Time of Death

No. I've got this. Push 20ccs epi.

You're wasting time. Come ON!

I've got this! Push the fucking epi!

---

Beyond the gently sloping sands, beyond the balcony, beyond the glass of a set of patio doors, the great expanse of endless ocean met volatile coastline, sending waves crashing down upon the land there in an endless, droning serenade. If Cecil never had to hear the sea again in his life, it would be too soon. he longed for a time when he would look out of the kitchen window and see dull, smog stained red brick instead of that foreboding, endless void. This place, this island was the perfect metaphor for how he had been feeling for the past few months. It was desolate and unknown, cast adrift in an unforgiving sea. Lost. Bleak. Fake. The murky, dark ocean that battered its shores was time, and feelings, hatred, love, elation, despair. The onslaught was eternal, never tiring, but those coastlines would not stand forever. Little by little, the pounding of frothing white capped waves would take the sands away, erode the faces of the cliffs until they crumbled into the water below. One day, the island would be no more. The sea would reclaim the land and everything that had once been upon it. So was the same true for Cecil. Would the onslaught mean the same end for him too? And if that was the case, then why was here there, on Green Ridge? If this was the end of it all, then why put himself through the torture of remaining there any longer?

The dream was officially dead.


The bleak island's only haematologist watched the coastline through the window above the kitchen sink, and longed to return home. Like a wolf, maybe, breaking from the pack to return to its place of birth in the final hours before death. His two weeks notice had already been posted. There was nothing left to stay here for. No dream left to chase. No friends who would really miss the lanky lab rat if he wasn't there tomorrow. Life on Green Ridge would go on as normal. Just without Cecil. And it was welcome to it, because as far as the haematologist was concerned, the whole accursed place could burn and perish into the unrelenting waves. He hated the abysmal rock. He could almost have stomached the English weather were it not a cross between Alcatraz and Twin Peaks. The unnerving, cookie cutter houses made him feel ill to look at, with their perfectly manicured lawns and white picket fences. Even the falsified smiles of the denizens there set his nerves on edge. There was something wrong about this place, and what made it unnerving to him was the insidious nature of it all. It looked so friendly and quaint on the outside, but the smiles and the jovial attitudes of the mindless sheep trapped on it left a bad taste in his mouth.

No, he had nothing left to stay for that wouldn't or couldn't leave with him. And yet, as much as he was eager to leave the creepy little rock behind, it felt like a defeat. It felt like another in a long string of small deaths. This was Cecil admitting that he was better off at home. It was Cecil admitting that maybe he always would have been better off at home. It felt like saying that the six years that he'd been gone and apart from Harry had been for nothing, and no longer mattered. And though he would never admit it aloud, he was frightened to go back now. What if time simply rewound? What if those six years really didn't mean anything? What if life went back to the way it had been before he had gone? And would that be a terrible thing? Or, hadn't it already happened, the moment the number eleven scalpel had tasted his blood and his skin again? Had he ever left? Could he? Leaving Green Ridge felt like willingly walking back through the gates of hell after having been released. And in some ways, he missed the scalding caress of the flames.

When he was done with the dishes he had been washing, Cecil dried his hands on the tea towel he had slung over his shoulder and peeled himself from the scenic view of the Pacific Ocean. He hated the sea. He hated everything about it. He hated the alien, and uncharted nature of its depths, and the sense of desperate desolation that came with the horizon that never seemed to end. He hated the smell, and the taste of it on the air. He hated how alien it was, and the never knowing what creatures might lurk beneath its false, sunshiny surface. The cold of hypothermia with the guise of a pleasant, family outing to the seaside. Just like him. Fake, and without boundaries. Not at all like the blond doctor who was cohabiting the beach house with him, and whom he found- predictably- in the living room, occupying the usual armchair. Harry's front was false. A façade of normalcy and harmlessness. But his depths were not uncharted, and universes of life unknown did not exist below the surface. He was the flame. He'd always been the flame. A pretty dance and an alluring light, but all fury and energy within, with the sole purpose of causing destruction and pain. Harry was familiarity too though. He was the only face on the Island that Cecil could say he really knew any more. He was the only person whose moves he could predict with a startling rate of success. he was a piece of the home Cecil was bitterly missing. And so the haematologist came to stand in the doorway of the living room, and stared down at the tea towel in his hands.

"I'm leaving."

He did not have to add that Harry could come along. It was simply assumed. He knew that Harry would never even entertain the idea of remaining behind in this godforsaken town. Harry's following him to Green Ridge had proved to Cecil that he would go anywhere, any time, if only to remain close to him. To keep him. Even if Cecil ran now, he didn't expect that harry would give up trying to find him again. Harry had won. He had his victory and now he had his prize, and the man was far too egotistical and proud to let that slip through his hands. Cecil sometimes wondered if it mattered to Harry at all if his brunette companion was miserable or happy. And then he gave up, and assumed from experience that it was an impossibility. The emotions of others had only seemed to matter to Harry if they caused him inconvenience or aggravation. Keeping Cecil happy might only serve the purpose of saving him the hassle of Cecil's complaining, or his generally broody demeanour. Still, Cecil shrugged as if this was nothing, as if he'd just decided on what pair of shoes he was going to wear today. The frivolity of his stance was entirely false.

"So that's it. The end, I guess. Just don't gloat." He shook his head and chanced a glance up at Harry, wringing the towel between his hands slightly. "It is what it is. I'm just done with this fucking place."

---

I had it, Harry. I fucking had it.

I could've saved him. How fucking dare you do that!

I had it... I fucking had it...