not so

there are moments in life that can only be categorized as defining. they mold you, shift your course, erase the values and beliefs you had and replace them with new ones. these moments bulldoze over what you thought was real and leave behind a scenery completely altered; like a landmark or an iconic building that is taken down remakes the face of a city so do these moments remake your present and everything that will follow. after a moment like that your life is not what it was a second before, and the completeness of the change can make it difficult to comprehend that it has indeed taken place; and at the same time you know that there is no going back, and whether you wanted the new situation or not doesn't make any difference at all.


after he had regained consciousness it hadn't taken very long for B to understand, even in his dazed state of mind,  that what he was experiencing  would -- well, already had -- erased his life as he had known it so far. the realization that nothing would ever again be or feel like it had before had been so fast and so clear, so unarguably final that it had felt like a fist to the stomach -- in one second everything he had and all that he was had been overwritten with a new and frightening reality.


the nausea he felt was so strong it filled most of his conscious mind and in a way he was grateful for that; for when it would pass, room for other thoughts would be freed and the horrible guilt he already felt in his every cell would blow into the extent it rightfully deserved.  
he sat there, the world spinning around him with a speed much faster he would have cared for. the left side of his face felt wet and he wondered with surprisingly faint an interest if he had threw up on himself; but when he carefully touched his cheek and then observed his fingers B saw that the substance on them was blood. in the darkness it looked almost black.


it was difficult to focus his eyes so he gave up and allowed the world around him to blur together with his grasp of time and place. the pulse of the lights of the emergency vehicles, reflecting from the wet asphalt, seemed like a mock imitation of the strobe lights of the night club just some tens of minutes ago; but the shouts and noises surrounding him had no resemblance to the beat of the music he and J had been consumed in. they were too harsh, too real and too loud in a way that made it impossible to ignore them; and yet they weren't enough to drown the voices B heard in his head.


J's, hesitant and unsure; the look in J's eyes worried and the line of his shoulders tense and rigid.


his own, gleeful and certain, backed up by the stimulants circulating in his system. 


it's ok, trust me, i've done this before...


...we will be fine


even with his glazed vision B saw that J, or rather what was left of him under the blanket one of the paramedics had discreetly pulled over his body, was most definitely not fine.