Work Text:
It was so light-hearted in his opinion. Betelgeuse had never truly faced death, though he would argue that he practically bathes in its stench every single night. You saw him fall that night.
But he wouldn’t truly know the impact death has in the moment. Fleeting panic, confusion, someone's face emerging as a deformed crying hole in the following silence, thunderous sobs rocking their body. As the corpse falls silent, limp. Betelgeuse can not imagine loosing a loved one. Not permanently. Jumping from and to realms, with both sides of the earth available to observe, to look at the fate of humans after the inevitable end. Yet, his best friend - Lydia, her parents, Betelgeuse's new buddies at a sketchy diner across the street and from the spooky carnival you dragged him to volunteer at - they slowly succumb to age... To poor habits, poverty, everlasting sun that slowly heats up the planet, to any tiny mishap with a chance of chasing away their souls deep into the Netherworld, hidden forever from sunlight.
A simple joke done to humour Lidia so many times made your own blood run cold. You stood with a bag of groceries at the front door, when a light breeze from an open window was caught in your coat. Stray wind was coming from the kitchen. You quickly shuffled out of your footwear, dusting it off before carelessly dropping it on the shelf next to a pair of your worker boots, giant platformed designer's with cute spider-webs and a lonely pair of dresser shoes with glimmering green stitching.
You said something short, witty, yelling at nobody in particular to shut the damn window already. You were dragging your groceries towards the dining table when it hit all at once. Your window was wide open, your friend standing with a proud, mischievous smile on his face with one leg swinging towards the dark gaping outside. A familiar sight, despite the opposite perspective.
–––06.04.20??
“I’m dragging your tortured body across the pavement, from one side of the street to another, and a much as I know that very soon you will spring back to clarity, that you will laugh at me for even assuming it, for even an ounce of fear, which is odd, you love it when other people look at you with horror, I swear I wouldn’t tell you but there was plenty of fear. I was mortified when you fell… The sound, the ringing wet smack on the hard ground reminds me of the swirling snowflakes caught on fast cold air behind my curtains, the open window, one foot on the border, besides the potted plants. Smear of the sound I see ten stories down of my apartment complex.”
“It’s so wet under my shoes, black blood smears everywhere, it’s under my fingernails, on my clothes, somehow it’s in my hair too, and in my teeth and it tastes like the dentists office. It tastes like pity medicine you can’t afford, like rot and longing and I am so lonely all of a sudden, without you. And in this moment I dare to imagine you never waking up. What if it’s easier that neither of us ever see the view from my window together ever again, what if it’s easier for me to pack my few belongings, rip the posters off the walls, put the plants at my neighbor's door and catch the last bus and disappear again.”
“Will she call me? Will she call for you three times? It was funny the last time, when she shoved you off, elbow firmly striking you. And you both laughed. After the residual screaming, first shock, first realisation of safety. Of your invincibility.”