Page 167 of Hurt

Grant stood from his office chair and left his work scattered over the desk. He moved through the darkened hallways without seeing. His bare feet shushed across the floor as he lifted them just enough to move forward. He didn’t have the energy to walk properly.

His body brought him to the door it always did. Inside he could hear the faint beeping of medical machines and the gentle whoosh of a ventilator artificially breathing for the person inside.

There was no knob on the door, so he just pushed it open with the faintest touch. The nurse had opened the curtains to let some natural light in. She was told not to. He would have to replace her. Again.

He took it upon himself to close the curtains, yanking them shut to blanket the room in darkness.

His attention turned to the figure in the bed. After months of laying on a bed he looked frail. All his height and muscle had faded, and the blankets rested over a living skeleton. He looked worse now that the bandages were gone. The sallow colored skin was obvious seen even in the gloom.

Grant stood at the end of the bed for a long time. Like he usually did, he contemplated life and death.

Ezra was only alive by the grace of machines and tubes. Tubes down his throat were responsible for his oxygen and tubes in his stomach were responsible for feeding him.

They said his brain was fine. The fall had ruined his body but the EEG’s showed near perfect brainwave activity. Inside his shattered, useless shell of a body, he could think. Could feel.

Ezra was trapped in a prison of his own body.

Grant could pull the plug. With the strength in his little finger, he could snuff out Ezra’s life for good. It would be too easy.

So he didn’t.

Instead, he let Ezra suffer in a torture so horrendous not even Grant could have come up with it.

His muscles deteriorated, sloughing off his bones like they were rotten. Sores appeared where his body rested against the bed. Microscopic movements causing friction against the starched sheets that ripped the skin open, over and over again. Able to feel every single thing yet unable to even open his eyes to escape the dark prison of his mind.

Ezra would be forced to be alone with his thoughts for the rest of his life.

Grant could think of no worse punishment.

There would come a day when his body failed. The machines would no longer be able to keep his heart pumping and his lungs filling. On that day, Grant would continue to fight for his life. He would force the doctors to work harder to keep him alive. He would not allow Ezra the sweet release of death.

It still wasn’t enough.

He left Ezra’s room, closing the door against the chemical medical smell mixed with the fetid decay of flesh.

Thunder crashed overhead and Grant breathed in deeply. Even after being here for months, the manor was not a home. It still smelled new. Like the air had never circulated past a human before.

There was one room he felt a modicum of peace. It was the biggest in the house. The southern wall was made entirely of windows with white grilles dividing them into neat little squares. Double doors opened to a patio that led out to the garden. On beautiful days they would open the doors and let the natural air and sunlight filter into the room.

Today the doors would be shut. The rain would slosh down them like a waterfall and somehow Grant thought it was more beautiful that way.

He stood in the doorway of the room and let the gray light wash over him. The hum of rain against the thin glass was almost too loud. An ambient noise that became the soundtrack of his day. Under the bank of windows was a soft white couch. Sometimes Grant would sit there and stare at the other side of the room. Or out the windows. That was a dangerous time. It was never good to let his mind wander.

The carpeting under his feet felt wrong as he finally entered the room. Even after all this time his toes still longed for the roughness of the old wood floors of the cottage.

Grant reached for the quilt hanging over the footboard of the bed. It was a thick thing—the kind of quilt that was handmade with love by someone Grant didn’t know. Snapping it out of the crisp folds, he draped it over the bed and tucked it in. There was a chill in the air thanks to the rain.

His hands ran over the quilt and his eyes were drawn to the guitar resting beside the bed. Kurt’s beat up guitar brought a touch of life to the room. No one had touched it since the day it had been brought in. Grant even took great care to not touch it when he dusted it off. The last person to play it had been Kurt. In an absurd way, he felt like if he touched it somehow Kurt’s essence would be rubbed off.

“I don’t even know how to play it,” he said to the room.

No one answered him.

He kept talking to the empty space hoping he would answer. Hoping one day a scathing remark would come his way and he would know he was back.

Grant finished tucking the quilt in and let his hands linger against the worn fabric.

“The dye is growing out,” he told the sleeping figure in the bed.