Question to the World

Comments: This story may slow down for a while but I'm not abandoning it; I like it way too much. It's just that I'm trying to finish getting Plato's Law up ASAP and it doesn't leave me much time to work on this. I wrote this chapter this morning and it seems a little different to me; it could just me because I just woke up and everything seems a little different to me.

Mood Song: Frontline by Pillar

Somehow, without too much difficulty, Ed manages to get me to my bed. My throat is burning and my head hurts. Ed had forced me to throw up everything in my stomach, pills included.

He tucks the covers up to my chin and goes back into the bathroom. He returns moments later with a plastic trashcan and a damp rag. I roll away from him when he sits on the edge of the bed next to me.

"Roy, this is important, how many pills did you take?" he murmurs, draping the damp washcloth across my forehead. It feels cool against my flaming skin.

"I don't know, maybe six or seven."

There is a silence. For a moment, I thought he had left but the sloping pressure on the bed tells me otherwise.

"You scared me, Roy. When I got to you and you weren't moving, I thought you were dead," he finally mumbles.

And I would have been, you little brat. If you hadn't come in I would already be dead, floating in that dreamless haze. When I hear him open his mouth once more to speak, I am already braced for its coming.

"Why, Roy?"

I'm flattered that he was worried about me but I'm not about to tell him why I tried to kill myself.

That I thought myself to be a hindrance to everyone and I was lonely.

What a manly way to go out!

I am completely unprepared for his next comment when he moves to the other side of the bed to look me in the eyes.

"Pills don't always work; usually a rope or a gun gets the job done."

I gawk at him, too shocked to speak. He was telling me ways to kill myself as if we were two old ladies in the grocery conversing over the best sales!

At that moment, I chose to stick around for a while longer. There was more to this boy than he showed. And I was going to find out.

Mask of Mirage