Day Twenty Seven - Jack. 4:48

"Jack, why are you still awake?" The dining room light flickered on as Cassadee's tired figure appeared in the doorway, her face complete with a mildly concerned look as she pulled her gaze over my body curled up in a chair and shaking just a little more than wouldn't be noticeable.

"I can't sleep." I let out in response, drawing in a huge breath of air, wondering if my lungs would collapse from an over intake of oxygen - I could always try. I wondered what it would have been like if it was I, and not Alex who'd died. After all, that was how it was originally meant to be, and who knows, perhaps it was meant to be that way for a reason.

"You have to at least try." She let out a sigh; it was clear she didn't want to be dealing with me like this but of course Cassadee was far too nice of a person to just leave me. "There's no way you're going to fall asleep there." She chose to point out the absolute obvious.

"I don't want to sleep, Cassadee." I met her gaze, taking in the confused expression I received in return. "I can't." I emphasised, wondering if she had it within her to just leave me the fuck alone, but since this was Cassadee, I could just about entirely cross out that possibility.

"Why not?" She furrowed her brow, sitting down in the chair opposite me and holding my gaze in a way that made me want to throw up everywhere.

This was fucking killing me. But just not well enough.

"Is it the house? Are you not used to it or..? I know I'm not exactly asking you to sleep in the most comfortable place either but Jack you have to try. You can't stay awake forever - you'll go mad." She chose the wrong statement to accompany with an air of light-heartedness, because really this was the one that hit the hardest of them all.

"I think I'm already mad." I threw my gaze upwards, fascinating myself with the emptiness of her ceiling and generally drawing myself away from her reaction entirely. "It's not that bad. I'm coping... I think." I think. Yeah, that was just borderline downright lying but the question of my moralities was the least of my problems right now.

"Jack, the only thing that's mad is you saying that." Her response came forcefully this time, completely and utterly determined in the fact that she'd walk away from this argument victoriously.

"That fits though, doesn't it?" I met her gaze, no longer concerned with the reaction I was bound to receive, and after all, this was all just inevitable when it came down to it. "The ramblings of a madman leave his lips."

"Not always." She insisted, perhaps just to be increasingly difficult, who knows.

"Mmm..." I mumbled in a disbelieving response, not at all convince by the standard of argument she was putting up.

"You're not Alex, you do know that right, Jack?" She leaned forward a little, suddenly growing far too concerned for my sanity's liking at all. She shouldn't care - perhaps then it'd be easier.

"Sometimes I think I'd like to be." I admitted, wondering how much easier it would be to be just so clever and free from emotion. Alex had carefully engineered himself into the brain of what to me seemed to almost be a superhuman.

"Why?" She exclaimed, seemingly unknown to my motives as I had expected.

"Because I don't want to feel a thing, not anymore." I let out a sigh, wishing I could just tear and rip the emption away, but that just wasn't how it worked and I hated that.

"Jack, there's nothing you could have done, his death, it's not your fault-" She began to proclaim, but I couldn't let her continue, because with every word that left her lips came the heightened risk that I may begin to believe her.

"There's everything I could have done, though." I hit her with the truth, wondering just how she'd react to that. "I saw this coming. I just ignored it." And I knew that all too fucking well.

"I don't blame you. No one wants to see thoughts of suicide in someone they love, and would even chose blatant ignorance over the acceptance of that." Now, she was agreeing with me, yet trying to make me feel better about the crime I’d committed, which perhaps made even less sense when I thought about it.

"He tried to before though, and even after that I didn't do all that much - I didn't do enough, Cassadee. I never did enough and now that's been proven. I'm not good enough for anyone at all." I pushed my head into my hands, trying not to cry and hoping she wouldn't notice, but she was Cassadee and of course she did.

"You've done so much, Jack." She reached out and pulled my hands away, leaving my red and shaking face exposed to her. "You've done so much more than you should have. I mean, he's Alex; you really shouldn't have gotten involved with him. You should have left while you had the chance, but that's-"

"I didn't want to leave." I admitted, practically screaming the truth at her in the off chance she might just listen. "He left, not me, in the end. Isn't that ironic, huh? The kidnapper escapes the victim. Fuck."

"It's not your fault." She persisted in her lost cause, and I really wished for her sake that it wasn't as such, but for my sake, the one favoured by me, it had to be that way, so I left myself content within my selfishness.

"Well, it really does feel like it." I snapped back in return, wishing her argument would just end and she'd admit the defeat she'd get by the end.

"Jack, it's five in the morning. You'll feel better after you've slept." She promised me yet another promise I couldn't quite believe, especially not after what had she'd said regarding Alex. Everything that left her lips from now on was just something I couldn't count on.

"I can't, remember." I glanced around the clock, and god she was right - it was nearly morning, and Alex still wasn't here, and in fact never would be. I can't live with this. I can't fucking live with myself at all. Not anymore.

"I have sleeping pills if that'll help..." Pills of any sort were the last thing that'd help right now, because pills only screamed one word, one name - Alex.

"The last thing I need are fucking pills right now." I snapped in response, glaring at her, and realising that perhaps my sudden outburst of anger wasn't perhaps the best of ideas I quickly stumbled to an apology. "Fuck... sorry. I-I..."

"I understand." She nodded, smiling at me the best she could in the situation, which really wasn't all that impressive, but could I really blame her? "It's okay, Jack, it is."

"Thank you." I accepted that at the very least, just to keep her happy I told myself.

"Just at least lie in bed, you can't sleep if you're not even trying." And she persisted in her quest for me to forget all about my sins for a few hours. I just couldn't do that - Alex wouldn't be happy.

"Like I couldn't save Alex, because I wasn't even trying." I mimicked, hitting her with the truth and wishing she'd just accept the evidence before her very eyes, but Cassadee was a different type of stubborn entirely.

"Jack, I know you were, you really were. Because if you didn't try, why would you care so much right now?" Fuck, that one was good, but I had an answer that was better.

"Guilt." I shrugged it off like it was nothing and I’d really just come up with this off the top of my head.

"But if you didn't care enough to try, why would you feel guilty in the first place?" And there she went again, our argument taken place by arrogant questions of morality.

"Death changes people. Death fucks us up because we don't understand it at all, and we've evolved so that the possibility of acceptance of the unknown is just out ruled.." I let out a sigh. "It drives you insane. Seven would just have been too many for Alex, I think."

"I think one was too many for him, Jack." She admitted, biting down on her lip awkwardly.

"So was that when he lost it?" My eyes widened, suddenly far too intrigued in the well-disguised lies that she concocted.

"I don't know for sure of course, but I would guess so." She practically went and confirmed it.

"What do you think he would have been like before he killed them?" I asked, sighing as I pulled down in the acceptance of the fact that there was no real Alex at all, just Alex the serial killer, who loved to manipulate people to the extreme. Fuck, perhaps this was all a trick and that was just what he was doing right now. God, how I would I even cope with that shit?

"I think then that the two of you would have had a really good chance together." She smiled at me as if what she'd just told me was something I could smile at too.

"I think so too." I let out sigh, drowning in just what could have been. And instantly hating myself for even letting my head think about that, because Alex was fucking dead and right now I just didn't care, did I?

"There's just so much I'll never know. I'll never know how it started or what happened, or fuck..." I buried my head in my hands once again; the voices still screaming at me from the back of my head and pushing me down the descent into insanity.

"I would guess the police would have records." She suggested, almost as if she was absolutely stupid, but of course, she wasn't, she was Cassadee.

"He's too clever for the police - they don't know about him at all." I explained, a little too smug for morality's liking. I didn't like morality.

"They'll have found the bodies." She continued, still stubborn in her wrong beliefs.

"It's Alex, I doubt it." I sighed, wondering when and if ever this would end.

"We can try." She continued, yet I still wasn't the slightest bit keen about anything regarding the police.

"It doesn't matter, I don't want to see the police at all. They'll just fuck things up again. I'll probably be stuck in a mental home or something... I don't know." I let out a groan; beginning to visualise my fate already and fuck it didn't look good.

"The thing is, Jack, that to them you're still a missing person - kidnapped, and you're in my house." Cassadee let out a sigh. "That doesn’t look good, does it?"

"I'm here willingly." I confirmed, as if she hadn't gathered that by now and was somehow under the illusion that she kidnapped me.

"The police won't necessarily see it that way." She reminded me of what was unfortunately the truth. "And I'm nowhere near as good as hiding fucking people as Alex."

"So is that your nice way of telling me to fuck off?" I went for the most obvious, if not a little blunt answer.

"No, Jack, really it isn't." She exclaimed, getting herself into a state that was really rather frantic. "You need someone right now and I can see that. I'm not letting you be alone, okay?"

"What do we do then?"

"You can call the police and tell them that you're okay and missing of your own accord." She suggested. It was a suggestion, but a stupid one, and therefore one I was going to ignore. "After all, they're not aware that Alex was involved." Fuck.

"Please don't say that." I choked out, heaving the tears and emotion back inside.

"What?"

"Was." Alex is, not Alex was. Alex. Fuck, Alex.

"Jack, he's... he's gone and I know it's hard but you've got to accept that." She explained almost as if she was explaining death to a young child, and right now I was just waiting for the 'he's gone to sleep' bit - surely that'd be amusing.

"I don't want to." I protested in a childish manner, because if she was going to talk to me like a child then that was exactly how I was going to act.

"I know. I wouldn't want to either, but we've got to do things in life that we don't want to." Again here came the parental response. Was I really all that hopeless?

I sighed, biting down on my lip hard enough for it to begin to bleed a little, and fuck that felt so good. "I hate this. I wish things were different."

"Me too, Jack. Me too."

-

13:34

"My head hurts." I complained aloud, clutching my forehead as I stumbled into the kitchen, where Cassadee stood preparing what I assumed by the time of afternoon to be lunch.

"At least you got some sleep." She sighed.

"Very little." I corrected her as I fell back into a dining chair.

"It's better than nothing, Jack. Think about the positives here."

"There are no fucking positives though." I rolled my eyes at her. "My fucking boyfriend's killed himself and you expect me to be positive here." I groaned.

"Jack-" She began.

"Whatever..." I let out a sigh, before turning back to her. "Can I make a call?"

"Yeah of course, dude I'm not your mum or something..." She exclaimed. "Oh, you don't have your own phone do you, god... fuck." She handed me the landline anyway. "Who are you calling, can I ask? I know I said I wasn't your mum, but yeah."

"This uhh... Matt dude, he's a kind of a 'friend' of Alex's, or well as close to a friend as someone like Alex is going to get." I began tapping his number into the handset, praying that if he picked up at all he wouldn't be too pissed entirely.

"I think that was you, Jack." She admitted before turning back to the meal she was cooking.

"Please just stop fucking saying was." I begged her.

"Jack, I know none of us like it, but he is dead." She let out a sigh, attempting to gauge my reaction as she began to wonder if she'd gone too far."

"I fucking wish it was me instead of him-"

"Jack!" she exclaimed. "No, you don't. Seriously don't you ever fucking say that, promise me you'll never say that again. Promise me, Jack."

And luckily for me it was at that moment that Flyzik picked up at the phone.

"It's Jack." I said into the phone, glancing at Cassadee briefly before I made my way into the living room to take the call somewhat more privately.

"Jack?" Oh fuck, he didn't even remember me, great. Well this guy was a dealer, so he probably knew a lot of Jacks, or at least that made me feel better so I went with that option.

"Alex's boyfriend." I confirmed.

"Oh, you. Hey kid, what do you want? I can do you some crack quite cheap right now you know-"

"Matt, I don't want drugs I just want to talk to you." I insisted.

"Well aren't you just the spoil sport." Why did Alex have to befriend people like him, fuck.

"It's important." I continued.

"Yeah, okay, kid. I'm sure you wouldn't call me if it wasn't." That really was true. Matt Flyzik was not my idea of ideal conversation.

"It's about Alex."

"Gone on, I'm listening." Fuck, I couldn't even pause for a minute without him butting in.

"There's no easy way to put this... he's dead."

"What?" He practically screamed down the phone line. "Are you fucking with me? You better not be fucking with me... fuck. You're not are you?"

"I'm not, Matt." I let out a sigh. "He killed himself."

"Oh Jesus."

"I know. He barely even left a note - just two words. He wrote them on the wall in his own fucking blood."

"Yeah, Alex is- was always a sadistic fuck." He let out a sigh. "What did he say, kid?"

"I'm sorry."

"Oh." His tone changed completely at that; confusion taking the place of grief.

"What?" I quivered.

"That's out of character." Matt persisted. "Very out of character. Did he ever go on about how he finds guilt useless and how he never regrets or feels sorry about anything?"

"Yeah." I admitted with a sigh. "I remember that."

"This is very fucking suspicious, you know." He observed.

"So are you telling me that he's not dead or something?"

"Dude, I'd love to but honestly I'm just as clueless as you. I would tell you go to the police, but I doubt that whatever this is that it's something they can handle."

"Alex said the police weren't aware of him though."

"Yeah kid, I know, but that's not what I'm talking about, because if Alex isn't dead, whatever's made him to do this is really something to be feared within its entirety."

"So what do we do?" I asked.

"Fuck kid, I don't know. How are you even coping? Don't tell me you're still in that fucked up house of his."

"I'm not. I'm staying with a friend." I explained as briefly as I could.

"A friend? And how much does this friend know?"

"Everything."

"Well aren't you fucking intelligent!" He spat at me out of nowhere.

"No, it's okay. She- she... Alex tried to kill her, but she escaped. She's aware of us and what happened."

"No one fucking escapes - she's lying."

"I helped her escape." I told him the truth.

"Well I can guess that Alex didn't exactly appreciate that."

"That's one way to put it." I let out a sigh.

"Give me the address and I'll come over and we can talk things over and sort out what the hell we're going to do, whether Alex is alive or not."

"Okay." I let out a sigh, reciting him the address reading it from where she'd conveniently written it on what appeared to be a business card.

"Yeah, I've got to see a client quickly, so I'll be over in an hour or so. Try not to do anything too stupid by then."

"Yeah, I'll try." I let out sigh. "Bye Flyzik."

"See you kid, stay sane."

I wish I could.

Intoxicated With The Madness, I'm In Love With My Sadness 

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