Doomed Love

Edmund’s not dead.

Not really.

I knew I had to drag him as soon as I found him, and it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought! For one thing, I’m small and weak. For another, and in perfect contrast, Edmund is a fucking giant. And he had to be all muscle the way boys are, bony and strong at the same time, like meat lockers.

Meat Lockers? That doesn’t make sense.

Oh well. He’s a meat locker forever now.

But he wasn’t a weird gangly guy, he was a handsome guy, with that handsome face and that handsome triangle shape that looks so appealing on a man. Almost-man. He was eighteen.

Is eighteen.

He’s not dead. I promise.

It took me a while to find him too. The idiot is bad with communication. He gets it from his parents. They stopped communicating with him as soon as he was able to functionally take care of himself. Who knows where they are now, maybe in some gross golden palace in whatever country appeals the most to rich people. I wouldn’t know. They don’t know either. They don’t know that their son didn’t kill himself, because he didn’t kill himself.

He’s not dead. I took him to the car. He’s fine.

Anyway, like I was saying, it was hard to find him because he doesn’t communicate well. I don’t even know what made me think to check the train tracks. But that’s where I found him. It was a moonless night, I guess that’s why the train driver never saw him. The train was long gone by now, so it was only me and Edmund. Which was fine. We were used to that.

My mom killed herself when I was seven, threw herself in front of a truck because the voices told her to; I was with her the day she did it, I watched her walk out, I watched the truck throw her in the air, and felt the bones in her body break when she hit the ground again.

My dad didn’t know what to do with me afterwards, so he moved us to the part of Maine where you see more moose than people and left me with Edmund’s family, which wasn’t really a family at all, so it was only me and Edmund. We were never good with other people, but we were good with each other. We could kick the crap out of one other and laugh while doing it. We liked to stay up late and talk over coffee. We didn’t eat as much as we should’ve, not that there was an adult around to tell us otherwise. But we knew. They don’t know. We don’t need them to survive. We have each other. So long as we’re alive, we’ll be fine.

I think I keep getting off track. Get it? Off track? Well, maybe you don’t because I haven’t told you the whole story yet.

I found Edmund on the train tracks. I wasn’t expecting to have to drag him, but luckily for me the car wasn’t far off. As soon as I pulled his body down from the steep embankment, I was surprised to see that his head was missing. It’s okay, though, it didn’t go far. I found it a little way down the track and set it on top of his chest. He’ll be fine.

As soon as I got him in the car, I grabbed the duct tape. When I finally reattached his head to the best of my ability, he sat up. He touched his neck and then gave me an incredulous look.

“Duct tape? Really?”

“What the hell do you want from me? I’m not a seamstress!”

“I look ridiculous!”

“You should’ve seen how ridiculous you looked without a head! What’d you try to kill yourself for? Is the life of a rich kid really that hard?”

“Shut up, you’re always patronizing me!”

“Yeah, because I’m your older cousin and I have that right. What’d you do it for? You know suicide’s illegal. I should report your stupid ass to the cops.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“So do it already.”

“I want you to tell me why first.”

“Guess you’ll just have to bloody find out for yourself while I’m rotting away in prison.”

“You’re so damn stubborn!”

He smirked, picking at his makeshift bandage. “What can I say? It runs in our family.”

“No, it runs in your side of the family. I have no relation; therefore, I am not stubborn. Logic.”

“Right. Logic.”

“I’ll find out, even if I have to lock you in a closet while I raid your bedroom. I’ve always wanted to go through your stuff, but every time I come by you seem to get so itchy whenever I go near your things. I’ll make sure to lock you in the closet.”

“Joyous day.”

I held the door for him on the way out.

A creeping mist slithered into the streets during the night like an uninvited guest, a visual reminder of the mystery that surrounds us all; and its sleeping residents, while still peacefully dreaming dreams of impossibilities and eternal discoveries, once awakened by morning routine, will be brought back down to earthly stability and grounded truths that can never be altered or fancifully decorated by the childish, wishful pleasantries they were only moments before dreaming of—where no matter what, there is always a way out; a subconscious reality that they can always wake up from. But for the time being they dream.

Notably, because of Somerset’s seemingly natural prestige, from its totality of stately manners and seaside cottages, to its residents dressed impeccably in any public scenario—the elder generation poised and regal, the younger like dignified models of the highest aristocracy—, our city is a visual perplexity.

Geographically, Somerset is a bed of mountains spotted with a mess of lakes, dispersed in all shapes and sizes, giving the treacherous terrain some small form of relief. The city itself is only a timid crest, snuggly planted along the arm of the coast. Why Somerset is such a wealthy city is completely dependent on the success of it residents—and it is those upstanding visionaries, crafters, and intellectuals that gives the land and air of this city the pulsating longevity of fashion and beauty. Without them, it would be empty, devoid of purpose. I envy the city. I wish for an epiphany to hit me, so that I could finally understand my own worth, but it never happens.

I feel as though I’m a single piece of a collage that was somehow fused together as a photograph, then that photograph was cut up to be like a puzzle, and I’m now one of those various puzzle pieces, disassembled and sitting alone from the rest and wondering what my purpose is in relation to the big picture.

I want to know what picture it is that I help create, what purpose it is that I help serve, what thought it is that I help create a concrete image for. I want to know where I belong.

Edmund hit my shoulder, pointing to the turn I almost missed to get to the coffee shop.

“Come back down, space cadet,” he teased.

After we ordered our drinks, the girl was handing them to me when I remembered Edmund likes his drink extra insulated. “Could I have an extra cup for this one, please? He doesn’t want his ice to melt too fast.”

She looked at me oddly, eyes glancing around my passenger side and a look that said she was feeling wildly uncomfortable. “Sure,” she replied in a drawn-out tone, handing it to me.

Once we’d driven off, Edmund huffed. “You see? The duct tape looks stupid.”

“Too bad. You gunna tell me why you did it now?”

All he did was sip his coffee.

It couldn’t’ve been because of last night. Was it really so strange?

We were drinking a little, but I was pretending to drink more than I was, dumping most of it over the balcony rail when he wasn’t paying attention. I thought it would make flirting with him easier. He made me nervous. He was way out of my league, but I couldn’t help myself. I loved him. And it wasn’t even like I did anything terribly risqué.

For the most part, I sat a little closer to him than I normally would’ve. I spoke kindly to him. We watched movies the way we liked to do, one after the other, we talked, I held his hand and he didn’t try to pull away, but he did look a little worried. He kept asking, “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need to go to bed?” when he probably thought I’d had too much to drink. I liked to go to bed when he was around. Our parents made us stop sleeping in the same bed when we were kids, but then they stopped coming home. I would always pretend like I didn’t know that he snuck into bed with me when he thought I was asleep. I’ve been pretending for years.

But I didn’t pretend last night.

I turned and looked at him as soon as he slipped in behind me. I remember how frightened he looked. He was shaking. I asked him if he would kiss me, and he told me no. When I asked why not, he said that he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he took advantage of me while I wasn’t in my right mind.

That’s the crux, not being able to tell someone that you’re faking it because if you did, you’d be giving up the whole game, and that might make them feel tricked somehow, even if that wasn’t your original intention.

I only wanted to feel comfortable around him, for just one night. He makes me so nervous. I like him too much. He’s such a gentleman. He wouldn’t kiss me because he thought I was too drunk. He’s too good for me. He’s a better person than I am, all I know how to do is pretend and fake and lie my way through the day. He’s too beautiful. I couldn’t stop looking at him. My heart was beating out of my chest. I loved his big blue eyes. I loved his messy brown hair. I had to kiss him—and I did.

I let myself slip in and lightly brush my lips against his, it could hardly even be called a kiss, whatever I did, but he made it real. He grabbed my face and pulled me back. He opened my mouth, and I felt his tongue. I could hear his breathing; I could hear his heart. I felt like every part of me could feel every part of him. My hands were on his back when he propped himself up to hover over me. He never let me go. I felt like we were both breathing way too much. We wanted too much from each other, but we were both still so young and so horribly inexperienced. And that’s when he suddenly ripped himself away, standing off towards the windows.

He was holding his head like it hurt him, and I think he was crying—but I knew if I asked, he would never admit it. He then said he had to go to the bathroom, and after that he was gone. It was the last time I saw him before I found him on the tracks.

After a few more miles, we came up on a big green sign that read EXIT 16, and on a smaller brown sign beneath it: CRAFT ESTATE.

It was already starting to sprinkle by the time we were pulling up to the cold stone mansion that he called home.

“Ready?”

“You got the key?”

I turned in my seat. “Why would I have the key to your house?”

“Well I don’t have it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

He threw his head back laughing. He’s lucky he had the back of the seat to buffer his thrust, otherwise the tape might not have held, and his head would’ve gone rolling.

“I’m just messing with you, little girl,” he said, shifting to pull the key from his jean’s pocket. “Ready? The rain’s getting heavier.”

I snatched the key from his hand with a scowl. “I’m going to pee all over your bed.”

“Oh goodie, just make sure I’m lying in it first.”

We ran up the steps and through the double doors into the foyer. It was cold, and it still felt dark even when the lights were on. There was a dreadful heaviness to the air that it made me want to go back outside, but this is Edmund’s home, this is the place he came back to every day after school, this is the place he got ready in the mornings and slept in every night. If anywhere knew him, it was here, and if it felt heavy, then chances are, it was reflective of what emanated from his mind, and whatever it was, it was potent enough that these overly indulgent walls drank it up like unwilling sponges. This house is in pain, and I’m going to find out why.

His room didn’t feel any better.

It was chaotic—almost frantic in its “business”. He had maps of different cities in all sorts of different languages, huge maps like some sort of treasure hunter. There were all kinds of beautiful photographs of space, different constellations and nebula and every discovered planet, pictures of black holes and supernovas and whole galaxies. There was a huge world globe that was as tall as me and looked like it weighed nearly a hundred pounds. He had books piled upon more books on computer concepts with long, complicated titles that I couldn’t even hope to understand let alone read; books on microphysics, botany, agriculture and sustainability, human anatomy, and marine biology. He loved whales. He painted an ocean full of whales on the expensive white ceiling of his parent’s mansion, so that he could lie in bed and look up and see peace and tranquility. He was a Michelangelo and a Poe and a Galileo all wrapped up in one.

Now that I could really look at everything, I felt my admiration for him growing. I didn’t think I could respect him any more than I already did. He was everything to me. He was my whole world. And yet I knew next to nothing about him. Why didn’t I ever notice until now? He was always around me. He was always keeping me busy, but he never really talked about himself. Not ever. How did I not notice? Was I really so self-centered?

His desk was a mess of papers and notebooks. It was the kind of desk you’d expect some bigwig CEO to have, gigantic, imposing, all wood and exquisitely crafted. There were three monitors. Who the hell needs three monitors? I sat down at the chair and felt important for absolutely no reason, like I was about to hand down some sort of life-altering judgment.

While I waited for the computer to wake up, Edmund crawled up on the bed and continued to watch stupid videos on his phone. He wasn’t trying to hover over me, but he sure as shit wasn’t offering up any explanation for all the different things that I was seeing. He started watching a “let’s play” on his phone, a gamer and a tech geek with the mind of an interstellar traveler, touched by words and eons of knowledge beyond normal human comprehension, but with the body of an idiot jock. It was hard to say whether Edmund was blessed or cursed. Everybody liked him, he was polite enough, girls liked him because he was kind but also insanely hot, and guys seemed to admire him like a universal older brother, but he never really found somewhere to fit in, so he just hung around me; the problem is that I’ve never really fit in either.

“Want to go play something in the den after you give up?”

“Don’t get too cocky, mister man. Linnie Peterson doesn’t give up.”

“My bet is that you’ll fall asleep trying.”

“I accept your challenge, and if I don’t fall asleep, you have to give me the password.”

“Fine, until dawn then.”

“Until dawn.”

We shook hands.

I might fall asleep. I was notorious for it during class. But I can’t now. I can’t let him win. I need that password. There’s no way I’m going to be able to figure it out on my own.

On the book stand in front of me, there was a big, old book, open to something in the format of a poem that I couldn’t read because it was in German. He also had a cute little cactus in a teacup next to his desk lamp. To the left of the keyboard was another book called “The Love Letters of John Keats”. It looked well-read.

“Do you like romance?” I asked when the computer screen flashed to life.

“Would that really be so shocking?” he countered, never looking up. “I’m not a robot, you know.”

“It’s not like you’ve ever mentioned being in love with anybody.”

“I don’t have to be in love to enjoy the idea of love.”

“Okay, so who’s John Keats?”

“Google it.”

“I’d love to. Give me your password.”

“Nice try.”

“Is he your favorite writer?”

“He’s a beautiful man with a beautiful mind.”

I typed in ilovejohnkeats, but that didn’t work. I then tried myheartforjohn and ibeattokeats. Best not tell him I tried any of those, especially that last one.

“Can I have a hint?”

“The agreement made no mention of hints.”

“You take things too literally sometimes.”

“Perhaps.”

“Just give me a hint!”

“Okay, okay. It’s not a word.”

“It’s not a word?”

“Correct.”

“How am I supposed to guess a made-up word?”

“I said it’s not a word.”

“It’s a number?”

“Yes.”

“But that’s even harder to guess!”

“Too bad for you.”

I slumped over the desk, eyes blankly staring at the small empty bar in the middle of a steely grey screen. I started putting in whatever came to mind. Eventually I started putting in combinations at random. His birthday. My birthday. I opened the drawer and found his wallet and tried his driver’s license number. His social security number. His school I.D. number. I tired the date of our upcoming graduation. I tried any string of numbers I saw in the John Keats book. Eventually I started putting in combinations at random.

Hours ticked away.

Edmund got up and put on a record, a soothing classical. He’s trying to put me to sleep. I drank more coffee and kept trying. I rummaged through his papers looking for numbers, his drawers were filled with notebooks, but there were so many and by a brief flip I saw what had to be thousands of numbers accompanied by his tiny handwriting, cryptically telling one or two-word mysteries such as 369: bright moon, 1.6180339887: nautilus. It would take me years to find out what it all said. I sat back in the chair and closed my eyes.

I sat back in the chair and closed my eyes. Think. I can’t think of anything. What number would be important to him? He’s too complicated. Who the hell uses a number for their password? I bet he thinks I’m an idiot. I am an idiot. But he’s an idiot too. Only idiots try to kill themselves. I don’t even know why he ran off so suddenly.

My eyes popped open.

Shit, I fell asleep!

It was a grey evening. I sat up in Edmund’s bed, but I don’t remember putting myself there. I saw him on the other side of the room, sitting cross-legged in front of the balcony windows, watching the now torrential downpour.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Too late to pretend like we didn’t skip our first two classes.”

“Whoops.”

“Might as well stay here.”

I flopped back down. I wasn’t about to argue the point of staying in bed instead of going to school.

“Did you sleep?”

“Of course I did.”

“Where did you sleep?”

“Right next to you.”

“That’s cute. I kinda miss being able to sleep in the same bed as kids.”

“It’s not like there’s anyone around to enforce that rule anymore.”

“Do you ever miss your parents?”

“Not at all.”

“When were they born?”

“I didn’t use them for my password.”

I let out a heavy sigh. I’ll never figure this out.

And then, on a whim, I put in the date he and I first met.

And it worked.

On every screen was a picture of me, my hair was a windblown mess, my cheeks were pink, it was probably cold, but I was smiling like an idiot in one of his giant cable knit sweaters that I loved to steal and never give back. We were on the beach, and the sky was painted with its setting colors. I couldn’t remember when exactly he took it, but I must’ve known he was doing it because I’m looking right at the camera. I never knew he admired me this much, just like I never knew he was a hopeless romantic—not to mention he’s far more sentimental than I ever would have pegged him for, seeing as he used a date from ten years ago.

Maybe it’s a guy thing, like he didn’t want to appear “soft”. But now I knew that day meant as much to him as it did me.

It had been so clear, so perfect, as if the universe had momentarily remembered its powers of synchronicities. The day was sticky on our skin, so we wandered through the forest to the river behind my house, eating wild blackberries and debating whether we should even go to school tomorrow. In an overgrown meadow choked with white daisies, we paused to watch a doe graze peacefully before sensing our presence and darting away. Edmund told me a story that his father had told him about his great-grandfather—that he’d allegedly been able to talk to and gain the trust of the deer and was even allowed to run with them.

He thought it was all bogus, but I found it romantic.

We followed the river until we found the forgotten wooden bridge that passed over a waterfall, and from there we made our way down to the flume. We took off our shoes and splashed around in the shallower pools above the fall, finding stones to make houses for fairies when we saw that the old ones had been knocked down or were completely missing. We went down to the deeper water and took off our clothes to swim with the eels and watch the clouds and talk about how nice it would be if tomorrow we woke up with wings and could fly away. By noon we were both hungry, so we got out and sat in the sun until we were dry and then went into town. We walked towards the quieter side where the streetlights never worked and were always blinking red, where almost all the businesses were either lawyer’s offices or antique shops. We got iced coffee and bagels and walked a little ways farther to sit on the stone wall overlooking the ocean. When the sun got too hot, we went back to my house and sat in front of the AC and watched black-and-white movies on the oldies channel until we both fell asleep on the couch, only waking up when Dad came home later that night with enough take-out for all three of us—back when he still came home. I remember Edmund spent the night and was dead asleep by ten, taking up my entire bed like a starfish, but it was fine. I could never sleep anyway. Instead, I would climb out the window and walk for hours, and when it was twilight, I went back home and sat beneath the moon and waited for the sun to rise.

The door abruptly opened. I looked over and saw their housekeeper standing there staring in at me.

“Linnie, what on earth are you doing here?” she asked. “Where’s Edmund?”

Confused, I looked around at the now empty room. “He was here just a minute ago. I think he ran out on me while I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Why aren’t you two in school? His parents got a call, they said that he hasn’t shown up for his classes, so I was told to come and check and see if he was still at home. It’s odd, considering his good attendance. Is he not feeling well?”

“He might not be feeling well. Are you sure you didn’t see him leave just now?”

“No, dear, I didn’t, but that rascal is always ducking out on me, probably because he knows I usually have to report on him to his parents. It seems he’s been rebelling as of late. Truth be told, I’ve hardly seen him at all in the past year. Anyway, you really shouldn’t skip school simply because he’s sick. He’s a man now. He can take care of himself.”

“I know, but he isolates himself so much. I just want to make sure he knows someone cares.”

The old woman shook her head and grabbed the door handle. “Well, I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for him. I’m sure your father will be getting a call as well. You should really head home.”

“My dad doesn’t come home anymore.”

She looked uncomfortable. She clearly didn’t know what to say, so she glanced at her watch. “It’s getting pretty late. Go see if you can find him,” were her parting words before shutting the door.

My head felt like it was splitting. Something wasn’t right. Where did he go? He was right here.

I put my jacket back on and headed out with no particular direction in mind.

Although it wasn’t raining anymore, the sky above the city was clogged with thick, impassible walls of dark gray clouds, thunder rumbling low and long. A cool spring air mingled with the fog that slipped into the streets like an uninvited guest, but in the distance, I could hear something strange, something uncomfortable grinding at my eardrums, making them pulsate as I tried not to dig my fingers inside and carve them out. I ended up at the beach.

The long stretch of unbroken sand buffered the ocean from the city. Aged wooden fences crawl along the backs of the dunes, entwined in a flirtatious relationship with the heavy tuffs of beach grass and sea oats. Unlike the gentle nature of the southern peak, the northern end of the cape was dominated by nearly inaccessible rocky cliffs that soared into the foggy skyline.

The closer to the northern peak I got, the more the sand was dominated by grass, fields of flowers, and rude beds of grey rock that came jutting out of the landscape like unsightly wounds. The farther up I went, the stronger the grinding in my ears became. Police sirens rang out as an elderly couple with a golden retriever was coming back towards me from where they had ventured in the other direction. They seemed to be eyeing me, but it hardly mattered why. I needed to find Edmund. I needed to catch up with him.

Because of the coolness in the air, dower cloudiness, and general lateness of the hour, there was only the occasional runner, or the elderly couple with their dog, all of whom were in the far distance, close to the ocean’s lapping tide.

The sound of the train screeching to a halt ripped across the air.

Maybe Edmund was feeling restless. He always needed to walk, and there was that one place he might go. Our childhood.

It was a beautiful place, a little single-room house on the beach that someone had either forgotten about or abandoned. We felt very akin to such a sad, lonely place.

The walls were one giant canvas that Edmund would get up on chairs to draw on, painting it with images of dreamy clouds the color of cotton candy, filling up any other empty space with ghostly valleys of sunflowers where strange creatures that looked like wolves carried starlight on their backs and birds whose bodies were the colors of the rainbow came out of the cotton candy clouds to fill the sky with beauty and light—he told me that these were the things he dreamt about.

There were colorful bags filled with pretty rocks and sea glass that we used to collect by the ocean. Seashells and driftwood were everywhere, hanging like chandeliers and strewn across the walls like Christmas lights that Edmund made for her using their estate handyman’s power drill (even though he wasn’t actually allowed to use it at the time). Starfish he dove to find and necklaces of shells, fake pearls, beads, and whole sand dollars strung or woven with jute sat like magical items glittering in the air. And tucked haphazardly inside sketchbooks piled up on the floor were poems Edmund had written about nature and our lives and his dreams and stories about the two of us going on amazing adventures around the world together and drawings he used to make just for me—beautiful drawings in purely pastel colors of an adorable unicorn girl adorned with flowers and accompanied by bunnies or small cubs or deer and surrounded by floating candies, stars, and multi-colored gems.

This place had been our stolen alcove. This is the place where Edmund found it safe to keep his secret passions. It was where we went when we wanted to forget about the rest of the world.

When his dad found out Edmund liked to draw such cutesy things, he made him stop. His father was just a little too insistent about gender roles, and to him drawing cute things was “unbecoming” and Edmund was “too smart to waste his energy on something like that”; he never told his father the specifics of the drawings—that in actuality, the dresses the unicorn girl wore happened to be designs that Edmund was creating for actual dresses that he wanted to make for me, but we knew he could never tell his father that. He would never allow it because fashion design wasn’t “useful”.

Sitting in a place filled with such bittersweet memories, I felt like I was drowning. I wanted so badly to fold up the entire room like a piece of paper and carry it around with me in my pocket, so that I could take it out and look at it and remind myself of a time when everything wasn’t so damn complicated.

As I drew closer to the northern peak, I could see a modest field was situated between the mountainous, ascending cliffs of the detestable, glaring coastal peak, hung within the crescent palm of the abutting stand of pine trees. And there, perched atop the mighty dunes of beach grass, was our house, lone and brooding like the slumbering watchfulness of a terrible god, the timeless presence of its solemn apprehension over the unseen, fathomless chaos all-encompassing and absolute.

Moldy, necrotic pillars scarcely held up the aged building, seemingly so common to the land, in all probability due to innumerable years spent there, that it seemed chiseled into the very fabric of the cape. Looming clouds of heather rise high to permeate the salty air, softening its bold, restless scents with gently embracing mists of lavender.

This place, I never found out where it came from or why it was there—something that was once held so sacred and peaceful in my heart, was now rotting and dead.

And it was inside this mysterious little house that I found a note addressed to me, written three days before:

“Linnie, I can’t live this way anymore. I love you so much that it hurts. I try so hard to fill my mind with other things because all I want to think about is you. My life is a mess. I want to marry you, I want to have a family with you, but I don’t want to touch you. I never intended to touch you. You were my holy ground. You were my sanctuary. What am I supposed to do? I fucking ruined you. I’m a horrible beast that ruined a beautiful soul. I never wanted to know how you taste because I knew it would never be enough. Sometimes I wish you were ugly so that no man would ever want to look at you. Why did you have to be born so devastatingly beautiful? If I took a knife and carved up your pretty face, if I disfigured you to the point of unrecognizability, would you hate me, or would you somehow understand that I was doing it out of love for you? But I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t hurt you. I’m just so frustrated. I want to poison every man who looks at you and watch them writhe in agony. I hate my very existence. How am I supposed to keep on living knowing that I can’t ever have you and that you’ll one day love another? I can’t bear it. I’d rather die than know. I’d rather die knowing you weren’t with anybody else and that I was your most important person. I would rather die.”

I looked numbly out over the water, and finally saw the evil gnawing at my ears; I usually only saw them in my dreams—black worms coming up from their infinite caverns in the sea to eat away at the coastline, shaving away at preconceptions, my reality, everything that I once thought was solid ground but was now nothing more than a vague interpretation masked by a veil of dense fog. But here they were, trying to sink it all into oblivion, taunting me, chewing slowly, because I had gotten everything all wrong.

But I think I understand now.

I felt something break within me, but I couldn’t tell if it was in my heart or in my head.

The growing sound of the police sirens rose to combat the pulsing beat in my ears, collecting deep within the city, and I think I knew why. The evening train must have seen the carcass of the boy laid across the tracks, the one I found and then left behind—though not before taking something. I had to quickly pry open his teeth before his body became too stiff and shove my hand inside, pushing his clammy, viscous tongue to the side so that my fingers were nearly in his throat, but that was where I found the ring.

I gave it to him on the day we met. Dad brought me to the mall, and that was where I met Edmund and his mom, and we found out we were cousins. Edmund’s always been shy, the day we met he wouldn’t even look at me, so I asked Dad to give me a quarter for one of those turn machines so I could get him a present. I was hoping to get one of the more boyish toys, but I got a ring instead. I thought he wouldn’t want it, but he did. He kept it on a chain around his neck for the longest time. I honestly didn’t even know he still had it, and I found it crammed inside his mouth of all places.

It reminds me of something he told me just recently—how back in the day, when a man was brought to the guillotine, before he was about to be beheaded, he would ask the executioner if he could have his cross put into his mouth so that his head could be closer to God. But Edmund didn’t believe in God, and he didn’t have a cross. All he had was me and that stupid little piece of shit ring.

A younger woman walking her dog approached me cautiously. She was looking at my jacket like the others had been. I finally looked down and saw the reason for their concern, Edmund’s blood very visibly dried, covering my torso from where I briefly held his headless torso. When she asked me if I needed help, I glanced at the tide rolling in.

“Edmund is dead. I have to catch up with him.”

The woman’s slight look of concern turned to panic as she hastily grabbed her phone and dialed 911, but releasing the dog’s leash sent the happy creature bounding off in the direction of the field and far away from me. She begged me to stay put while talking to the operator on the other end and chasing after her dog.

I glanced back towards the ocean.

I have to catch up with him.