Do you have any regrets?
It could be as small as failing a test because you were too busy hanging out with your friends.
Or it could be something as life altering as not talking to your parents before they… before you lost the chance.
Ultimately, what creates regret are a series of choices and circumstances, and for Julien—
The biggest mistake he ever made in his life was a result of his own willful ignorance.
As blinding lights and ear-splitting sirens cut across the dark backdrop of the night, the world came into sharp focus like the climax of a heart-wrenching film. If he was the camera, then everything else was a part of the sinister orchestra caught within his broken lens.
But there can be no film without its audience.
Some stood on tiptoes to get a closer look, others pulled out their phones to record, others still pretended as though they didn't see anything at all as they took cautious peeks at the commotion around them—walking with hurried steps.
Then there were the police. Barking out orders, redirecting traffic, shoving people away as their dogs stood guard around the macabre center.
No matter what they were doing, they were all his witnesses.
Then where was he?
Julien held his head as his vision re-entered focus. So much was going on around him, but he wasn't paying attention to any of it.
Something was wrong with this picture.
His head throbbed.
Don't look.
He couldn't avoid what was in front of him.
He didn't deserve to.
At the heart of it all, Julien's pale-blue eyes remained fixed in place, his heart's deafening pounding sending tremors through his frozen body.
Throb
The tape was being rewound.
Wrrr
Click—
Ah.
He knew where he was.
Julien remained on the ground, his eyes fixed to the ending scene of this horrific film as hateful words rained down on him like an avalanche from above.
He couldn't speak.
He could barely breathe.
It hurts.
Julien's fingers twitched as he tried to grab his rotting throat, to force out even one word of rebuttal against the vitriolic curses that cut deeper than the fresh wounds gouged into the palms of his hands—wounds from the very same man who stood before him.
He couldn't move.
Why?
All he could do was watch.
Why are you the one crying?
But that didn't make it hurt any less, even if the blood running endlessly through his fingers was—
"I hate you."
A whisper, so much weaker than the rest, reached his ears.
"I hate you."
Julien looked up.
"I…hate you."
The man's voice trembled and tears flowed down his cheeks. Hurriedly wiping away his weakness, 'His' face scrunched up in strained fury as he yelled.
"I HATE YOU! IHATEYOUIHATEYOU!!!!"
And he broke down, faster than Julien had ever seen.
Startled, Julien tried to take a step back.
But he couldn't.
And the fact that he was standing, the fact that a tired smile couldn't make its way to his face even if he willed it, was enough.
So this is a dream.
His heart ached. He'd had the same dream so many times that he was starting to lose count and yet—
Even as the same reels were cut, looped, joined in odd ways, and forced upon him—he just couldn't do it. He couldn't look the apparition in the eye. He couldn't move any of the pieces. He couldn't…. and even if he could, what would it change?
Old feelings poured into him in a violent wave, the sharp pain nearly enough to topple him over.
Vomit.
He needed to vomit.
But what came out was something else. From his chest bloomed a perfect purple rose, its thorns digging into his heart threatening to erase his sense of self.
Please.
He begged.
He begged in the only way he knew how as the film approached its end. 'He' took a step forward.
It's going too fast.
Cold anxiety encroached on his patchily healed heart as an even colder reality cemented itself in front of him.
Thump thump.
He knew.
Thump thump.
'He' wasn't there anymore.
No. No. No, no, no, no no.
Thump thump.
'He's' still here.
As Julien took in the stale eyes looking at him from the pavement below, his mind went blank.
I'm sorry.
He couldn't even say that.
Clinging to the fabric of his clothes with whitened knuckles, Julien struggled, truly struggled against his fetters—hoping to gain leverage against the torrential storm of past emotions overwhelming him, hoping against hope that this time—
He could say something.
He just wanted to say one thing.
Anything.
But he couldn't.
I'm sorry.
It was already too late.
No.
If he wasn't so defensive.
If he'd checked on 'Him' sooner.
If he could just go back and fix everything—
Excuses.
"…"
Why wouldn't someone hate him when he hated himself so much?
As the storm reached a deafening crescendo, the scene slipped away with a harrowing screech, like nails clinging desperately to a chalkboard.
He helplessly wrestled with the air as his body turned weightless, trying to hold onto anything he could. But the world itself was slipping through his fingers, like illusions in the mist.
And the blood on his hands.
Please don't go…
Tears clouded his vision as the world faded away. He looked to the lifeless corpse in front of him with desperation on his face, hoping that maybe, just maybe—
"I wish I never met you."
A muttered curse, and the spider's thread keeping him afloat snapped—
And just like that, he fell.
He fell for a long time.
Fell fast and far into an endless abyss.
Into an endless void of despair.
I didn't—
The world bent around him, as if straining against his weight, before snapping and sending him plummeting away from the last bits of light.
In an instant, he was all alone.
—
He ran and ran, searching desperately, pleading hopelessly with the vast expanse of nothingness, struggling with ragged breaths.
But there was no direction he could go in that could take him back.
There never was.
A manic, terrifyingly familiar grin found its way to his face as his teardrops became a puddle, and then a flood, before becoming a rapid that swept him away with the current.
He floated aimlessly for a long while, swaying in the hammock of tears before they gave way to an empty field, depositing him in its desolate center.
Exhausted and unable to move, he stared into the black sky.
It's not over yet.
The young man continued to stare into the empty sky, waiting for something to happen.
And then it did.
In the span of a blink, he was no longer laying down. Standing with legs that couldn't walk, he stared at the man in front of him with dull eyes—the man that hurt him and who he hurt even more.
His best friend.
He stared at 'Him,' and was stared at in turn. Glancing at the kitchen knife clutched within 'His' pale fingers, Julien's heart was unusually calm—even relieved.
He looked back up at 'His' deceitfully gentle face.
"Have you come to kill me?"
He received no answer.
Before he knew it, the skin on his friend's hands began to melt away like a burning candle, his pink hair fell away like a lie, and his organs rotted from the inside out, leaving a grotesque husk of a human being in its wake.
The world shifted around him as well, enveloping the morbid silhouette into a blanket of inky black, shifting the edge of his dreams towards the center, and splitting the center of his reality towards the edge.
The world wiggled and squirmed like a dying slug, squelching and creaking with every movement the vindictive ghost made as it struggled against the shifting world.
"—!"
Julien was engulfed, unable to cover his ears.
Stop it!
He was so sick of this.
Why couldn't he just…
Just…
He sucked in a sharp breath.
Why does it always go so wrong?
Even this. Even everything he saw over and over and over again was wrong.
He was wrong.
He knew it.
Somewhere beneath the fractured images was something he still couldn't remember. And though he knew it, though he knew what he was seeing wasn't right, though he knew he could never move forward without that final sliver of truth…
He was scared.
And he didn't think that was ever going to change.
A part of him even thought…
This is what I deserve.
And as if to agree with his worn down convictions, the apparition's bitter smile filled his view.
"I hope you suffer as much as I have."
It was a kind whisper, one that echoed against every wall it could until the last of Julien's heart ground to ash. Images flashed through his mind at those few simple words.
Just like that, the finale was clear.
That's right.
I did this.
He curled into a ball, clutching his head and rocking his body as tears stained his cheeks.
It's all my fault.
The world quaked and split apart once more, sending him back to the start. The police, the crowd, all sorts of sensations overwhelmed his taxed mind, pulling him out of his reverie.
He knew what was coming next.
Raising his head as slowly as his puppeted body could, he took in the sight in front of him with dead eyes.
His own corpse returned the same gaze.
Ah.
He was relieved.
As though this was the ending he was waiting for.
As the taste of copper occupied his tongue, he watched listlessly as blood poured out of his own lifeless body, staining the concrete a brilliant shade of red before creeping up his skin and ridding his body of the cold.
More images flashed across his mind, but there was no reason to react anymore.
The dead couldn't feel after all.
—
*BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEE—*
Click–-
Jolting awake, Julien fumbled for the alarm—turning it off before letting his hand fall limply into his lap.
"Haa, haa."
Running a rough hand over his face, he pushed the sweat-clung locks of auburn away from his forehead and forcefully stuttered his breathing. This was fine.
He was still ok.
He sat there for a while staring at the lilac canopy of the sky peeking through his curtains with blank eyes, pretending not to notice the beating of his heart or the flowing of his tears.