To the Boy Who Always Dies in My Stories (Part 1)
By Idowu Precious (Babosha)
Author’s note: slightly graphic content, mention of killing and murder?
This is not a love letter, neither is it an apology letter. This is… something. You may call it an attempt. An attempt at what, you might ask. I’m afraid I have no words to answer that. Where words should be, lie only feelings of sadness, emptiness, frustration and a last unknown feeling. My mother says it is guilt, I tell her she is wrong. “I am incapable of feeling guilt", I say. This last emotion is heavy, it weighs me down like a wet duvet on my chest. If I could name it, I would. But it is nameless as it is endless.
There is a pause between my breaths now, a little moment to gather my thoughts. I stare at the pen between my fingers, I watch as the ink bleeds out of it. I try to come up with soft endings, the kind that makes readers’ hearts feel fluffy but my hands move faster than my brain, each letter crafting out the screams and pains you shall endure.
The first time you died, I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel a thing. I had made it gentle, so gentle I almost felt like I deserved an award for the peace I brought you. It was soft, like the smile that usually plays on your lips at the sight of your lover. You had been through so much before then: the sleepless nights, the trembling hands, the letters your lover never answered, the father who never called, the mother whose eyes were distant. You were crumbling already, even before my pen reached you. So when I gave you your ending, I thought it was mercy.
I wrote the room silent except for your breath. And then, as if it were a dream, I had you close your eyes. Life slipped from you so peacefully with your last exhale barely audible. Your pulse slowed and stopped, and your heart never beat again. Your lips curved but not in a scream but in that soft smile. My readers called it beautiful. They said it was “poetic.” I told myself it was mercy. I was a merciful creator. But in the back of my mind, a small voice whispered: you killed him.
The second time it happened, I revved things up a little. “It was his fault”, I told myself. You paid no regard to me, to the hard work I had put into crafting you. You refused to bend to the plot and so I made your death loud and messy. You died in the rain, beneath the blaring horns of cars.
I remember writing the moment: your phone buzzing in your hand, her name lighting up the screen, your heart racing in excitement. You didn’t see the truck swerving. The sound of metal merged with your snapping bones. You went under so fast your body didn’t know where to hurt first. I made it vivid, from the way your skull cracked like an egg on asphalt, the grey and pink of your brain spilling out and mixing with the rainwater in little rivers down the gutter. Your arm bent backward at an impossible angle, your fingers twitching even after everything else had gone slack. A tooth rolled out of your mouth and clinked on the road like a pebble. And still, I wrote her name glowing on your phone screen until it went black with you.
This time I didn’t feel merciful. This time, when I put my pen down, my stomach churned…with excitement and a little bit of nausea. I told myself it was necessary as characters need to die for stories to live. Didn’t they?
The third time was an accident. At least, that’s what I tell myself. My mother raises an eyebrow whenever I say that. She believes I have begun to think myself something of a god, drunk on the power of the words that bleed out of my ink. She says she sees a craze in my eyes. I smile, not at her words but at the memory of your death.
I hadn’t meant for you to drown. It was supposed to be symbolic, a baptism of some sorts. You were supposed to survive it, to rise again cleaner, harder, colder. But my pen slipped. Or maybe my hands guided it without me. I did say they moved faster than my brain. You were at the beach, the water dark and deep like a mouth waiting to swallow. I wrote you slipping, your heel catching on a slippery slope . I wrote your body falling, a clean splash. I thought you’d swim.
But the water was thicker than water should be. It clung to you like hands, dragged you down. You thrashed, your nails clawing at nothing, bubbles bursting from your mouth like frantic punctuation. Your eyes (god, I can still see your eyes) wild and white, rolling up as the darkness swallowed you. I wrote the silence of the surface after you sank. Only the ripples remained, widening and fading with waves gently crashing against each other, it was as if you had never been there at all. My mother said nothing when she read that draft. She just looked at me long and hard, as though she were trying to see what kind of thing she had raised.
By the fourth time, I knew what was coming. I was past mercy.
Watch out for part 2.
