Jeanmarco Halloween
sfw.
mentioned suicide

The year dies in October.

Jean doesn’t know or care much about seasons or the change of colour in leaves, the wind going colder and whirling under his clothes and soul. It’s the 31st, and for some strange reason, it’s not midnight like in those horror films when he’s perched on the floor of his room and fiddling with the old wooden ouija board.

When the brim between living and dead shivers and blurs, when children scream for candy outside and loud orange and neon green screech for attention in the stores, Jean’s sitting in his room inside a chalk pentagram surrounded by candles.

It’s the third year after the incident.

He speaks the words he’s been mumbling to himself all week. Jean puts his fingers on the board, the wood warm and pulsing under his tips. The letters mean nothing, and neither does the triangle that starts moving around all by itself.

Jean smiles and blinks the tears away.

“I missed you so fuckin’ much.”

A shiver runs up and down his spine when Marco giggles, his laughter hollow and foreign.

“Missed you too, idiot.”

Jean swallows, gulps down the guilt and fear, just like every year. Marco becomes less human every time; every time Jean feels a kiss ghosting over his lips, Marco’s colder than before and his blurred spirit hovering over the board becomes thinner and so translucent that it’s almost fucking beautiful.

The hole under his chin where he fired the gun and killed himself is still there.

Marco’s mother followed him half a year later. His father’s in jail now, after three years at last. Marco’s form twitches and coils around Jean’s crossed ankles when Jean tells him how the police came, finally enough evidence. He’d dared to touch another boy, and had gotten himself caught. Finally.

Marco’s last kiss tingles on Jean’s lips, salt and sadness.

“Thank you, Jean.” No, don’t say that, Jean whimpers into his hands and tries to hold him, just fucking keep him close – you come back next year, don’t you Marco?

No. Marco doesn’t say it, but his eyes are the last part of his ghost fading into a golden gleaming light, and he leaves Jean behind with a guilt that’ll never be satisfied, never be eradicated like a vanishing form of silver soul melting with the cold night air flushing in from the window.

Every year, on the 31st of Halloween, Jean sleeps with the board under his pillow.

His fingers find the wood in the middle of the night, and he bites back all those sobs that Marco left behind when he went to peace.