killin It

The wind whistling down the alley outside the bedroom window was so loud, Deacon could hear it clearly even after he pressed his pillow over his face. He inhaled through his mouth for a five count, held it in for a six count, and exhaled for a seven count. After a few rounds, his heart rate wasn’t any lower, but at least his breathing was consistent, controlled, slow and hot, the opposite of what he heard raging outside. He went for long enough he doesn’t need to count anymore.

The wind kept picking up, grabbing unclasped shutters and anything else that wasn’t tied down, sending them all hurling against the building. He can feel the vibration of each bang, wincing after every one, then tensing in anticipation of the next.

The whistle became a roar, more immediate, like one of the windows blew open. Deacon doesn’t get up to look, his head is fully under the covers, his body in the fetal position, tucking the blankets under his body on all sides to form an airtight cocoon.

It’s not airtight for long, he felt it first on his toes, a gentle, but ice-cold breeze. He curled his legs up even tighter into his body, and spun the covers around his feet until they are buried under layers of material. After less than a breath, he feels it run through his hair, gentle, but still cold and invasive. He tucks his chin, and makes himself as small as he can, to stay protected. He feels it on his toes again.

Then he hears footsteps. Slowly approaching, stopping outside his door. He hears the knob turn. His heart pounds.

Deacon gasps awake and pushes himself into a sitting position. His skin is damp with sweat, and so are his sheets. Besides his ragged breathing, the room is silent. Outside is clear and still. He waits, for the wind to pick up or for his heart rate to slow, knowing it will be one of the two.

After a minute of uninterrupted silence, he moves his hands around the covers, stopping to press down on the mattress, confirming its softness. “You’re warm, you’re comfortable, you’re safe.” He whispers to himself, as his hand runs into a warm mass next to him.

Stacy stirs, either from the contact, his whisper, or she woke up when he did, too distressed to intervene until she had to. “What’s going on?” Her voice was sleepy and annoyed. Deacon didn’t know what time it was.

“Nothing babe, just a bad dream.”

She rolled over halfway towards him. “What happened?”

He waited. “I don’t remember.” He tried to sound surprised.

“Poor Deakie.” Stacy rolled back, and in less than a minute, her breathing steadied.

Deacon wanted to nestle in behind her, press as much of his body against her as he could, soak up all her warmth, wrap his legs between and around hers, and match her breathing until he drifted off into her kind of sleep. She probably wanted that too, even though he was drenched in sweat. Instead he swung his legs the other way, out of the covers and into the open air, then stepped down from the bed and walked into the bathroom.

He looked at himself in the mirror to confirm that everything he’d been repeating to himself was true. He was inside. It was warm. He wasn’t alone. Deacon ran his hands under the faucet then ran his hands over his face and through his hair.

He padded around the house, stepping quietly in the bedroom to check that all the windows were closed. They were. He couldn’t hear a sound on the other side, even when he pressed his forehead against the glass. Deacon kept moving, pulling a filtered pitcher out of his refrigerator and pouring himself a glass of water.

He stood in his kitchen, lit only by the city lights outside, in a white t-shirt and boxers, and held his water, without taking a drink. He moved towards the floor-to-ceiling windows, wondering what in the dark skyline could calm him down, but stopped well before he could look down at the street. Chester, he realized, was why he was having nightmares, and unconsciously started mumbling his mantra again.

He was inside his small fake loft with partial city views, in the part of town without good tap water. A girl slept in his bed, but he knew it was running its course, no telling how many more nights she’d spend there. It was warm, but not warm enough to stand in his underwear for too long, or in his bare feet on the cool wood. It was true he’d come a long way, but he had to go twice as far to make it all worth it. And his best friend was dead, suddenly and completely removed from his life forever.

Deacon couldn’t fathom the big, sweeping impact Chester’s death would have on so many aspects of his life moving forward: his moods, his fears, his actions, his decisions. It had only been two days, and no one thinks that big, especially about their own lives. So he thought small, all the near terms things he’d be missing out on. He thought about the table they were building; Deacon both vowed to finish it and lamented his lost access to all those gleaming power tools Chester just bought and had no idea how to operate. He thought about the job offer Chester was going to give him, to provide him negotiating leverage for a raise at his current job, or a cushy landing raft if they called his bluff and he needed to jump ship.

He understood how petty these thoughts were, but doubted they explained the guilt he had been living with ever since he walked down Chester’s front steps and saw his broken body. He’d taken advantage of his friend, they all had, and he couldn’t remember Chester taking advantage of any of them. He was the best of them, and the first to go. A sad irony, but not the kind of thing that puts a hydraulic press on your chest.

Deacon was almost the last to find him after, and maybe the last to see him before, which filled quiet nights like this with what ifs. He couldn’t help but wonder if he could have arrived earlier and stanched some wound, snapped something back into place, or at least gave Chester some comfort in his last moments. Something Bastian was totally incapable of.

But there were more what ifs on the other end. Deacon kept going through their last few minutes in Chester’s garage and in his workshop. Deacon screamed at his memories as he relived them, telling himself to stop focusing on the car and the power tools and pick up some indication about what Chester was about to do. He begged himself to keep his friend down there, find him, pull him into a bear hug and never let him go upstairs, hold on to him as he squirmed and thrashed until morning if he had to.

The night before Deacon had convinced himself that was the cause of his guilt, that he could have easily prevented it and didn’t. But the effectiveness of that explanation had waned. It fluttered and looped, caught in the breeze as it flitted out of his head and into the city beyond. The breeze remained, gaining power until it roared in his ears, rushing past them so fast it was like he was falling, off a four story townhouse right on Broadway.