An unsure, shaking hand found Todd's shoulder, breaking him from sleep's clutches.
"Todd? Todd."
"Ugh, Charlie", he mumbled. Todd tried to turn over and sink into warm oblivion once more, but Charlie's hand gently gripped his elbow and pulled him from his ninety percent asleep state. Regaining some consciousnes, the young boy pried his eyes open.
Charlie's face was tear - stained and the usually so lively boy looked devastated. Immediately, dread curled in Todd's stomach like a cold, poisonous snake.
"What is it?", his voice shook, and he looked at the door - there were Knox, Meeks and Pitts, and they looked horrified - just as miserable as Charlie, all three of them staring at him with tears in their eyes. Pitts looked struck, disbelieving, and somehow that scared Todd even more than Knox's grief-filled face. Terrified, Todd glanced back at Charlie - who shattered Todd's world with two words.
"Neil's dead." Charlie's voice cracked on the last word, and Todd found himself paralysed. Still, somehow, he must have moved, for the next thing he knew, he was outside, walking through the snow. The other poets were following him with some distance, jogging to catch up.
It was the cold that did it.
It had only begun snowing last night, Todd realised. He turned around in wonder, remembering how Neil had said he couldn't wait for the snow to fall not too long ago - but there was no Neil among the poets, because Neil was dead, dead, dead, and Todd didn't understand - Neil wasn't dead, he was alive, he always was alive, he was the most alive person Todd knew. But Neil wasn't standing there next to Charlie, he wasn't there between Knox and Pitts and Meeks, he wasn't in the middle of the group the way he always was, and he would never be there again.
As he scanned the lanscape, Todd couldn't help the small, breathless laugh that escaped him.
"It's so beautiful."
It was beautiful, and Neil wasn't here to see it. Neil would have wanted to see it. Neil would never see it, because Neil was never coming back. Because Neil was dead, dead, dead.
Dead. Dead dead dead.
His blood was roaring in his ears, and with every beat of his heart, the reality sunk in. Ba-boom. DEAD. Ba-boom. DEAD. Ba-boom. DEAD.
NEIL was DEAD.
Todd felt the bile rising in his throat, the sour taste barely registering, but then he was choking - and he turned around and fell to his knees, heaving. The bile and the vomit splattered into the snow, and immediately, the other poets were there - by his side, holding him, and Knox was at his back, pressing his face into the fabric of Todd's robe. But none of them were Neil, because Neil wasn't there, because Neil was dead -
"Todd!"
"It's - okay, Todd."
"It's all right."
But it wasn't all right, it wasn't all right, nothing was all right, Neil was dead and he wasn't coming back - Todd was outright sobbing now -
"Todd, it's okay, it's okay!"
But the tears had begun to seep into - Charlie's? Pitt's? - voice too, and someone pressed a fistful of snow against Todd's mouth, pulled him up. Still, they were talking to him trying to calm him down, but -
"No, he wouldn't, he wouldn't - it was his father!" The wail burst out of Todd louder than they were, drowning them out.
"NO", Pitts gasped, but Todd didn't - couldn't - stop.
"It was - it was his father! It was his father - stay with me!" He was crying out now, incoherent nonsense mostly, but one thing he could voice loudly, clearly enough for them to understand -
YOU ARE READING
Meet Me In The Woods
FanfictionA few months ago, Neil would have given up. If his father had taken everything he cared about from him, he would have gone to his father's study and unlocked that drawer and taken out the gun. But he was taught by John Keating for almost an entire t...
