Work Text:
Brandon’s father is dead by his side. A mess of brown hair and brains, his cassock was damp with his own remains. Now he knew why they wore white at church, but black during the Downing process. Black hid blood more efficiently than white. The girls’ church dresses and head scarves proved this, speckles of blood from previous sacrifices upon their clothing.
The room smells of metal. From the iron of the blood spewed along the walls, to the shot gun that now rested in Brandon’s chemically still hands. He couldn’t panic, as that’s what the pills were for, but he remembered feeling anxiety only akin to waiting for surgery. And now it was his turn to be under the scalpel.
Several other members in the cramped room stared at him. In his vision, everyone was bleary. Faces of boys with choppy hair cuts, and similar black cassocks, and girls in blood-speckled church dresses, stand just ahead. Some look indifferent—children received higher doses of pills. Others look happy. Brandon feels nothing.
The space between them and Brandon is small. The space between them and Brandon will soon be long.
He glances down at his father. His father could've made it well in the church, had he rejected his vices sooner. Brandon witnessed him down a can of beer before they went, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, before jabbing his thumb in the direction of the car. Brandon followed as a prisoner to the guillotine. In his mind, he convinced himself of the peace he’d experience, of the after life that waited for him.
He abstained from dating. (Well, what happened between him and Bkinger was something he was ready to repent a hundred years for. He was misguided. He didn’t know what a downer was, back then.) He abstained from TV. He abstained from swearing, even the smallest of profanities. His final message to Ozolog was encouraging him to join the Church. God knows Ozolog deserved some peace—as did Sparten, Sony, and the others.
Someone, a gruffer older man, among the bleary crowd, told Brandon this:
“Hurry it up.”
Brandon swallows hard. The panic in his mind was muffled, but it was raw. It was over for him now. He wished he could play Roblox again. He wished he could watch cable TV, outside of the approved DVDs. He wished for so many things.
He wouldn’t allow himself to be selfish. Not in his last days. God hated selfish people, as he did apostates and liars. He sings a hymnal in his mind. To drown everything else out.
Some glad morning when this life is over, I’ll fly away.
The shotgun traces cold circles along his chin. His finger finds the trigger, the rest of his hand awkwardly splayed against the leather grip. He didn’t truly know how to use it. He was vaguely instructed by his father, as well as figured it out from watching everyone else.
To a home on God’s celestial shore, I’ll fly away.
He retracts the trigger. He tries not to look at it. But it is so cold, it demands his attention.
Just a few more weary days and then, I’ll fly away…
He can’t seem to steel his nerves. He did something his friend, Ozolog, told him to do when he was scared of going to the dentist—back when his father bothered to take him. ‘Just zone out,’ Ozolog had said. He made it sound so easy.
To a land where joy shall never end—
He stares blankly at a groove in the floor. He pulls the trigger.
I’ll fly away.
For the second time, Brandon is thirteen years old. It is the year 2009. A pocket dimension in time where this new century was intriguing to adults, and the 2010s were intriguing to children.
In class, he sits by Ozolog, who glares at him teasingly. Brandon smiles as he settles back in his chair, having taken a visit to the pencil sharpening station.
Seventh grade was exciting, for it was the year they all could walk to class instead of staying in one. They abandoned fun class jobs, reading the calendar together, and publicly celebrating birthdays with cupcakes. But new fun was to be had, sitting on screeching science lab chairs, and even occasional visits to the computer lab!
Suddenly, Ozolog’s foot collides with his. Brandon tilts his head. Ozolog only does it again.
Brandon tests the waters. He, too, collides his foot against Ozolog’s. That turned out to be the right choice, as now they are playing an engaging game. They snicker in the back. Their foot collisions never hurt. It was silly. And it was fun. Brandon’s chest feels warm despite the everlasting reminder of Hell and everything else bad.
Even when the teacher calls them out for playing ‘footsie’, it is still silly. Brandon feels a part of something special when Ozolog looks at him once more, giggling.
Brandon giggles back. He looks back to the presentation, some information about evolution that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because Sundowners didn’t believe in evolution. Every human was one half, and they descended with their other half after Downing. It didn’t matter, because Brandon would die a few years later. It didn’t matter, because Ozolog nudged a folded note in Brandon’s direction.
Brandon takes the note. He unfolds it.
Have you heard of Roblox? was scrawled onto paper. Ozolog’s handwriting was neat but spaced out. No, Brandon hadn’t heard of Roblox yet. And when he and Ozolog skips on the cement path home, Brandon promises to make an account.
And, next year, when Brandon is homeschooled, the fun continues. Even when Ozolog can no longer play footsie with him. Brandon first played Heli Wars with Ozolog. Then he plays it with Sparten, Sony, Weegee, and Bkinger.
He plays it to ignore the shouting. He stays up past his seven thirty bedtime to play, using safe chat to avoid making too much noise. His friends never seemed to understand why someone as old as him slept at seven. It's just what good Sundowners did. Waking early to watch the sun go up, sleeping once it went down.
He protected his friends, new and old. Placing green bricks and crosses on their builds. Even if nobody understood. Even if Ozolog paused weirdly, saying “He just does that.”
God didn’t punish the ignorant. Despite what the church fellow had said, Brandon believed God wouldn’t punish the infidels. Because that meant his friends, kind and silly, would be punished.
And if his friends were punished and condemned, he couldn’t ever play Roblox again. He couldn’t ever see Ozolog giggle, or smile, or stare at him like Brandon was more than a cog in God’s eternal plan. Was it greed? A moral deficiency? To want to feel like more?
Brandon wasn't conscious enough to know. For he was dead. There was no afterlife, it was all an elaborate trick, manipulation that would continue by the ‘Church elders’ to come. He ended up being a cog, that way. One more death. One more number.
There was no living part of him who could be betrayed. However, if he was alive, he would claim Heaven for himself.
And he would decide
Heaven is where your friends are.