Cloud's Song

The smell of the walls was old, it almost reminded me of the way it would reek inside an ancient pyramid - much farther than deceased, dusty, and...of flesh. Frozen flesh, and not quite dead corpses. It always kind of freaked me out how they froze the insides to stall the decaying process...to me, it was almost eerie and very un-natural. Or, maybe my imagination's just too big. That's what you always told me, anyway.

The floor was lined with thick, fancy carpet although there was nothing stimulating or fancy about this place. There were lamps, cream coloured couches and walls that were skinned with oddly patterned wall paper that matched the red and cream colour scheme. It was typically floral, with lots of weird swirly designs that would have looked pretty or calming on any other wall on any other building on any other place across this broad, horrendous and beautiful planet.

It was pretty amusing how they tried to make such an unhappy place look like a carnival, full of 'attractions' for the whole family to see. Literally. At least, I was trying to make it amusing in my mind. If it wasn't for these small thoughts of comic, I was afraid insanity's mouth that was more or less gaining on me, would inhale a very deep breath and swallow me forever.

Finally we reached our designated room, named so originally and tastefully, 'Parlour E.' I held my twin's hand tighter as we stared up at the bleak, lined sign that stated boldly who's wake was taking place in 'E'.

Plain, block letters, nothing special or colourful or dressed up to look good. Just, Cloud Strife. I almost shuddered looking at it, my mind still being rejected by any possible idea that you had already died.

If this were at all a natural experience, I would be an old man, as well as Roxas - and we may still hold hands, but perhaps our hearts would be soft and wise and experienced enough to absorb this poisonous information that was more painful than getting a leg removed by the aid of a small wood working knife.

However, we were not old, Roxas and I - sixteen, to be exact. Turning seventeen in the approaching month of June. But that was not nearly a high enough number of years under our skin to act as a strong enough barrier against such shock and remorse.

When we entered the room, I leading the rather disoriented Roxas behind my body, acting like some kind of pathetic shield, I looked all around me. Relatives and friends stood and wept for you, as if the flowing of tears and the loss of strength and life in one's gut and knees would possibly resurrect you. As if standing there, and swaying like a tree in a gentle breeze, feeling defeated, would cause your pale, face up corpse in it's forever bed, to open it's eyes.

At this time, I felt rather angry with you. Just noticing these people who wept, mourned and bled for you...what made you possibly resort to such an act of cruelty and loss of mind? My heart ached with anger that would dare yet be expressed, sadness that loomed like purple mist in my heart, floating into my throat and gagging me.

I saw my Mother as I walked in, she would be your Aunt. She was talking to your Mother(Who was, of course, nothing but a skeleton wet with tears and blackened with sorrowful ash.) I knew the instant I walked in with Roxas and they noticed us, what they were saying in their depressed and subdued voices. They were saying things like:

'Oh, Sora and Roxas were so close to Cloud...'
'This must be such a loss for them...they're so young..'

Etc, etc, etc. And they'd they would walk over to us as soon as we reach the casket, and rub our shoulders, their ruby lips moving to give words of reassurance, that they probably knew wouldn't help us anyway. Sorry about my sarcasm, it's really not typical of me...but when you weren't here anymore to be, someone had to adopt that cold, sarcastic jingle to their own words, right?

We arrived at the casket, feeling bitter and overgrown with emotion. Everything about you looked so pale, so...unrealistic. It was like a morbid painting from someones sickly mind.

I wept silently, feeling the hot water course down my cheeks like scorching claws ripping my skin. Your face was pale, and your eyes closed gently, as if in sleep. Dressed in a suit, something I don't think I had ever seen before, you looked very handsome. I wanted to tell you. Your blond hair was fine and neat looking, and still spiky, something which panged me with the need yet prohibition to smile. I could see the tiny shimmer of the diamond stud earring in your right ear lobe. Everything was the same. It was like nothing had changed, except the pace of your blood, and the steps your heart planned to make.

As mine and your mom walked over, I heard Roxas sobbing and soon your Mother was doing the same thing. It dampened my mind with insatiable rage. My Mother held back the tears that I could see were longing exit from her pale looking eyes, and she embraced both Roxas and me, her re-assuring voice babbling things my mind was simply blotting out. I felt my hand detach from Roxas', and my mind detach from reality.

I felt much too bad for my aunt right now. The loss of her husband, and your father, was much to harsh of a blow, like a freezing hurricane breeze on a hot summer day. That was years ago. Unexpected, and unwanted, and they grieved for him. I was young then, much too young to understand the depth and cold water of grieving, but I do remember the funeral.

You were thirteen. Roxas and I, seven. We were very young children, and restless boys. That's the way kids always are. I don't have many memories of you from before this point, just the simple ones like visiting your house on the weekends and on holidays.

Anyway, your mom was much too overcome with the sickening feeling of depression over the sudden loss of her husband due to heavy stroke. The emotional breakdowns were countless, and my mother, wanting to be as excellent a sister as possible in such an unlucky and unsustainable time, left Roxas and I under the care of you - while she went to her older sister's aid.

At this point, my parents had been divorced for a year - my Dad lived away in a whole other town, with custody of mine and Roxas' older brother, Ventus. We had seen them very few times since the papers had been filed, and it was all rather confusing to us, then.

I remember these same halls, with the carpet and wallpaper I loathed now. I was holding your right hand and Roxas on your left, as we wandered the very compact and hustle and bustle funeral home. I didn't understand what was happening, all I knew was, as all parents tell young children when someone leaves their lives due to death, 'Your Uncle is gone to heaven, sweetie.'

There's one thing I can tell you, right now - I wasn't so sure I believed in such a place, when you were gone. I still don't. For if there was a present heaven, there would have to be an opposing hell - and it pained me so to think that you could go to hell, that torturous dungeon, for taking away the air in your own lungs.

Anyway, I remember seeing the casket from a limited height, being the age I was. You released our hands for just an instant, to speak with a few relatives for just a moment - but just a moment it takes for a pair of seven years olds to cause a ruckus.

You were receiving comfort and the warm embraces of love from your loved ones, and for just a minute, perhaps you had stopped thinking about us and what we were doing - and begun thinking about yourself, and the tragedy that had just struck you like a slap across the face from a cold, stone hand.

If I had been old enough, I would have felt guilty, and bad, and terribly sorry...but of course, a childish mind feels sorry for no well being but their own, and if I could now I would make up for my ignorance then. However, it was much too late for such long past events.

Roxas and I could barely see into the casket, and as children, we didn't understand the concept of death and the sentimental attachment each person's loved ones has to their deceased body. We didn't realize that climbing up onto the edge of the beautifully carved boat that would carry an earthly body down death's river could easily be toppled to the floor with the aid of enough weight and mischief. I remember pulling myself up, and before I knew anything had happened at all, before the tiniest bat of any eyelash - I was to the floor again with a heart shuddering crash.

I still remember how my heart raced when the still, freezing corpse was laying almost on top of Roxas and I. I remember how I struggled to pull away, although the weight of the heavy casket as well as my uncle was pinning me to the floor as if with some unstoppable weight, even for the biggest of body builders.

I was so young. I'm sorry.

Mom rushed over, screaming and scolding us as my aunt clutched her hands to her face, shaking sorrowfully and letting out wails of despair; her heart was gone.

You too, hustled over to the scene of the immature accident. You hoisted Roxas and I up from under the fallen body of your deceased father, who was slowly slipping from the velvet soft inside of his resting place. And clutching us both to one side of you, smothering our faces in your ribcage, your voice rose out of your chest like a mighty, oppressive wind.

"Don't yell at them! They didn't know!" You hollered, and it echoed all through the funeral home, so it seemed. Sometimes, I swear I hear that same pathetic cracking and screaming strain of your upset voice, as well as the silence that followed, during cold nights. The only audible noise during the silence was the relentless sobs that wracked your Mother's frail and tired frame from the couch where she was slowly dying.

You swallowed, my heart pumped blood and adrenaline faster than I had ever imagined possible at that point. You practically dragged us out of the room by holding tightly to our shoulders, and we headed into the restroom. There, you released us and you sat upon the counter.

I tried to apologize, and to speak to you - but it was much too overwhelming. You wept in utter silence against all the world, for quite some time. I remember how bored and restless I was, sitting there against the wall with Roxas while you sobbed on the counter above me in sheer grim silence. However, I could easily recall then, how mad my Mother had looked, her eyes flaming like a forest fire and looking dangerous like a guillotine. I had no intentions of going back out there, no matter how crazily bored and insane I was feeling.

-

I had apologized several times for that since growing up, but it never seemed to be enough conciliation...I had never seen you cry for a second after that horrible afternoon, and it seemed somehow...unusual.

By the time I had broken back into reality's bubble, my Mom had walked away to leave Roxas and I alone with you, and she had taken her sister outside Parlour E, into the lobby like area that presented couches, tables and many tissues. My Aunt was far from functional, at this time, and there was no reason under the wonderful blue sky as to why she would be.

Your Mother had lost her husband, and now, look at you - I looked at you. Stared, really. My thoughts hovered like frantic bees about a memory that reminded me of something you once told me. You told me that you didn't understand why some people were so offended by staring. To you, it was a compliment, if someone wanted to waste time and focus their eyes upon just you - it just must be a compliment.

So, in dear honour of your honesty and strange, idealistic opinions, I complimented you. I complimented you for a long time. Roxas' hand squeezed the universe and more out of my forearm, but I didn't turn to look at him. I just stared. You were so unnatural looking. I thought about my uncle's corpse, and I found it strange that I now looking at yours - in both a body and mind that had grown to see things differently.

No longer did I struggle to view the body, because I really didn't even want to. The curiosity had burned out, like a candle in the rain. No longer was my mind naive to the idea of death, I understood it the way a Historian understood the history of any culture.

Soon I had to turn away from you. I looked around the room in my constant state of disbelief and nausea, and I looked at the people I saw. I didn't compliment them, just shot around little glances like quick snapping photographs. I saw aunts, uncles, relatives of both mine and yours alike. And then, someone that I saw, caused more than a teaspoon of anger to get added to my already mixed up track of living.

I saw...her. Your ex-girlfriend, Tifa Lockhart. She sat in a small armchair near all the dozens of bunches of colourful flowers that rested next to your sleeping form, mascara waterfalls marking their territory down her pale, sorry looking cheeks. Standing beside her rather awkwardly, was her new boyfriend - Sephiroth. The new boyfriend that replaced you, the new boyfriend whom she saw without telling you.

I hated seeing them here, at your final goodbye and good night. I despised how she cried, acting as if she honestly had a heart beating under her flesh. And her new boyfriend had even less of a right to show up here than she did.

I watched her crying into her hands, and I saw Sephiroth reach out a hand to touch her shoulder - but she softly dismissed it with a tiny push. She was sorry. Sorry for all the hell she forced him through, ankles chained and arms shackled.

I knew Roxas was observing the same scene as I, and it was as if I could feel my twins blood boiling. He took menacing steps towards the couple, but I grabbed his arm like a reflex, and he seemed to snap out of whatever rage tornado he was snared in. He looked at me, resuming his scared and sad look, and I walked him away from Tifa. I didn't want to repeat any unfortunate funeral mishaps.

I knew well of our opinions, that she - unintentionally, of course - really killed you. She drove you over the edge with her sickening, dirty infidelity, like a huge push. It was something I wouldn't forgive her for, and I couldn't deal with even being in the room with her filth.

We headed to the washroom, because I couldn't stand the stench of the old, Egyptian pyramid like smell with the ugly furnishings and your dead corpse for another millisecond.

I sat up on the counter, where you had that day nine years ago, and let out a huge sigh. Roxas embraced me from where he stood and I let his tears soak and confide in the front of my fancy suit. I didn't cry, not yet, for I knew that would come later when I was free of the suffocation of this place.

Instead, I let my thoughts flutter out the small upper window, like much sad looking and confined butterflies...

I thought about all the phone conversations we had over the years. You called me almost every night, at about nine thirty sharp, and we talked about...well, nothing. We just let our brains and our imaginations do the talking - dreams, thoughts of the future, weekly plans, problems(If there were any at the current time.) , and sometimes even a mild form of gossip, among many other things on the endless list.

Evidently, I was closer to you than Roxas, not to say you two weren't tight knit. The three of us were, and I think my attachment to you grew strong from the day of my Uncle's funeral. You had protected us, even then, because we were little - and you didn't cease doing so for any day afterwards. Slowly, as I got smarter and taller and older, I learned that you didn't protect us that day because we were young children - but, it was because you loved us.

You told me about Tifa and Sephiroth, when you found out. That was the most upset I had seen you, after the funeral. You weren't crying(Or so I could basically tell from the tone of your voice.) but you were awfully troubled, and there was an inevitable danger looming in your voice, rising like the wailing of a siren. This was only months before your wake. I never imagined that the danger I heard would ever succumb to this.

Although twenty two and in a very professional university, you still seemed unhappy. Unhappy about everything, from something as small as the present weather to as large as your relationship with Tifa when it fell out so disgustingly. You had always seemed like that. Apathetic. Monotonous. Dry. Emotion-less. There were only so many words that could be used to describe it; your emotional well was bone dry, and never being refilled.

You had been that way for as long as I can remember, and I figured you would be for all the years the earth had the honour of carrying you on it's journey through the cosmos. However, your time was cut short by the effects of the contents in a pill bottle. The pill bottle in which your suicide note was taped with little care, so it seemed.

Your suicide letter was one that deeply confused me, as well as concerned me, of course. It was a rather strange read, much like the books you enjoyed. I didn't know if it was a note of longing, confession, guilt, blame...all three, or none...

However, regardless of what your letter meant word by word, sentence by sentence, it meant more to my tattered soul. Therefore, when Roxas brought it to me on that gloomy, overcast day after calling 911, I had stuffed it greedily into my jeans pocket. I sat with Roxas, who was, naturally, hysterical after finding you in such a mess, and waited for word for the arrival of the ambulance.

This is what the note read, word for word, for I have memorized it in my several attempts to make sense of it all. Written in your scraggly and small, yet perfectly legible handwriting, it read:

I never thought I'd die alone.
I laughed the loudest, who'd have known?
I traced the cord back to the wall.
No wonder, it was never plugged in at all.
I took my time, I hurried up.
The choice was mine, I didn't think enough.
I'm too depressed to go on.
You'll be sorry when I'm gone.

I never conquered, rarely came.
Sixteen just held such better days.
Days when I still felt alive.
We couldn't wait to get outside.
The world was wide, too late to try.
The tour was over, we'd survived.
I couldn't wait 'til I got home,
To pass the time in my room alone.

I never thought I'd die alone.
Another six months I'll be unknown.
Give all my things to all my friends.
You'll never step foot in my room again.
You'll close it off, board it up.
Remember the time when I spilled the cup,
Of apple juice in the hall?
Please tell Mom this is not her fault.

I never conquered, rarely came.
Tomorrow holds such better days.
Days when I can still feel alive,
When I can't wait to get outside.
The world is wide, the time goes by.
The tour is over, I'd survived.
I can't wait 'til I get home,
To pass the time in my room alone."

It was such a moving...well, I'd call it a piece of art if it didn't come from such a morbid genre. Moving, and down spiraling, and very sadly detailed...Stricken with the hot lightning of anger and self hate, and reading it made me wish even more that I could have helped you before you resorted to such drastic actions.

Roxas' trembling body, as well as my own, were still being rather disregarded by my mind. On the inside, I was feeling rather ignorant towards the outside world - right now, I was in my own particular world, where you still thrived, like us all. My current reality, thrashed with endless grief and misunderstanding, was distant, like the rising of the morning sun; on the horizon.

I thought about all the support you had endlessly granted Roxas and I on several and various occasions. You helped us with school work sometimes, or to study for important tests and exams. You never got mad at us, unless we did something extremely disappointing which didn't really happen. You always defended us, and stuck on our side like a noble, loyal soldier, no matter what we were going through; even if we were wrong. You were the only one who praised the work of our band; liked the songs we wrote and the covers we preformed.

You always respected us and our interests, and even if you had a suggestion to make or criticism to be had, you always carried us down gently, like a leaf falling on the breeze in autumn. However, overall, you enjoyed our music, you supported our active hobby - something I dearly appreciated but never thanked you for. I regreted that tremendously, and still do.

Roxas, the bassist. Demyx, the guitarist. Axel, the drummer. And I, the vocalist. Oh, how I enjoyed those summer afternoons we spent in Axel's basement...and I remember how you'd often drop by and just listen to us play while working on your complicated university homework.

You never told me what you were training to be, and most of the time you dodged the question skillfully, something that led me eventually to think you didn't even know yourself. Perhaps that was another one of your troubles.

Now, I don't even know if I could sing in the band anymore. Without you there to listen, who would, besides the lonely tails of wind, with their invisible, whispering lips? Nobody. Nobody at all.

Soon, Mom came in to collect us - all the pieces on the bathroom floor - and head home. Home, finally.

As much as I wanted to be with you, talk to you and thank you for everything possible - I just couldn't bear with your cold fingers that wouldn't move when I touched them. Your blank and exceptionally more pale face that lacked expression, even if you weren't the most expressive person I had ever known. The fact that your heart wasn't beating, your lungs weren't moving, and...and, that you were dead.  It was a bucket of water over the head, a punch to the eye, a spontaneous gunshot...unexpected, hated, and overwhelming. Moreso than anything I had ever felt or will ever feel.

We got in the car and my mind was blank the entire way home. Mom hummed as she drove, something rather calm and relaxing with my eyes closed and the practically gentle bumps of the road. The radio was on low; the typical popular station. I remembered how much you hated pop culture, and bitterly, felt another tear tumble from my eye, streaking my cheek with it's watery misery the entire trip down.

-

When I got home, I got a shower, and then spent the rest of the afternoon sulking. Roxas went to Axel's, looking for a little extra comfort, I presumed. Mom was in the kitchen for the majority of the day, doing various things, and at around eight thirty, I announced I was going to bed and fled upstairs. It was early, but I didn't care. I wanted my solitary lonliness to confide in, and that alone.

I lay in my bed for a long period of time. It was dark out, but not completely black, but my room was dimly lit enough to provide the comfort of a stranger.

In a pair of jeans and a baggy t-shirt, I rested under my covers for what seemed like hours. I could have dozed off a few times, but, who knows - my mind was in tatters and shambles at this time, and I was much too exhausted to even glance at my digital clock.

I thought about the note. How you loved to 'pass the time in your room, alone.' You had told me that, once, and it was no surprise to me. You were an extremely introverted person. Constantly keeping to yourself about most things, with a quiet voice and a quiet lifestyle.

I realized that I was spending my time alone in my bedroom, now, as you had done several times throughout your life, I was sure. It felt good to be doing something you liked, and for a second, I heard your voice echo across the walls of my room, creeping like a shadow from the window to the door.

Shuddering, with a shiver of cold pricks along my spinal cord, I jammed my eyes closed. The questions poured into my mind, like the heaviest downfall of rain, sounding like a hail of stones on the roof.

Why couldn't you just still be here? I didn't want you to rot in the ground, becoming nothing but a home for maggots and worms and other filthy creatures. Why did you do it? Why didn't you even have the dignity to give me a logical reason for your thinking on that stupid note? Why, why, why...I didn't want to ask myself anymore.

Angry, I shoved my hand in my jeans pocket and pulled out the much folded, wrinkled and tainted note. I opened it up, and stared at it, tears of despair or rage(I wasn't sure.) welling up and spilling from my eyes like an overflowing bathtub.

Letting my mind run sporadically wild, I raised up the frame of mind to rip it. Tear it into a thousand fragments, deposit those shards all over the front lawn, and just...forget. Forget about all this. I don't even know why I held to tightly to it. I didn't understand what compelled me to not hand it over that day to my Mother, or the Police, or even the fucking paramedics. To lie, and pretend you never left a note at all. When Roxas brought it to me, when we visited your apartment on that cloudy afternoon. Brought it to me, after looking for you in your room while I looked through the bathroom and living room.

I don't understand exactly why I stuffed it into my pocket. Perhaps I just wanted your last thoughts...wanted them to be mine. I wanted your final words, I wanted you, and to understand all that was running through your brain.

I wanted to rip those scribbly words that I longed so desperately to embrace and inhale. And I almost did it - almost tore a sinister gash right through the middle of your final, documented, corrupted thoughts. But then, one of my own thoughts, saved me.

This was something I had never thought of, until my anger had filtered such an idea out of the part of my concious brain that was being pushed away and ignored by all my hovering remembrance and grieving of you.

Before I knew it, I had switched on a lamp - and with that lamp, a surge of creative points and bulbs in my own mind lit up.

Before I knew it, I had picked up a pen and started writing on the back of this crumpled sheet of paper. Notes, guitar chords, even piano notes...before I knew it, they were covering the reverse side of the sheet like a spreading illness. Before I knew it, I had written your song - Cloud's Song, with your very own last thoughts as the lyrics.

The days passed on. I thought about and memorized these lyrics, and brought the idea up to the band. I continued to think of the lyrics and all their power, biting my lip and trying to be iron strong as they lowered your undeserving body into the ground. I hummed the rather downbeat tune of the song under my breath as we, the whole family, cleaned out your apartment, removing the many things you had left behind.

I finally handed over the note to my Aunt, who much deserved to read it.  I sang the song to myself as I trecked through the graveyard after our practise every afternoon, to plant gorgeous, fresh flowers next to your headstone, that looked so brand new and beautiful that it made me ill.

We practised every day, not missing it for anything, even if nobody was there to listen. However, I knew you were still listening - no matter what. Every time I sang into the microphone these beautiful lyrics you had left behind for the world, I knew that blocks away, in that over flowing graveyard, the flowers that I had planted there shifted in the still air.

You were always listening, for me, and I was always singing, for you. Always for you. I felt rather redeemed and my soul scraped clean of any guilt after we preformed such a song, in Axel's basement. I felt like I was communicating with you, in your far away world, and I found I could somehow smile, against all the opposing storms and odds.

However - regardless of the good feelings the song brought me and how the thoughts of you made me sad and longfully mourning; Regardless of how I enjoyed being with the band and spending time with my friends that I clutched so dear to my slowly healing heart;  I couldn't wait until I got home, to pass the time in my room, alone.

Or was I alone? Like such things as heaven and hell, since you had left me, it was an idea I completely stopped believing in.