☤ - a memory of death/loss
Past experiences help shape who we are currently, how we see the world. Send in a symbol and I’ll write a drabble of one of my muse’s memories.
He still saw it in his nightmares on days his stress was at it’s peak. It was one of those things he was sure might fade with time or better memories but those were few and far between. The infected were just getting started and his father and hustled him, and his brothers Gregory and Vincent to a familiar cabin owned by a man they’d grown up knowing as Uncle Stan (he wasn’t related but one of his father’s closest friends) to wait things out. Of course things go from bad to worse and Uncle Stan gets sick which involves and the man meets his end outside in a shed courtesy of Jaime’s father. He’d immediately headed for a bottle of whiskey and disappeared from view. Of course Jaime would be sent on a run by Vincent and needing out and away as he tried to wrap his mind around this wasn’t about to argue. He was careful, maybe too careful and it takes a few hours before he decides to return a little concerned at no contact though he had at first thought it was just from the tense situation. He’d come back to the house being dark and quiet and something had told him it wasn’t good. But he still goes to check. His quiet, “Dad?” at the door of the room the man had occupied in the last couple of weeks comes with no answer. He knocks and repeats the inquiry. Nothing. Slowly, carefully, he opens the door unsure of what he would find and definitely not ready for what he did. He’d stumble backwards into the hallway as his mind struggles with comprehending the enormity of the choice made. True there was no love-loss between him and his father and he’d long since believed he’d ever be accepted as he was that was still the man who had sired him. A man who had clearly decided this wasn’t a world he wanted to live in. Jaime had immediately gone to his oldest brother, Vincent’s room and doesn’t even bother knocking and just pulls the door open. A soft, sharp sound escapes him and he shoves the door shut before gazing at the partially opened door Gregory would be beyond. Slowly, shaking and struggling to breathe, he reaches and pushes the door open. And the parts of him that had one day hoped things might be better, might get mended, are shattered at the sight. Breathing hitching, he pulls the door shut and leans heavily against it. So this was how it was? The world went to hell and men he knew had made a life out of being tough... He couldn’t follow that thought to it’s completion and stumbles back down to the couch he’d been using pressing his face into a worn pillow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he was getting out of here because he wasn’t staying in this tomb. He couldn’t. And he could not go back into those rooms. One more night. He could grieve but tomorrow he had to plan. And he would plan. Because he wasn’t letting himself give up. Not yet.