There are recollections that refuse to be forgotten, and they nag and disturb and scream at Roy Adustus and tear away at his heart with every passing day.
So in the dead of the night, facedown in his bed he thinks about how they became friends over their shared appreciations for reading and night skies and background music.
He remembers how they'd share books with each other on a myriad of subjects and stories and talk over the phone about this or that passage and that detail and how it correlates with another and that plot twist and on and on and on.
And he recalled every little nuance on how they'd sit on the library couches and share a pair of earbuds (with the volume ticked at precisely thirteen or twenty-seven if there was a library activity) curl up on adjacent seats (with ugly color schemes of olive and horrible purple) and listen to orchestral soundtracks for movies (they preferred The Lord of the Rings) or video games (usually Skyrim) or television shows (infrequently) and read books of poetry (they both loved LOVELESS) or science (usually books on astrology or ornithology) or dystopian love stories with action in the odd mix.
And sometimes Robin called at the ungodly time of 3:30 just to cry and vent about his alcoholic father and Roy would frown and try to comfort him and convince him to just keep on living life because life is so beautiful, why would you want to waste it? Why would you want to leave?
And in the end he's always left wondering Why did you leave me?
So facedown at 2 AM, Roy screams into his sheets and pillows and slams his fist into the headboard of his bedframe and asks again and again WHY?
And then he lifts up his head with tears streaming down his face and quietly staggers into the nearby bathroom and pull out the razor he uses to shave and seethes with frustration and endless questions of why why why and tears at the inside of his upper left arm and forgets those memories and the levels of volume and his questions and there is just the sting and then the bliss and the edge of the razor and the sharp clarity of the cuts and the dulling of his anger and confusion and there is just the red of his blood and the newly forming scar and the bliss and he wants to feel that forever and forget and feel like he floats on clouds and his pains leave permanently.
But they don't, so he returns to the bathroom once a week to do it again and again and again, drowning himself in the blood and the freedom of the openness and the sting into happy forgetfulness.