Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

Today’s story is brought to life by the following prompt…

This is my submission for Kevin’s No Theme Thursday.

Of All the Whys

Darcy tucks his hair back beneath the rim of his hat. “I know you don’t wanna talk to me, and I definitely know you don’t wanna tell me what it is I wanna know, but,” he says with a heavy sigh and a twisted curl of his lips, “I’m gonna ask it anyway.” He digs his hands deep into his pockets and looks up into the night sky.
“Why?” he calls out loudly.
Seconds roll into minutes, and minutes stretch on endlessly. He allows his tongue to roll over his teeth and forces a smile.
“You could at least acknowledge my question instead of ignoring me. It’s only polite.”
The sky ignites, and a ball of white-hot light tears through it, disappearing off into the horizon. He nods his head and takes a deep breath.
“Yup, okay, good job,” he says sarcastically, rolling his eyes and forcing his hands deeper into his pockets. “Is that all you got?”
The sky ignites again, this time littered with a hundred or more balls of light that shoot overhead and into the distance. He catches his breath and allows a muffled laugh to escape his grasp.
“T-That’s more like it,” he says with an enthusiastic nod of his head. “Still not an answer though.”
“Can’t you be content with a little victory?” she asks him.
“Little victories don’t win wars.”
“Is this what this is, a war?”
He laughs and turns to her with a cheeky smile on his lips. “That’s what they keep telling me. That’s why I keep fighting.”
She shakes her head and lets out an exhausted sigh. “Then you need to stop listening to them and start listening to yourself.”
“How do I do that, when I don’t know what I’m saying?” he says as he turns back to the night sky, and swallows a stale breath of air down his dry throat.
“I don’t think that’s true. I think you understand yourself a whole lot better than they do. You just have to be honest with yourself.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Well, to start with, you need to drop this charade and face the truth, the reality of what’s happening,” she says.
“What if I don’t want to?” he says with a tear trickling down his cheek.
“Then you won’t make any progress, and the next few steps will be harder than they need to be.”
“H-How can it be a-any harder than it a-already is?” he says as he turns to face a mirror image of himself, his words trailing off as he quickly turns away. “I-I-I, I don’t want t-to,” he stammers.
“But you have to.”
He takes a strained breath, closes his eyes, and turns to face himself again. When he opens his eyes, the reflection that stands before him is no longer that of a young boy, but a pale, sickly-looking man in a hospital gown. He forces a pain-soaked smile across his lips, and gently nods his head, as they both start weeping gently.
He looks back out over the horizon, wiping his nose vigorously on the back of his hand.
“D-Did I do s-something wrong t-to deserve this?” he asks.
“Why do you think you did something wrong?”
“B-B-Because, I-I-I’m dying!”
“Everything has to die somehow, and in some way. Everything can’t be forever, it just wouldn’t make sense. It’s how you live that’s the key. Hell, even gods die.”
“H-H-How do you know that?” he asks as he turns back to himself, tears streaming down his face.
He smiles, “Because, I’m yours, and you, you are mine.”
“I-I-I-I, I don’t follow. How c-can I be y-your god, i-if you are mine?”
He laughs and winks playfully. “In here, when you go, it goes, and so do I.”
“S-S-So none of this is r-real? I-I-It’s just in my head?”
He laughs loudly, “Darcy, none of this is in your head, and all of this is in your head at the same time.”
He shakes his head and squeezes his eyes closed. “I-I-I, I don’t get any of this.”
“You will eventually,” he says as he disappears, leaving the adolescent Darcy standing in the field alone once more. “I know you don’t wanna talk to me, and I definitely know you don’t wanna tell me what it is I wanna know, but,” he says with a heavy sigh and a twisted curl of his lips, “I’m gonna ask it anyway.”