Try to Remember
Interlude: Coldness
—?M?—?M?—
There are many different ways a man can feel cold. Few can match the sensation when it attacks you from all sides; the chill in your bones, the ice in your blood, the frost on your skin, the numbness in your heart, and the all pervading arctic snow that falls only on a man who is close to giving up.
He was back there; Denver, 2009, he was only thirteen years old. He'd lain in the snow drift for so long he'd lost all feeling. Across the icy stretch of the alleyway, was another body, face down in the snow, it's skin approaching blue. He had mercifully died as he hit the ground; Kenny however, was not so lucky. Legs broken, arms tired and bruised, blood stains frozen across the emblazoned M on his shirt.
He had been so close, yet he didn't know if that made it worse. What if this had happened, and he'd been far away, if he hadn't even known until it was too late? That would have been the less painful route. But to fall here, when He'd needed him most. That infected his heart with a kind of cold the snowy night never could.
He tried to rise again, but as with all the times before he could only twitch. A minute motion, like a fly swatted, it's tiny body only able to spasm in a barely controlled tremor that gave the impression of life, but none of the warmth of it.
The blood had faded now, frozen beneath them both. Him and the other boy were just two kids, one dead the other dying, frozen in the streets. No matter how much he willed it, he couldn't force his body to give up, for his biological functions to just stop, and let him die. Despite how flagrantly he cheated death, he never could control it. He had fooled himself into believing he was immortal, invincible. He wasn't. He was just a pawn in someone else's game, and like all the other pawns, he was disposable.
Another chill whispered through him, a hairline fracture running up his spine that made him shiver. Something had changed. Nothing ever changed. This dream was always the same; infinitely cold, forever immobile. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw something new, something that had never been there before. At the far end of the alleyway, where his vision blurred the world into smears of colour, there was something standing.
Tall, human shaped, seeming all the more dark given the contrast it bore standing with it's back to the streetlights. A long coat, an old fashioned hat, hands shoved deep into pockets. Like him, this newcomer was unmoving, merely standing there and watching him. Something glimmered where it's eyes would be, like moonlight bouncing off glass.
His eyes didn't even close. But something left them, and while those blue eyes stared blankly at the trespasser in his memory, Kenny McKormick died.
—?M?—?M?—
A/N: Not a very long chapter at all, not even technically a chapter, hence the 'interlude' part. The reason being that the next chapter proper is proving very difficult to get my head around. I've got several versions of it drafted, the problem lies with how I want it to play out, what's believable, and what's best for the story in the long run.
I'll talk more about the interlude on my Tumblr if people are so inclined, you can find the link on my profile.
Thanks for the reviews and all that. Let me know what you think of this interlude business and whether it's a good bridge between the chapters themselves (since I don't update very frequently/regularly), or whether it's too short to warrant updating the story. Until next time.
— Faff