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Carson

Death is a weird thing. One moment your loved one is there, and the next you’re staring at their lifeless bodies in a car. It’s been exactly a year since I lost two of my best friends.

I was at work, responding to a call where a car had run a stop light and hit another car head-on.

I didn’t know then that two of my best friends were in the car that got hit. I didn’t know that I would walk to the driver’s door and would find the man I have known for almost my whole life deceased in the driver’s seat, his fiancé sitting beside him in the passenger seat, deceased as well.

Two of the best people I have known were dead in a matter of seconds. One moment they were driving to pick up their toddler son, and the next they were gone.

Joey was my brother’s best friend. They have known each other since they were toddlers. He was my brother—maybe not by blood, but I have always thought of him as family. When he was fifteen, he met Melissa. They fell in love and became high school sweethearts.

A little over two years ago they had a son, Colton. They were the perfect little family. Until one drunk driver ruined it all. My brother was watching Colton so Joey and Melissa could have a date night.

I was the one who broke the news. Telling my brother the news of his best friend’s passing was the worst thing I have ever had to do. The heartbreaking scream that had escaped his throat, how he had grabbed me by my shirt, pleading for me to say that I was lying, still torments my dreams.

Colton was sleeping. He had no idea that his mom and dad were gone. Connor was the one who told him the same day he found out that Joey and Melissa had given him full custody of him. Connor moved into Joey and Melissa’s house, going through the whole process of adopting him while planning a funeral at the same time.

The past few months after their death were brutal. Connor had to learn how to be a parent. My parents were grieving a man who was like a son, and I kept seeing their lifeless bodies in their car. Everyone grieves differently. Connor had learned how to live with it. He’s an amazing father. Colton didn’t fully understand what had happened. He was so young and doesn’t remember his biological parents. For him, Connor is his father. Connor is raising him as his son, but Colton knows he also has a different dad, and he had a mom, but they are angels now.

My parents visit them a lot. They meet every week with Melissa and Joey’s parents to talk about how they’re handling everything. But I’m still suffering. Every time I close my eyes, I see them sitting there with blood covering their faces. I can’t sleep more than a few hours without waking up with night terrors.

I haven’t told anyone about my sleeping problems. Only my boss knows since I came to work one day looking like a zombie. Every morning when I arrive at the firehouse, he asks me how I’m doing, and if I’m not rested enough, he sends me home, making up some excuse so the others don’t find out.

Work is the only thing that keeps me standing. I can be the Carson I was before the accident. I don’t have to think about my own problems. For a few hours, I can pretend everything is normal.

Everyone is at the cemetery today. They had invited me, but I haven’t been able to visit their graves yet. The sight of lifeless bodies keeps plaguing my mind.

I had offered to watch Colton instead.

“Okay buddy, do you want to play with the ball?”

“Yes, ball!” Colton has always been my nephew. I have always called him that, just like he calls me his uncle Cars. We’re standing in the backyard, barefoot. Colton is carrying a huge plastic ball and throws it over to me. Alexis is sitting at her dinner table. She waves when she sees me staring. My lips curl in a smile as I wave back.

Everyone here in town knows who my neighbor is. Not know her. But know what happened to her. Her and her brother’s history is big news here in town. It happened fifteen years ago. But if you ask some people here in town, they’ll say they remember it like it was yesterday. I knew what happened.

Alexis and I are the same age, but back then I didn’t understand the full story. I only knew a boy was murdered and his sister had survived.

I had never met Alexis or her brother. I’d seen them walk around a few times, but we weren’t friends. They didn’t go to the same school as me.

They never found the killer. The police couldn’t find him anywhere. They interviewed everyone, my parents included, asking if we knew who he was, if we ever saw him talking to anyone. But no one knew anything. They were secluded. The man had lived in town for a while. But he liked to be alone. He barely talked to anyone.

Alexis and her brother only lived here for a few weeks before the attack. They sometimes wore dirty clothes, and Alexis’s hair was always tangled. But people assumed he didn’t know how to do her hair properly, and kids get dirty every day.

I yawn, lying down on the grass, my eyes watering from the sun. Colton jumps down on me. “Horse, play horse!” He squeals, slapping my chest. I grin. My sleeping problems have doubled in the last week. I hadn’t been able to sleep last night due to the nightmares. It’s like my brain knows what day it is and decides to torment me. I hear the faint sound of a door opening as I turn to lie on my stomach. Colton climbs on my back.

“You’re a burglar, taxi driver, firefighter, and now a horse too? You really are a busy guy, aren’t you?”

My eyes open as I hear the familiar voice. My head tilts back so I am eye-to-eye with Alexis. “Not a burglar,” I say.

Alexis grins. Her bright green eyes twinkle in the sun.

She hasn’t commented on my eyes so far. Most times when I meet new people, they will stare at them, trying to figure out what is unnatural about them. Some will ask a million questions about whether I was born like that or if one eye is fake.

I used to get bullied in school. Kids would call me a freak and were scared that my heterochromia was contagious. It made me feel insecure growing up. My family would tell me I was unique and that they were jealous, but I didn’t want to be unique. I just wanted to be normal. Killian was the first one who didn’t make a weird comment about them. He said he liked them and never brought them up again. He was my only friend in school. Even now, over a decade later, he’s still my best friend. He’s the only one I can talk to apart from my family, and I don’t have to worry about being too much. I’m not a talker. I’ve never been, but he doesn’t mind. He knows I’m listening, and that’s the most important part. But the past year I have been isolating myself from him and from my family. I don’t want to worry them with my mental health.

They’re grieving too, and I don’t want to burden them with my problems.

The scar on Alexis’s throat is conspicuous. The sight makes me angry, not because it’s prominent on her skin, but because it’s there. No young girl should have gone through what she’s been through. I have seen the stares people give her on the street. Some even stop dead to get a better look. I hate every bit of it. They treat her like she’s a famous painting in a museum. I have told countless people to stop looking at her like that. I know what it feels like to be scrutinized. And I hate every bit of it. She deserves better.