A little spec of cosmic dust (Pt.2)

Left Difficulty B, Right Difficulty B

The ambulance came fast, but death had come faster. Along came the defibrillator, a few hundred volts vainly surging through the body. I knew it could never shake life into those empty eyes, but Mother kept screaming she would sue the paramedic’s ass if he didn’t bring her father back.

“You touch me and I’ll fucking divorce you, Melvin,” she snarled at Dad when he tried to calm her down. Her bloodshot eyes were open so wide I feared they might fall off their sockets.

My elder brother’s eyes, on the other hand, were vacant and pouring. His girlfriend was rubbing his shoulder and whispering words of comfort into his ear, but I could tell he was way too far away to ever hear them. He had helped to move grandpa into the couch before shutting himself off.

Across the room, Uncle Malachi couldn’t get his hand off his mouth. He would twist it into all sorts of positions: at first he only covered his mouth to muffle a sob and then he’d bite into a fistful of despair. Some time later he started biting his nails in a very weird manner, digging into the next finger only when the one he had been munching on had started bleeding.

I was sitting opposite the dining table, staring with dumbfounded fascination at the accuracy of the mould of the side of grandpa’s face in the cake.

“The ear is particularly detailed,” I thought in hollow words.

My stomach was churning, the hot dogs of the luncheon going up and down, indecisive about which body exit to take, but my mind was eerily lucid. I couldn’t comprehend what was going on in the couch with the defibrillator and all, so I had just scratched it out of the picture. I understood what death was — it was Goldie being flushed down the toilet, it was Pac-Man disintegrating in funny sounds, it was even the pet turtle of the class halting to a new and terrible non-speed record —, but this was something else. This was… this was… this was…

Suddenly I burst into tears, so abruptly I even startled myself — which only made my crying grow in volume. I howled, and the wailing hurt my throat as I vomited it onto the room along with mucus and a choking cough. Dad rushed to me with a glass of water, but I couldn’t drink. I puked on his shirt and hugged him.

“Bear hugs,” I muttered through the sobs that shook my body, feeling a warm sting in the eyes as I put my arms around his waist and pressed my face against the puke stain.

Then there was a beat of white noise: Mother screaming louder, Uncle Malachi storming out of the living room and my brother’s girlfriend losing it in a series of ear-piercing shrieks. The moment ended when I felt Dad’s arms on mine and him caressing my hair. I closed my hands firmly around his kidneys, but he didn’t flinch one inch. The entire world — and, more importantly, that room — went numb.

• • •

I awoke about an hour later. Dad was still holding me and the remains of the hot dogs had solidified between his shirt and my face. Only a few vertical lines — which, I assumed, corresponded to the trails of my tears — were still somewhat fresh when I finally separated from him. He gave me a wry smile.

“Any better?” he asked me.

“Guess so,” I replied in a hoarse voice, looking around. There wasn’t anybody else in the room.

“Your mom’s gone to the hospital to get some paperwork done,” Dad said, as if he had read my thoughts. “Mike’s gone to the office to fetch some documents. Alice went off with him, so he should be fine.”

Before I could ask about Uncle Malachi, I heard sobs coming from the kitchen, and then the soft hiss of the kettle.

“Want some tea?” asked Dad, as he cleaned part of a bun from my cheek. “Or would you rather wash up first?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t much of a fan of tea and, as I was regaining consciousness, I started feeling rather disgusted about having lunch smeared on my face. I told him I’d take a shower and left the room.

I spent over half an hour in the bathroom, leaving only when the heater could no longer keep the water warm. I remember stepping out of the tub asking myself whether grandpa’s skin would now feel as lukewarm as the darkened liquid that was leaving through the drain.

When I walked into the kitchen — with my hair still wet and my Star Wars pyjamas on — only Uncle Malachi was there. He was leaning against the counter, a steamy mug in hand. He raised his head, but I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me in the eyes because he was wearing brown tinted sunglasses. He scratched his beard and said “Want some?” signalling to a pitcher by the cooker. I shook my head and drank some tap water instead. We stayed silent, looking at each other with inexpressive, lost eyes, the only action anchoring us to reality being the mechanical movement of the arm to wet our mouths.

“We’re just little specs of cosmic dust, Chris,” said Uncle Malachi after a few endless minutes. “Petty bacteria in the foul breath of the universe, doomed to disappear into the void of space”.

It didn’t occur to me that such a remark was simply off the mark in front of a kid; I took it in my stride on the grounds of the whining, self-pitying tone in which he had uttered it. It didn’t feel quite true, though.

“Existence is something so… fleeting”, he insisted, as if it were some new concept for him, but somehow I knew better. I shook off the feeling by taking another sip of water and then — as I finished my glass — I remembered something.

“The presents,” I murmured, suddenly realizing it was still my birthday. “Would you mind helping me unwrap my presents?” I said to Uncle Malachi, leaving the empty glass on the counter.