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you think the only people who are people;
Hallucination
His skin was white like paper, thin blue veins pulsing in his wrist. In the mirror, he had seen the dark purple lining underneath his eyes, red lines like snakes on the edges of his eyes. At two in the morning, the sheets had finally felt too heavy for him, so he tried to sleep in his guest room. But the guest room suffocated him with dust, so he tried to sleep on his couch, but the springs had pressed dark fist bruises against his back. At three in the morning, he stumbled to the sink and splashed water over his white paper face and scrubbing the soap over blue veins lining the bones of his hands, then got dressed slowly.
At four in the morning, he sat in the darkness of his kitchen. He had destroyed his grandfather clock a few hours ago. He wasn't mad. But the solemn intonation made it feel like time was chasing after him throughout the house, the same intonation telling him that lemons and oranges, it was time for him to be dead.
Books and notes were scattered across his kitchen table, last attempts to reclaim sleep. He tried the long stories, then the short, then the comforting ones with the bright pictures and smiling teddy bears, and he tossed them all onto a messy pile, that he straightened only out of desperation of his loose hands. His eyes, his damned eyes, there was something irrevocably wrong with them that the words of his own notes began to swim, dripping into each other, his angry scrawls twisting into black fowls with parchment yellow eyes.
That was the first time he heard—him.
It was a soft pattering in the attic. He barely noticed it at first. He enjoyed keeping ghosts around the house. It made his mansion feel less lonely, and their presence was a comfort to him. But ghosts didn't laugh, and he heard the sound of laughter.
The motion was vigorous enough to jerk out of his stupor. It must have, because when he tried to listen keenly for the footsteps again, he only heard silence. Silence, and the soft brush of the night wind against his window, telling him the morning would not be coming for him just yet. He could have sworn that he heard the laughter of a little boy, but as he folded his paper hands with their blue ink over his pile of useless books, he admitted to himself that it was likely only a ghost.
--
“England?”
He started, nearly spilling his tea over his pressed trousers. It took another moment to adjust to the dimness of the light as Canada’s shadow towered over him. He had been sitting at the table, reading the newspaper, when everything had gone suddenly blank. He must have been asleep, but he felt wearier in his bones for it.
“Canada,” he said, his voice raspy as he tried to stand up. “Sorry, I was just—thinking. You know how it is.”
“I see,” Canada said kindly. He was a kind boy, the type who would always apologize. It was a good idea to have lunch with him. It felt comforting. But when he snuck a glance at the date of the newspaper, he was left with the hopeless feeling that the numbers meant nothing to him.
“How have you been lately?”
“Oh,” England said, fingers curling around his sixth cup of tea that day, “Well enough, I suppose. Can’t complain. And you?”
Canada sipped his hot chocolate slowly. “You don’t look very well, England,” he finally said. He always did have heavy lashes, even when he was a boy. When he lowered his eyes to his drink again, the shadows of his lashes fell across his face like black tombstones, stretching across the ground, stone crosses that bore no name because the child had been stillborn in a family of ten with only three alive and next to those nameless soldiers whose bodies were scraped together and not even England’s necromancy could put them back together it was all rather like Humpty Dumpty.
“England?” Canada peered at him. “Have you been sleeping well?”
He thought, for a moment, that he could have said that he wasn’t. It would have been the truth, and it would have been useless, but he entertained the thought. It was such a simple word. But it was all so very meaningless.
“Yes,” he heard himself say. “I’ve been sleeping just fine.”
--
His steps distinctly wobbled. He was only trying to make his way up the UN stairwell when the world seemed to swirl around him. Taking a stop at the second floor doorway, he sat on the cement steps and rubbed his forehead, pinching his nose between his forefinger and thumb. He had to get ahold of himself. It was just another day. Just one more boring meeting and he’d go along just fine.
It was then he heard the sound again, the tinkling laughter of joy. It made his heart hurt, ache within the caverns of his chest, and when he looked up, it felt like the world had stopped. The flutters of his breath caught in his throat when a flash of pale blue seemed to disappear up the stairs, and the small footsteps continued to climb upward. The laughter echoed off the walls, bouncing from above to his lowly below.
Within the second, he had tossed aside the papers he had been holding, and he scrambled frantically after the sound.
“Wait!” he called out. “Wait! Hold—” He tripped, or nearly did, his face slamming close to the railing. He gripped the black rail tightly as his face lurched over the stairwell, staring down at the maze of step upon step upon step, that all led to a small little space several feet below. The footsteps did not stop, nor did the laughter, and he pulled himself back into the space and chased after the sound, clawing at the railings and thudding like stone after him.
On the top floor, the door was open, held by a small rock. The laughter disappeared down the dark hallway, and into a closet door that was partly ajar. In a few quick steps, his fist was clutching at the handle, and he pulled it open, and nearly vomited in his mouth.
The putrefying smell wafted into his nose, and the rats scrambled over his feet, thick, furry beasts, each larger than both his fists together, with their small eyes and their heavy weight. But it wasn’t the rats, by god, it wasn’t even the rats, it was the smell of rotting flesh. The corpses littered around the room, and there was the moaning of the mostly dead, the gases expelled violently, the way the flesh dripped off the skeleton, and how the rats greedily gnawed at the meat of the faces, tearing apart eyeballs for themselves, swarming each body until they were a moving mass of gray, and he tried to scramble backwards, stepping on the rats and feeling the crunch underneath his feet, when someone caught his wrist.
He spun around, and stared into the empty void of the gas mask. When he tried to pull his hand back to himself, he saw the hand was half melted away, but not in the rotten disease of the plague. It was burnt, by mustard gas or by ruinous fire, charred to a blackness that bubbled with the oils of the body, leaving only the bones clinging to the lost flesh. The man was in his uniform, parachute trailing behind him, broken and ravaged, and the mask stared at him.
When another hand was placed behind his shoulder, he struck out violently, flinging himself backward into a wall. But this hand was human, and Hong Kong’s quiet face looked at him. It was always difficult to tell his expression, but there was something about his stature, as if he was a stone shaped through years of a waterfall, that calmed him. It calmed everything, so that when England looked back into the doorway, there was only a pitiful mop and an empty bucket.
“What are you doing here?” Hong Kong’s long red sleeves swept across the floor as he picked up a duster that had fallen out, placing it back onto the shelf. His voice was level and betrayed nothing.
“I… thought I heard something.” England felt for his tie, straightening it, and ignoring the pounding in his head that felt something terrible. “It was nothing. Sorry. What were you doing here?”
“I heard something.” Hong Kong closed the door behind them, but his hand lingered on the knob.
“What?” His question was too sharp, but he could hardly contain himself. But it was as if his heart had beat in his ears.
Hong Kong shrugged his slim shoulders, face unmoving. “You were screaming.”
It wasn’t the answer he had expected. Instinctively, his hand closed around his mouth, to stop the time of his screams. When he realized what he was doing, he curled his hand into a fist and dropped his arm to his side, trying to scrape together his dignity.
“You were mistaken,” he said, and he turned to wobble back down the stairs. He felt another touch to his shoulder, and when he turned around, Hong Kong held out the papers that had fluttered like white butterflies. They were in meticulous order, even though they must have flown throughout the entire stairwell.
Hong Kong looked at him with his deep eyes and said nothing.
--
There was an explosion, an eruption, down at the parking lot. England jumped up from his stupor, where he had been staring at his notes and he had drawn his gun. The second silver bomb dropped, creating a small crater, rippling across the ground. There was nothing like this, there would be never anything like this again, and the shrapnel flew, merely inches away from his head in the trenches. His eyes flickered outside to where the cars were enveloped in flames from the bomb, and he heard the whistling of another, and he flinched and turned around to duck and cover when he realized he had most of the world staring at him from the table.
“Hey, mum,” Australia said. He was the first one to say anything, his rough voice calm. He tickled his koala under one hand as he stood up. “It was just a car door, yeah? It’s all right. Why don’t you put the gun away?”
He was going to ask what gun, then he realized there was a heavy weight in his hand. He looked down numbly at the Westley in his hand. He didn’t remember slipping it into his belt. When he looked outside again, the flames had disappeared. There was no more burning cars, but simply brightly-modeled automobiles that were lined up like candy.
“That’s it,” Australia was saying, “Right there. There we go, gun’s away. Alright, New Zealand, why don’t you take mum outside for a bit? It’s a bit stuffy in here.”
He felt his arm being taken, and he tried to shake her off. “I’m fine,” he said, insistently. “I just… I just need a bit of air.” New Zealand looked at him, then at Australia. Nobody else in the room moved, as if they were all holding their breath underwater, frozen in glass. When Australia gave a slight nod, New Zealand released his arm. He made a small show of patting down his sleeve before he walked out.
Perhaps he had just fallen asleep at the table. Nightmares. They happened. But when he thought about it, how real it felt, the flames blazing below and the fear gripping like black claws against his heart, he wasn’t so sure.
--
He knew they were talking outside. Hong Kong didn’t usually part from Taiwan’s side so early in the day, and not to sit next to Canada. But he tried to ignore it, ignore them, and make his tea and peace. It was his fifteenth cup that day, but he wasn’t sure what day it was. He had notes in his briefcase, but they felt out of order, and the meetings passed by so slowly that he was sure he would die before they all left.
He drank down the tea swiftly, feeling the warmth burn against his throat. He was drinking it sooner and sooner after the water had boiled. Something about the sheer heat that peeled away his lungs made it seem like he could stay awake. When he turned to put the cup away, he heard that noise again. This time, it seemed like all the muscles in his body tightened up, and when he turned, he thought he saw blue and yellow disappear beyond the door.
Shoving the cup onto the table, he darted quickly to the doorway and glanced into the open hallway. But it was only America sitting on the bench, big and bulky, with his leather jacket partly open at the collar and eating a hamburger at the same time. He looked up at England, appearing unconcerned.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing,” England said, stepping out. He glanced up and down, but there was nobody to be seen. “Sorry, just thought… I saw someone pass by here.”
“Nah. I’ve been sitting here since the break.” America swallowed a particularly vigorous piece of burger. “You’re really an idiot, you know. Why don’t you get some sleep?”
“I don’t…” England ran his fingers through his short hair. “I’ve been getting decent sleep.”
“You’ve been getting crappy sleep.” America shrugged, turning back to the magazine balanced on his legs. “Do what you want.”
“I would have done that anyway,” England said dryly, sitting next to him on the bench. America didn’t say anything, flipping through the motorcycle advertisements, lettuce dropping on the headlights of one particular photograph. He scraped it off with his pinky.
“This is kinda awkward.” America glanced at him.
“I don’t know about that,” England said, humoring him. “I think it’s rather nice.”
“That’s the thing. This isn’t nice at all. It’s just kinda creepy.” America flipped through another page on the magazine, hooking it with his ring finger. “You act like I’m supposed to like you. But I really don’t. You’re a pretty crappy brother, and you’re a crappier friend. I don’t know. I just don’t like being with you.”
England looked at him. He couldn’t lie to himself. He had thought—had believed—America might have felt like that. But it was another thing to hear it for himself. To hear the words out of his mouth. It was like a sword struck the barest parts of his heart, over and over again, leaving behind bruises and wounds, shocking his system until he could only stare at the motorcycles in the magazine and try to imagine himself being loved.
“England.” Canada approached him from the other side of the hall. His steps were slow, hesitant, shuffling. Hong Kong stood next to him, not saying anything, as always. He lingered in the shadow, but his steps were quiet and sure.
“What?” England tilted his head towards them.
“Who are you talking to?” Canada asked, finally reaching him. He touched England’s shoulder gently, as if trying to pull him away from the bench.
England glanced to his right, but America was no longer there. Not even his magazine remained, or the lettuce sprinkles that were so judiciously dropped around the bench. It was then, just then, that his heart sank into his chest, and he realized that he was tired. With his wrist, he tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes.
“Nobody,” he murmured. And the silence stretched into the gaps of his lies.
--
He’d been driving when he caught sight of the flash of blue again. It was a cloudy day, where the light was already dim on the horizon. But there was that sound, a familiar sound, that rang in his head, a single note that made his heart ache. When he turned his head, he saw a field of gold, and a boy standing in between the strands, his eyes burning like fire as they looked at him.
And suddenly he wasn’t in his car anymore. He must have left it behind, because he was holding the car keys in his hand. The mud felt sticky on his shoes as he tried to drag his feet through the field. The thin feather tendrils of the reeds reached out for him, lingering on his shirt like tiny hands.
“Come back,” he said. The boy stood a little distant ahead, and suddenly smiled. With a quick turn, the boy was running into the distance, disappearing behind the golden stalks that bent quickly to hide his passage.
“Wait!” He ran faster, shoving the small tufts of seed away from his face, where they tried to scratch out his eyes and crawl into his mouth. His chest began to hurt from the running, muscles with violent spasms, and it burned his lungs to try to gulp down the air. But the sky was growing dimmer, and soon the little flashes of blue became more and more difficult to discern, and blackness fell onto him like a wet wool cloak upon his face, choking him.
Gunfire ripped through the air, and he ducked down into the mud, where it slopped up against his fatigues and dripped down his forearms. It clung to him as he wiggled behind a tree, a disgraceful and disgusting worm in the midst of war. He gasped as he clutched his gun closer to his chest, fingers damp and shaking. Someone was screaming for help, pink intestines splashed out in front of them in the mud and the pouring slick rain, their organs like a long fleshy rope, and the screaming wouldn’t stop, and the hurtling whistling of the bombs came above him. He was cold but he could still shoot, and with a shaking finger, he aimed the gun at the blank forehead of the man whose intestines could never be rewired, his own commander, his friend, the one who had given him the cigarette because he won at poker, the man who he shat with at the latrines, and he pulled the trigger.
Someone pushed his shoulder, and he spun around, spewing the gun fire so quickly that his shoulder jerked back and smashed against the tree. Breathlessly, he tried to stand, sliding in the mud and falling back into the ground. The man in the red uniform stared at him emptily, emptily because his eyes had been eaten by maggots, which still crawled over his face. He had no hands, but his sleeves were empty, flesh still jagged at the ripping and white bone in the middle of the red, and someone was rapping on his window.
He jerked up to see Seychelles peering into his car. Her long hair drooped over her faint blue dress, and she looked absurdly out of place. He managed to roll down his window, catching his breath, and gripped his steering wheel tightly. The keys dangled from his ignition.
“Are you all right?” she asked first, pushing back one pigtail behind her ear. It fell back forward, hitting the side of the car lightly, where the man had stood with his missing hands.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I must have fallen asleep.” He made a show of rubbing his eyes.
“Your eyes were open.” Seychelles looked around in his car. “I have some free time, so if you want me to go shopping with you or something…”
“Shopping? Who said anything about shopping?” England finally released his grip on the steering wheel, fumbling to grasp the keys.
“… You’re at a shopping mall.” Seychelles looked to her right, and he looked forward to see the large shopping center in front of him, bright letters and plastic smiles. He felt a sinking feeling in his heart, the pounding headache beating drums against the inside of his skull.
--
He had destroyed all the clocks in his house. It was as if he had slipped away into a fairy world, where all time had frozen. But it wasn’t a fairy world, because his wrist hurt where he had smashed his alarm clock that ticked at him, at where he plugged up his dripping faucet, and even sealed the window in his bedroom so the whistling wind couldn’t have at him.
Now the silence was stifling to him, and he shifted in his bed. He closed his eyes. He counted sheep. He got a glass of milk, and drank it in one gulp. He sprawled on his large bed, then curled into a small corner. But his eyes had been glued open, and he finally crawled out of his bed to his rocking chair.
Pressing both palms to his eyes, he leaned back and tried to relax. He was tired. He was tired, and he was old, and he ached from every joint. His back dully pained him, his knees wrecked him, but it was his heart that gave out the worse. He only wanted to sleep, and he was so exhausted that he simply couldn’t.
“You’re an idiot.” America sat on his bed, flipping through a different catalog of motorcycles. He was smearing ketchup over the rumpled sheets that stank of sweat and tears. “How long are you going to keep this up?”
“It’s not my fault,” he said, his voice raspy. His head hurt.
“It’s always your fault. That’s why nobody likes you. I don’t like you.” America slurped noisily on his soda. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “Things are never going to get better for you. I mean, just look at you.”
“Shut up.” England tried to stand up, but his legs felt weak and the room spun. He rubbed his forehead again, but America was still there, eating, drinking, watching with eyes that glared like the sun. He only wanted to sleep. He only wanted to able to finally rest, after two days—three days—how many days had it been—
“You still read that crap?” America picked up a romance novel between his forefinger and thumb, swinging the book onto the floor. “You don’t get a happy ending.”
“I get what I want.” Even when he said it, the words seemed spitefully childish.
America smiled. His smile was filled with bats and white skulls lying in the mud, because something wicked this way came. “No, you don’t,” he said softly. “Because you’re England.”
--
He was strapped to the stake, hay bristling underneath his bare feet. The villagers loomed in a half-circle around him, staring with cold eyes. He shivered through his thin shift, eyes flickering to the empty houses. No matter how hard he tried to tug at his hands, they were bound so tightly that he could no longer feel the tips of his fingers, even when he hit them against the wood.
One man stepped forward in the crowd. He wore a red uniform. He had golden hair and blue eyes, and a young look around his face. He stared sullenly at him.
He wet his cracked lips, and whispered, “America.”
America put down his rifle, placed down his musket balls, and began to strike at the wood, harder and harder. It was like a chanting in his brain, and England struggled futilely against the rope. The flames bit at his feet, and then it sprang up in one motion, engulfing him and burning his skin until it bubbled on him, searing pain that burned white hot in his mind and he was screaming and twisting and America watched with his dark eyes and bandaged feet. It was all wrong. America didn’t happen until later, much later, and the burning happened before, and his king stared at him with those dark eyes because he walked into the throne room and it was a different king and a different queen, and he had been playing with the sticks when the ships first came to the coast, black ships that wanted gold and would pay with fire to earn it.
--
“Are you lonely?”
America sat on the sofa, his feet on the good cushions. It tracked dirt everywhere. England buried his face into his hands, trying to cover his vulnerable flesh with thin hands.
“No,” he said. It was barely a sound, a gargled choke of admittance.
“Liar.” America stood up off the couch, stretching. His shirt raised to show his white undershirt, and England stared because it was too real. It was all too real for him.
“I’m fi…” He had to swallow to wet his throat.
America laughed mirthlessly, then stretched out a single finger to him. He closed one eye behind his shining glasses, and whispered, “Bang.”
The bullet ripped through his chest, and it took him by surprise. He dropped his tea cup, splashing the scalding hot water down his thigh and knee, dampening his trousers as blood dampened his clean white shirt. The bullet hole still smoked, smoldering at the edges, and he gasped breathlessly as he placed his hand over his chest to try and stop the blood. His hand was cut where he had dropped the cup, the white china shard still sticking out of his hand like an absurd sundial against the lines of his palm.
When he tried to peel off his shirt to see the wound, his skin began to sloughing off. His skin had turned a sickly color, like a rotting lemon, with black at the edges where the skin had began to die. He reached up to his face instinctively, and felt his face sliding off. He tried to keep himself together, but the skin fell like paper to the floor, surrounding his boots. Stumbling, he tried to reach the first aid kit, absurdly, as if he could bandage together his life, when he stepped in something cold.
He jerked back, shuddering at the expectation of the horror, but he had only stepped in some ice cream. When he looked up, Sealand stood at the doorway, holding an ice cream cone. He didn’t say anything, didn’t cry, just looked up at him with a faintly unsettled stubborn look on his face.
“Sealand,” he said. He gripped his own shoulder tightly, and then realized there was no blood on his shirt or shoes or anywhere. When he looked back, he could see where he had dropped his tea, but nothing more. No sign of America, no sign of himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning back. “I’ll buy you another ice cream, so—don’t cry—”
“’m not crying.” Sealand threw away the cone as if it suddenly disgusted him. He sat down on the couch stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t want one anymore.”
“Are you angry?” England sat down across from him, bending his head forward. “I just didn’t see you there. That’s all. I’m sorry. Don’t pout.” The words seemed oddly complacent, peaceful, unlike him.
“I just don’t want one,” Sealand said pointedly, and then he took out his game, and began to play. The sounds of beeping filled the room, and England leaned back into his own chair, gingerly, to watch him. He didn’t say anything, and neither did Sealand, but he had a feeling that Sealand was only there to watch him, and to make sure his skin didn’t slough off.
--
For dinner, there was rabbit.
A furry white rabbit, coat thick and matted down with blood. Its head sat on the dish, surrounded by half-heartedly torn lettuce. Its body sat on the main plate on the table. When England looked into the blank red eyes, he thought of his own little rabbit from his childhood, and he felt sick.
“Eat up,” America said.
Somewhere, a boy was laughing.
--
It was raining.
What day was it?
He had ripped out all the calendars of his house, and now lay down on his side to listen to the quiet of his room. The rain fell softly against his house at first, then harder, then softer. The gray skies made it impossible to tell the time of day. His broken alarm clock said it was three in the morning, his scattered grandfather clock told him one, and his watch with the cracked face said it was only five in the evening.
The electricity of his phones had irritated him, so he had tossed his cell phone into the sink. He had shoved the pills down his throat, hard against the softness of his stomach, but they did nothing and he had spilled them across his tiled bathroom floor in frustration. He was constantly tired, but sleep hovered like a heavy rain cloud above his head, heavy and threatening, but promising nothing.
“Why are you doing this?” He hung his head between his knees, grasping his short hair between his fingers. His breath ran ragged, but when he looked up, America stood at the foot of his bed, looking down at him. The dark skies cast silhouettes for the reflection of his glasses.
America only shrugged, sitting down before the mirror. He looked real. He must be real, with his trousers bunched up over his solid brown shoes, the way his shirt crumpled, dusty hamburger remains scattered on his trousers.
“Stop it!” England grasped for something, anything, on his drawer, and when he found his keys, he threw it against the mirror. America didn’t flinch as it smashed next to his head, immediately spreading a spiderweb of cracks over England’s anguished reflection. “Leave me be! Damn it! Damn you!”
“There’s a leak.” America shrugged. “In your house.”
England sat in his bed for another moment, then he slowly slid off his bed. With his bare feet, he padded out of his bedroom, leaving America behind to slowly eat his perpetual burger. It was quiet, dank, and dark. The water ran through his metal pipes, leaving a strong gurgling sound that rang in his ears.
Something cold and wet fell on the back of his neck. He touched it, looking up. There was a leak in his house. He felt another splash in his eye. He didn’t want to put a pot there. The sound of water ringing against metal would be too much for him to handle. But he was reluctant to ruin his floorboards, either, so he began to move down the stairs to fetch a pan.
In the kitchen, he heard the upstairs floor creak, as if something heavy was pressing upon it. He looked up, dismally, to see a crack on his kitchen ceiling. The thin black line grew into a crisp smile, and water began to splash into his hair, dampening his pajamas. Some rang into the pot that he was holding, sweet siren songs. He watched as the water collected at the bottom of the pan.
Then he was drowning.
The water rushed down the stairs, a torrential rage of frothing white foam, crashing into the back wall of his house and then careening past the corners to come crashing at him, hitting his body at full force. He tried to grab at the table, but the water rushed too quickly and too fast. The cold hit him first, a shock that made him tremble even when he was under water, completely submerged. But he couldn’t swim, and he frantically tried to grasp along the walls to pull himself above the waves. The walls were distant, and he could only try to push himself through helpless efforts to something, anything, that could raise him higher.
But he was drowning in blood, the bitter taste filling his mouth. When he slammed his leg against the table, he pushed himself upward, coughing and hacking. With every large gulp of breath, he was pulled back down in the undercurrent, the painful need to breathe pressing against his soft lungs. Distantly, he heard the sound of Gatling guns, then the shots fired from a Browning, and the screams of women and children.
Then the sound of a little boy laughing.
He tried to see through the blood, but the bitter taste filled his mouth and he was swallowing more and more in large gulps, and he was finally pulled down down down and it was all dark and
It was a ballroom, with skeletons in the large ladies’ dresses, their corsets, their mink stoles draped across their shoulders, and the men with their waistcoats and trousers all done up, except they were all just skulls. They stood around and drank water and ate caviar, except the water dripped from their ribs to the floor in the patter, and the caviar splashed down onto it.
They turned to look at him, in one motion. Their eyeless sockets stared at him, and the witches cackled from beyond the mortal realm. He tried to turn to leave, but another flash of blue caught his eye. He started immediately, spinning to catch sight of the boy run up the velvet-covered stairs. He didn’t stop to think, but shoved past the skeletons, trying to climb the stairs to follow him.
But the skeletons began to moan, with the vocal cords they no longer owned, and they used their phalanges to grip at the sides of his arm, dragging him back, reaching at him, touching his eyes and his hair, bone scraping against his flesh. He shoved them away violently, knocking more than one back to clatter in a dusty pile of bones, which they stirred and tried to put themselves back together between the mess of their golden dresses and black suits.
He flung one skull against a wall, watching it smash into pieces, before he finally reached the stairwell, and taking two steps at a time, he climbed it. The boy’s giggles still resounded in the high ballroom, except it wasn’t a ballroom anymore. He had climbed the stairs to his attic, where he leaned on his knees, panting, looking around.
The boxes were stacked on top of each other, artifacts that he always meant to ship into a museum, but something old about him made him keep. He coughed at the dust he had stirred up, trying to shake the cobwebs out of his head. He was sweating, and he couldn’t tell the time. When he looked outside his small window, where the balcony had been sealed shut for centuries, the sky was still a gloomy darkness.
Something shifted behind him. He turned to look, but nobody appeared. Hesitantly, he stepped forward to the darkness. There were only boxes, boxes of memories, boxes of last hopes, boxes of failures and boxes of lost dreams. He opened one, and then felt sickened. Thin cloth, ravaged by age, sat on the top of the box. A light blue nightgown with frills that he had sewed lovingly on the collars, the mud he had washed with his elbows in the fresh rivers.
With a harsh, hoarse cry, he stumbled back and bumped into America’s chest.
“Go to hell, England.” America turned around and walked away, footsteps thudding.
“Wait—” England began to start after him, but the laughter caught his ears again. But this time, he saw him. He saw the little boy with the golden hair and bright blue eyes, smiling innocently, standing in the light blue nightgown. The boy giggled and motioned him to come forward.
It felt like he was a dead man. Slowly, he stepped forward, nearly tripping over the boxes, but relentless. When he had almost reached him, the boy took a step back. For every step forward he took, the boy took another step back, until they were in the open air, the fields of gold waving gently in the wind and the heartbreaking blue sky stretching above them to eternity. The boy smiled again at him, reassuringly.
His skin felt damp. Gently, he knelt, trying to coax him forward.
“Here,” he said softly. “I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
The boy—America—little America, who loved him, always would, never leave him— smiled.
“Liar,” America whispered, and stepped back.
“America!” England lurched forward, and suddenly he felt himself falling, gravity pulling him down, and then everything was black, black, black, but still he did not sleep, just painfully wheezed, felt his ribs crunch underneath him, felt his hands shatter, knees bent, head smashed on the ground, blood spreading beneath him like a blood eagle, glass shattering everywhere underneath him in small shining shards that bit at his fingertips and the broad palms of his hand, tearing violently into his forearm, and he heard footsteps and someone was shouting, but it was all in his head, it was always in his head
but that didn’t make it a lie.
Someone was shaking him, rolling him on his side, but he couldn’t see them. He thought it had to be—had to be a soldier who lost his leg by a stray cannon ball—a young boy who couldn’t smile anymore—had to be—had to be an impoverished woman, staring at him, asking with her eyes why he had taken away her daughters and sons—had to be another man he failed—another person who would hate him—he tried to push them away, but strong hands caught him by the wrists.
“… doing!”
Sound was rushing back into his ears, and he flickered his eyes heavily towards the person. It looked like America, if America was damp from the rain and his face seized with anger. When England tilted his head to his house, he saw the broken balcony from the attic. He tried to push America away to stand, but America folded him into his arms, lifting him back into the house.
“What are you doing here,” England murmured, pressing one hand across his eyes. It felt like there was something had gone wrong with his wrist, which he laid flat on his stomach. Every time America moved, it felt like the bone jarred into his flesh and he shuddered quietly.
“Because,” America said, climbing the stairs. “I got pulled aside twenty times on my birthday party with people tell me to check up on you. Twenty times. A bunch by Canada.” He had reached England’s bedroom, and he propped him on the bed. Within a few minutes, he was wrapping his wrist tightly within white bandages. It hurt, but England didn’t let it show on his face. The sleepiness numbed it some.
“I forgot it was your birthday,” England said. It was all just one long hallucination. America here, America there, America. It was always America. And it was America who was tugging his wet shirt off him, awkwardly trying to stuff his limp arms into a dry one, clumsily doing up the buttons, Nantucket bobbing up and down.
“What were you doing up there?” America sat on the foot on his bed, glaring at him behind his glasses. He looked almost human, almost real.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.” America pushed up his glasses. “Great. That’s real great. Hey, did anyone tell you that you look horrible?”
“I’m fine.”
“You jumped off a third story building.” But America relented from his tirade, and looked at him honestly, with open eyes that looked almost concerned. “You look really crappy. You know that?”
“I don’t.” England tried to rub his eyes, but the sharp jolt of his injured wrist stopped him.
“You look tired. When’s the last time you slept?”
He didn’t say anything, and America took that as an answer. After another lingering moment, he reached over and gently pushed England into the bed. Clumsily, he folded the blanket up to his shoulders, and, clothes and all, laid down next to him on his stomach. He glanced at England, challenging him to object, but when England only looked at him quietly, he rolled onto his back to stare up at the ceiling.
“Go to sleep, England.”
“I got you a present,” England said miserably. The words felt hard in his throat. “You… crashed your motorcycle, the other day… so I got you a new one. It’s… the keys are in the drawer, and…”
“I’m not leaving.” America turned his face and smiled at him, half self-consciously. “But thanks.”
England felt his eyes flickering shut. Everything suddenly felt so heavy, and the pillow deep and comfortable. He could smell America beside him, and with the last of his strength, he pushed his good hand to touch his shoulder, to see if he was real. But it proved nothing. Nothing could prove reality.
“Are you real?” he murmured sleepily. The warm presence beside him washed over him, deeper and deeper, lulling him to a quiet darkness. For the first time, it felt almost peaceful. The cold room seemed smaller, and when he gently pushed with his fingertips, the solidness of another person comforted him.
“Yeah. I’m real.” America grasped his hand tightly. “You made a lot of people worry. Canada wouldn’t stop talking about it, and Hong Kong got kinda angry at me, and Australia tried to hit me, and New Zealand was New Zealand about it, and… You need to sleep.”
“Couldn’t…” England breathed shallowly.
“Couldn’t?”
“Couldn’t.” For a second, England managed to open his eyes partly, enough to see the blurry shape of America curiously staring at him. “Happy birthday, America.”
It was silent, and he thought for a moment that he had already fallen asleep. Then, he felt an arm wrap around his shoulder, and a soft kiss to his forehead.
“Love you, too.”
And then there was only sleep.
His skin was white like paper, thin blue veins pulsing in his wrist. In the mirror, he had seen the dark purple lining underneath his eyes, red lines like snakes on the edges of his eyes. At two in the morning, the sheets had finally felt too heavy for him, so he tried to sleep in his guest room. But the guest room suffocated him with dust, so he tried to sleep on his couch, but the springs had pressed dark fist bruises against his back. At three in the morning, he stumbled to the sink and splashed water over his white paper face and scrubbing the soap over blue veins lining the bones of his hands, then got dressed slowly.
At four in the morning, he sat in the darkness of his kitchen. He had destroyed his grandfather clock a few hours ago. He wasn't mad. But the solemn intonation made it feel like time was chasing after him throughout the house, the same intonation telling him that lemons and oranges, it was time for him to be dead.
Books and notes were scattered across his kitchen table, last attempts to reclaim sleep. He tried the long stories, then the short, then the comforting ones with the bright pictures and smiling teddy bears, and he tossed them all onto a messy pile, that he straightened only out of desperation of his loose hands. His eyes, his damned eyes, there was something irrevocably wrong with them that the words of his own notes began to swim, dripping into each other, his angry scrawls twisting into black fowls with parchment yellow eyes.
That was the first time he heard—him.
It was a soft pattering in the attic. He barely noticed it at first. He enjoyed keeping ghosts around the house. It made his mansion feel less lonely, and their presence was a comfort to him. But ghosts didn't laugh, and he heard the sound of laughter.
The motion was vigorous enough to jerk out of his stupor. It must have, because when he tried to listen keenly for the footsteps again, he only heard silence. Silence, and the soft brush of the night wind against his window, telling him the morning would not be coming for him just yet. He could have sworn that he heard the laughter of a little boy, but as he folded his paper hands with their blue ink over his pile of useless books, he admitted to himself that it was likely only a ghost.
--
“England?”
He started, nearly spilling his tea over his pressed trousers. It took another moment to adjust to the dimness of the light as Canada’s shadow towered over him. He had been sitting at the table, reading the newspaper, when everything had gone suddenly blank. He must have been asleep, but he felt wearier in his bones for it.
“Canada,” he said, his voice raspy as he tried to stand up. “Sorry, I was just—thinking. You know how it is.”
“I see,” Canada said kindly. He was a kind boy, the type who would always apologize. It was a good idea to have lunch with him. It felt comforting. But when he snuck a glance at the date of the newspaper, he was left with the hopeless feeling that the numbers meant nothing to him.
“How have you been lately?”
“Oh,” England said, fingers curling around his sixth cup of tea that day, “Well enough, I suppose. Can’t complain. And you?”
Canada sipped his hot chocolate slowly. “You don’t look very well, England,” he finally said. He always did have heavy lashes, even when he was a boy. When he lowered his eyes to his drink again, the shadows of his lashes fell across his face like black tombstones, stretching across the ground, stone crosses that bore no name because the child had been stillborn in a family of ten with only three alive and next to those nameless soldiers whose bodies were scraped together and not even England’s necromancy could put them back together it was all rather like Humpty Dumpty.
“England?” Canada peered at him. “Have you been sleeping well?”
He thought, for a moment, that he could have said that he wasn’t. It would have been the truth, and it would have been useless, but he entertained the thought. It was such a simple word. But it was all so very meaningless.
“Yes,” he heard himself say. “I’ve been sleeping just fine.”
--
His steps distinctly wobbled. He was only trying to make his way up the UN stairwell when the world seemed to swirl around him. Taking a stop at the second floor doorway, he sat on the cement steps and rubbed his forehead, pinching his nose between his forefinger and thumb. He had to get ahold of himself. It was just another day. Just one more boring meeting and he’d go along just fine.
It was then he heard the sound again, the tinkling laughter of joy. It made his heart hurt, ache within the caverns of his chest, and when he looked up, it felt like the world had stopped. The flutters of his breath caught in his throat when a flash of pale blue seemed to disappear up the stairs, and the small footsteps continued to climb upward. The laughter echoed off the walls, bouncing from above to his lowly below.
Within the second, he had tossed aside the papers he had been holding, and he scrambled frantically after the sound.
“Wait!” he called out. “Wait! Hold—” He tripped, or nearly did, his face slamming close to the railing. He gripped the black rail tightly as his face lurched over the stairwell, staring down at the maze of step upon step upon step, that all led to a small little space several feet below. The footsteps did not stop, nor did the laughter, and he pulled himself back into the space and chased after the sound, clawing at the railings and thudding like stone after him.
On the top floor, the door was open, held by a small rock. The laughter disappeared down the dark hallway, and into a closet door that was partly ajar. In a few quick steps, his fist was clutching at the handle, and he pulled it open, and nearly vomited in his mouth.
The putrefying smell wafted into his nose, and the rats scrambled over his feet, thick, furry beasts, each larger than both his fists together, with their small eyes and their heavy weight. But it wasn’t the rats, by god, it wasn’t even the rats, it was the smell of rotting flesh. The corpses littered around the room, and there was the moaning of the mostly dead, the gases expelled violently, the way the flesh dripped off the skeleton, and how the rats greedily gnawed at the meat of the faces, tearing apart eyeballs for themselves, swarming each body until they were a moving mass of gray, and he tried to scramble backwards, stepping on the rats and feeling the crunch underneath his feet, when someone caught his wrist.
He spun around, and stared into the empty void of the gas mask. When he tried to pull his hand back to himself, he saw the hand was half melted away, but not in the rotten disease of the plague. It was burnt, by mustard gas or by ruinous fire, charred to a blackness that bubbled with the oils of the body, leaving only the bones clinging to the lost flesh. The man was in his uniform, parachute trailing behind him, broken and ravaged, and the mask stared at him.
When another hand was placed behind his shoulder, he struck out violently, flinging himself backward into a wall. But this hand was human, and Hong Kong’s quiet face looked at him. It was always difficult to tell his expression, but there was something about his stature, as if he was a stone shaped through years of a waterfall, that calmed him. It calmed everything, so that when England looked back into the doorway, there was only a pitiful mop and an empty bucket.
“What are you doing here?” Hong Kong’s long red sleeves swept across the floor as he picked up a duster that had fallen out, placing it back onto the shelf. His voice was level and betrayed nothing.
“I… thought I heard something.” England felt for his tie, straightening it, and ignoring the pounding in his head that felt something terrible. “It was nothing. Sorry. What were you doing here?”
“I heard something.” Hong Kong closed the door behind them, but his hand lingered on the knob.
“What?” His question was too sharp, but he could hardly contain himself. But it was as if his heart had beat in his ears.
Hong Kong shrugged his slim shoulders, face unmoving. “You were screaming.”
It wasn’t the answer he had expected. Instinctively, his hand closed around his mouth, to stop the time of his screams. When he realized what he was doing, he curled his hand into a fist and dropped his arm to his side, trying to scrape together his dignity.
“You were mistaken,” he said, and he turned to wobble back down the stairs. He felt another touch to his shoulder, and when he turned around, Hong Kong held out the papers that had fluttered like white butterflies. They were in meticulous order, even though they must have flown throughout the entire stairwell.
Hong Kong looked at him with his deep eyes and said nothing.
--
There was an explosion, an eruption, down at the parking lot. England jumped up from his stupor, where he had been staring at his notes and he had drawn his gun. The second silver bomb dropped, creating a small crater, rippling across the ground. There was nothing like this, there would be never anything like this again, and the shrapnel flew, merely inches away from his head in the trenches. His eyes flickered outside to where the cars were enveloped in flames from the bomb, and he heard the whistling of another, and he flinched and turned around to duck and cover when he realized he had most of the world staring at him from the table.
“Hey, mum,” Australia said. He was the first one to say anything, his rough voice calm. He tickled his koala under one hand as he stood up. “It was just a car door, yeah? It’s all right. Why don’t you put the gun away?”
He was going to ask what gun, then he realized there was a heavy weight in his hand. He looked down numbly at the Westley in his hand. He didn’t remember slipping it into his belt. When he looked outside again, the flames had disappeared. There was no more burning cars, but simply brightly-modeled automobiles that were lined up like candy.
“That’s it,” Australia was saying, “Right there. There we go, gun’s away. Alright, New Zealand, why don’t you take mum outside for a bit? It’s a bit stuffy in here.”
He felt his arm being taken, and he tried to shake her off. “I’m fine,” he said, insistently. “I just… I just need a bit of air.” New Zealand looked at him, then at Australia. Nobody else in the room moved, as if they were all holding their breath underwater, frozen in glass. When Australia gave a slight nod, New Zealand released his arm. He made a small show of patting down his sleeve before he walked out.
Perhaps he had just fallen asleep at the table. Nightmares. They happened. But when he thought about it, how real it felt, the flames blazing below and the fear gripping like black claws against his heart, he wasn’t so sure.
--
He knew they were talking outside. Hong Kong didn’t usually part from Taiwan’s side so early in the day, and not to sit next to Canada. But he tried to ignore it, ignore them, and make his tea and peace. It was his fifteenth cup that day, but he wasn’t sure what day it was. He had notes in his briefcase, but they felt out of order, and the meetings passed by so slowly that he was sure he would die before they all left.
He drank down the tea swiftly, feeling the warmth burn against his throat. He was drinking it sooner and sooner after the water had boiled. Something about the sheer heat that peeled away his lungs made it seem like he could stay awake. When he turned to put the cup away, he heard that noise again. This time, it seemed like all the muscles in his body tightened up, and when he turned, he thought he saw blue and yellow disappear beyond the door.
Shoving the cup onto the table, he darted quickly to the doorway and glanced into the open hallway. But it was only America sitting on the bench, big and bulky, with his leather jacket partly open at the collar and eating a hamburger at the same time. He looked up at England, appearing unconcerned.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing,” England said, stepping out. He glanced up and down, but there was nobody to be seen. “Sorry, just thought… I saw someone pass by here.”
“Nah. I’ve been sitting here since the break.” America swallowed a particularly vigorous piece of burger. “You’re really an idiot, you know. Why don’t you get some sleep?”
“I don’t…” England ran his fingers through his short hair. “I’ve been getting decent sleep.”
“You’ve been getting crappy sleep.” America shrugged, turning back to the magazine balanced on his legs. “Do what you want.”
“I would have done that anyway,” England said dryly, sitting next to him on the bench. America didn’t say anything, flipping through the motorcycle advertisements, lettuce dropping on the headlights of one particular photograph. He scraped it off with his pinky.
“This is kinda awkward.” America glanced at him.
“I don’t know about that,” England said, humoring him. “I think it’s rather nice.”
“That’s the thing. This isn’t nice at all. It’s just kinda creepy.” America flipped through another page on the magazine, hooking it with his ring finger. “You act like I’m supposed to like you. But I really don’t. You’re a pretty crappy brother, and you’re a crappier friend. I don’t know. I just don’t like being with you.”
England looked at him. He couldn’t lie to himself. He had thought—had believed—America might have felt like that. But it was another thing to hear it for himself. To hear the words out of his mouth. It was like a sword struck the barest parts of his heart, over and over again, leaving behind bruises and wounds, shocking his system until he could only stare at the motorcycles in the magazine and try to imagine himself being loved.
“England.” Canada approached him from the other side of the hall. His steps were slow, hesitant, shuffling. Hong Kong stood next to him, not saying anything, as always. He lingered in the shadow, but his steps were quiet and sure.
“What?” England tilted his head towards them.
“Who are you talking to?” Canada asked, finally reaching him. He touched England’s shoulder gently, as if trying to pull him away from the bench.
England glanced to his right, but America was no longer there. Not even his magazine remained, or the lettuce sprinkles that were so judiciously dropped around the bench. It was then, just then, that his heart sank into his chest, and he realized that he was tired. With his wrist, he tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes.
“Nobody,” he murmured. And the silence stretched into the gaps of his lies.
--
He’d been driving when he caught sight of the flash of blue again. It was a cloudy day, where the light was already dim on the horizon. But there was that sound, a familiar sound, that rang in his head, a single note that made his heart ache. When he turned his head, he saw a field of gold, and a boy standing in between the strands, his eyes burning like fire as they looked at him.
And suddenly he wasn’t in his car anymore. He must have left it behind, because he was holding the car keys in his hand. The mud felt sticky on his shoes as he tried to drag his feet through the field. The thin feather tendrils of the reeds reached out for him, lingering on his shirt like tiny hands.
“Come back,” he said. The boy stood a little distant ahead, and suddenly smiled. With a quick turn, the boy was running into the distance, disappearing behind the golden stalks that bent quickly to hide his passage.
“Wait!” He ran faster, shoving the small tufts of seed away from his face, where they tried to scratch out his eyes and crawl into his mouth. His chest began to hurt from the running, muscles with violent spasms, and it burned his lungs to try to gulp down the air. But the sky was growing dimmer, and soon the little flashes of blue became more and more difficult to discern, and blackness fell onto him like a wet wool cloak upon his face, choking him.
Gunfire ripped through the air, and he ducked down into the mud, where it slopped up against his fatigues and dripped down his forearms. It clung to him as he wiggled behind a tree, a disgraceful and disgusting worm in the midst of war. He gasped as he clutched his gun closer to his chest, fingers damp and shaking. Someone was screaming for help, pink intestines splashed out in front of them in the mud and the pouring slick rain, their organs like a long fleshy rope, and the screaming wouldn’t stop, and the hurtling whistling of the bombs came above him. He was cold but he could still shoot, and with a shaking finger, he aimed the gun at the blank forehead of the man whose intestines could never be rewired, his own commander, his friend, the one who had given him the cigarette because he won at poker, the man who he shat with at the latrines, and he pulled the trigger.
Someone pushed his shoulder, and he spun around, spewing the gun fire so quickly that his shoulder jerked back and smashed against the tree. Breathlessly, he tried to stand, sliding in the mud and falling back into the ground. The man in the red uniform stared at him emptily, emptily because his eyes had been eaten by maggots, which still crawled over his face. He had no hands, but his sleeves were empty, flesh still jagged at the ripping and white bone in the middle of the red, and someone was rapping on his window.
He jerked up to see Seychelles peering into his car. Her long hair drooped over her faint blue dress, and she looked absurdly out of place. He managed to roll down his window, catching his breath, and gripped his steering wheel tightly. The keys dangled from his ignition.
“Are you all right?” she asked first, pushing back one pigtail behind her ear. It fell back forward, hitting the side of the car lightly, where the man had stood with his missing hands.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I must have fallen asleep.” He made a show of rubbing his eyes.
“Your eyes were open.” Seychelles looked around in his car. “I have some free time, so if you want me to go shopping with you or something…”
“Shopping? Who said anything about shopping?” England finally released his grip on the steering wheel, fumbling to grasp the keys.
“… You’re at a shopping mall.” Seychelles looked to her right, and he looked forward to see the large shopping center in front of him, bright letters and plastic smiles. He felt a sinking feeling in his heart, the pounding headache beating drums against the inside of his skull.
--
He had destroyed all the clocks in his house. It was as if he had slipped away into a fairy world, where all time had frozen. But it wasn’t a fairy world, because his wrist hurt where he had smashed his alarm clock that ticked at him, at where he plugged up his dripping faucet, and even sealed the window in his bedroom so the whistling wind couldn’t have at him.
Now the silence was stifling to him, and he shifted in his bed. He closed his eyes. He counted sheep. He got a glass of milk, and drank it in one gulp. He sprawled on his large bed, then curled into a small corner. But his eyes had been glued open, and he finally crawled out of his bed to his rocking chair.
Pressing both palms to his eyes, he leaned back and tried to relax. He was tired. He was tired, and he was old, and he ached from every joint. His back dully pained him, his knees wrecked him, but it was his heart that gave out the worse. He only wanted to sleep, and he was so exhausted that he simply couldn’t.
“You’re an idiot.” America sat on his bed, flipping through a different catalog of motorcycles. He was smearing ketchup over the rumpled sheets that stank of sweat and tears. “How long are you going to keep this up?”
“It’s not my fault,” he said, his voice raspy. His head hurt.
“It’s always your fault. That’s why nobody likes you. I don’t like you.” America slurped noisily on his soda. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “Things are never going to get better for you. I mean, just look at you.”
“Shut up.” England tried to stand up, but his legs felt weak and the room spun. He rubbed his forehead again, but America was still there, eating, drinking, watching with eyes that glared like the sun. He only wanted to sleep. He only wanted to able to finally rest, after two days—three days—how many days had it been—
“You still read that crap?” America picked up a romance novel between his forefinger and thumb, swinging the book onto the floor. “You don’t get a happy ending.”
“I get what I want.” Even when he said it, the words seemed spitefully childish.
America smiled. His smile was filled with bats and white skulls lying in the mud, because something wicked this way came. “No, you don’t,” he said softly. “Because you’re England.”
--
He was strapped to the stake, hay bristling underneath his bare feet. The villagers loomed in a half-circle around him, staring with cold eyes. He shivered through his thin shift, eyes flickering to the empty houses. No matter how hard he tried to tug at his hands, they were bound so tightly that he could no longer feel the tips of his fingers, even when he hit them against the wood.
One man stepped forward in the crowd. He wore a red uniform. He had golden hair and blue eyes, and a young look around his face. He stared sullenly at him.
He wet his cracked lips, and whispered, “America.”
America put down his rifle, placed down his musket balls, and began to strike at the wood, harder and harder. It was like a chanting in his brain, and England struggled futilely against the rope. The flames bit at his feet, and then it sprang up in one motion, engulfing him and burning his skin until it bubbled on him, searing pain that burned white hot in his mind and he was screaming and twisting and America watched with his dark eyes and bandaged feet. It was all wrong. America didn’t happen until later, much later, and the burning happened before, and his king stared at him with those dark eyes because he walked into the throne room and it was a different king and a different queen, and he had been playing with the sticks when the ships first came to the coast, black ships that wanted gold and would pay with fire to earn it.
--
“Are you lonely?”
America sat on the sofa, his feet on the good cushions. It tracked dirt everywhere. England buried his face into his hands, trying to cover his vulnerable flesh with thin hands.
“No,” he said. It was barely a sound, a gargled choke of admittance.
“Liar.” America stood up off the couch, stretching. His shirt raised to show his white undershirt, and England stared because it was too real. It was all too real for him.
“I’m fi…” He had to swallow to wet his throat.
America laughed mirthlessly, then stretched out a single finger to him. He closed one eye behind his shining glasses, and whispered, “Bang.”
The bullet ripped through his chest, and it took him by surprise. He dropped his tea cup, splashing the scalding hot water down his thigh and knee, dampening his trousers as blood dampened his clean white shirt. The bullet hole still smoked, smoldering at the edges, and he gasped breathlessly as he placed his hand over his chest to try and stop the blood. His hand was cut where he had dropped the cup, the white china shard still sticking out of his hand like an absurd sundial against the lines of his palm.
When he tried to peel off his shirt to see the wound, his skin began to sloughing off. His skin had turned a sickly color, like a rotting lemon, with black at the edges where the skin had began to die. He reached up to his face instinctively, and felt his face sliding off. He tried to keep himself together, but the skin fell like paper to the floor, surrounding his boots. Stumbling, he tried to reach the first aid kit, absurdly, as if he could bandage together his life, when he stepped in something cold.
He jerked back, shuddering at the expectation of the horror, but he had only stepped in some ice cream. When he looked up, Sealand stood at the doorway, holding an ice cream cone. He didn’t say anything, didn’t cry, just looked up at him with a faintly unsettled stubborn look on his face.
“Sealand,” he said. He gripped his own shoulder tightly, and then realized there was no blood on his shirt or shoes or anywhere. When he looked back, he could see where he had dropped his tea, but nothing more. No sign of America, no sign of himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning back. “I’ll buy you another ice cream, so—don’t cry—”
“’m not crying.” Sealand threw away the cone as if it suddenly disgusted him. He sat down on the couch stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t want one anymore.”
“Are you angry?” England sat down across from him, bending his head forward. “I just didn’t see you there. That’s all. I’m sorry. Don’t pout.” The words seemed oddly complacent, peaceful, unlike him.
“I just don’t want one,” Sealand said pointedly, and then he took out his game, and began to play. The sounds of beeping filled the room, and England leaned back into his own chair, gingerly, to watch him. He didn’t say anything, and neither did Sealand, but he had a feeling that Sealand was only there to watch him, and to make sure his skin didn’t slough off.
--
For dinner, there was rabbit.
A furry white rabbit, coat thick and matted down with blood. Its head sat on the dish, surrounded by half-heartedly torn lettuce. Its body sat on the main plate on the table. When England looked into the blank red eyes, he thought of his own little rabbit from his childhood, and he felt sick.
“Eat up,” America said.
Somewhere, a boy was laughing.
--
It was raining.
What day was it?
He had ripped out all the calendars of his house, and now lay down on his side to listen to the quiet of his room. The rain fell softly against his house at first, then harder, then softer. The gray skies made it impossible to tell the time of day. His broken alarm clock said it was three in the morning, his scattered grandfather clock told him one, and his watch with the cracked face said it was only five in the evening.
The electricity of his phones had irritated him, so he had tossed his cell phone into the sink. He had shoved the pills down his throat, hard against the softness of his stomach, but they did nothing and he had spilled them across his tiled bathroom floor in frustration. He was constantly tired, but sleep hovered like a heavy rain cloud above his head, heavy and threatening, but promising nothing.
“Why are you doing this?” He hung his head between his knees, grasping his short hair between his fingers. His breath ran ragged, but when he looked up, America stood at the foot of his bed, looking down at him. The dark skies cast silhouettes for the reflection of his glasses.
America only shrugged, sitting down before the mirror. He looked real. He must be real, with his trousers bunched up over his solid brown shoes, the way his shirt crumpled, dusty hamburger remains scattered on his trousers.
“Stop it!” England grasped for something, anything, on his drawer, and when he found his keys, he threw it against the mirror. America didn’t flinch as it smashed next to his head, immediately spreading a spiderweb of cracks over England’s anguished reflection. “Leave me be! Damn it! Damn you!”
“There’s a leak.” America shrugged. “In your house.”
England sat in his bed for another moment, then he slowly slid off his bed. With his bare feet, he padded out of his bedroom, leaving America behind to slowly eat his perpetual burger. It was quiet, dank, and dark. The water ran through his metal pipes, leaving a strong gurgling sound that rang in his ears.
Something cold and wet fell on the back of his neck. He touched it, looking up. There was a leak in his house. He felt another splash in his eye. He didn’t want to put a pot there. The sound of water ringing against metal would be too much for him to handle. But he was reluctant to ruin his floorboards, either, so he began to move down the stairs to fetch a pan.
In the kitchen, he heard the upstairs floor creak, as if something heavy was pressing upon it. He looked up, dismally, to see a crack on his kitchen ceiling. The thin black line grew into a crisp smile, and water began to splash into his hair, dampening his pajamas. Some rang into the pot that he was holding, sweet siren songs. He watched as the water collected at the bottom of the pan.
Then he was drowning.
The water rushed down the stairs, a torrential rage of frothing white foam, crashing into the back wall of his house and then careening past the corners to come crashing at him, hitting his body at full force. He tried to grab at the table, but the water rushed too quickly and too fast. The cold hit him first, a shock that made him tremble even when he was under water, completely submerged. But he couldn’t swim, and he frantically tried to grasp along the walls to pull himself above the waves. The walls were distant, and he could only try to push himself through helpless efforts to something, anything, that could raise him higher.
But he was drowning in blood, the bitter taste filling his mouth. When he slammed his leg against the table, he pushed himself upward, coughing and hacking. With every large gulp of breath, he was pulled back down in the undercurrent, the painful need to breathe pressing against his soft lungs. Distantly, he heard the sound of Gatling guns, then the shots fired from a Browning, and the screams of women and children.
Then the sound of a little boy laughing.
He tried to see through the blood, but the bitter taste filled his mouth and he was swallowing more and more in large gulps, and he was finally pulled down down down and it was all dark and
It was a ballroom, with skeletons in the large ladies’ dresses, their corsets, their mink stoles draped across their shoulders, and the men with their waistcoats and trousers all done up, except they were all just skulls. They stood around and drank water and ate caviar, except the water dripped from their ribs to the floor in the patter, and the caviar splashed down onto it.
They turned to look at him, in one motion. Their eyeless sockets stared at him, and the witches cackled from beyond the mortal realm. He tried to turn to leave, but another flash of blue caught his eye. He started immediately, spinning to catch sight of the boy run up the velvet-covered stairs. He didn’t stop to think, but shoved past the skeletons, trying to climb the stairs to follow him.
But the skeletons began to moan, with the vocal cords they no longer owned, and they used their phalanges to grip at the sides of his arm, dragging him back, reaching at him, touching his eyes and his hair, bone scraping against his flesh. He shoved them away violently, knocking more than one back to clatter in a dusty pile of bones, which they stirred and tried to put themselves back together between the mess of their golden dresses and black suits.
He flung one skull against a wall, watching it smash into pieces, before he finally reached the stairwell, and taking two steps at a time, he climbed it. The boy’s giggles still resounded in the high ballroom, except it wasn’t a ballroom anymore. He had climbed the stairs to his attic, where he leaned on his knees, panting, looking around.
The boxes were stacked on top of each other, artifacts that he always meant to ship into a museum, but something old about him made him keep. He coughed at the dust he had stirred up, trying to shake the cobwebs out of his head. He was sweating, and he couldn’t tell the time. When he looked outside his small window, where the balcony had been sealed shut for centuries, the sky was still a gloomy darkness.
Something shifted behind him. He turned to look, but nobody appeared. Hesitantly, he stepped forward to the darkness. There were only boxes, boxes of memories, boxes of last hopes, boxes of failures and boxes of lost dreams. He opened one, and then felt sickened. Thin cloth, ravaged by age, sat on the top of the box. A light blue nightgown with frills that he had sewed lovingly on the collars, the mud he had washed with his elbows in the fresh rivers.
With a harsh, hoarse cry, he stumbled back and bumped into America’s chest.
“Go to hell, England.” America turned around and walked away, footsteps thudding.
“Wait—” England began to start after him, but the laughter caught his ears again. But this time, he saw him. He saw the little boy with the golden hair and bright blue eyes, smiling innocently, standing in the light blue nightgown. The boy giggled and motioned him to come forward.
It felt like he was a dead man. Slowly, he stepped forward, nearly tripping over the boxes, but relentless. When he had almost reached him, the boy took a step back. For every step forward he took, the boy took another step back, until they were in the open air, the fields of gold waving gently in the wind and the heartbreaking blue sky stretching above them to eternity. The boy smiled again at him, reassuringly.
His skin felt damp. Gently, he knelt, trying to coax him forward.
“Here,” he said softly. “I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
The boy—America—little America, who loved him, always would, never leave him— smiled.
“Liar,” America whispered, and stepped back.
“America!” England lurched forward, and suddenly he felt himself falling, gravity pulling him down, and then everything was black, black, black, but still he did not sleep, just painfully wheezed, felt his ribs crunch underneath him, felt his hands shatter, knees bent, head smashed on the ground, blood spreading beneath him like a blood eagle, glass shattering everywhere underneath him in small shining shards that bit at his fingertips and the broad palms of his hand, tearing violently into his forearm, and he heard footsteps and someone was shouting, but it was all in his head, it was always in his head
but that didn’t make it a lie.
Someone was shaking him, rolling him on his side, but he couldn’t see them. He thought it had to be—had to be a soldier who lost his leg by a stray cannon ball—a young boy who couldn’t smile anymore—had to be—had to be an impoverished woman, staring at him, asking with her eyes why he had taken away her daughters and sons—had to be another man he failed—another person who would hate him—he tried to push them away, but strong hands caught him by the wrists.
“… doing!”
Sound was rushing back into his ears, and he flickered his eyes heavily towards the person. It looked like America, if America was damp from the rain and his face seized with anger. When England tilted his head to his house, he saw the broken balcony from the attic. He tried to push America away to stand, but America folded him into his arms, lifting him back into the house.
“What are you doing here,” England murmured, pressing one hand across his eyes. It felt like there was something had gone wrong with his wrist, which he laid flat on his stomach. Every time America moved, it felt like the bone jarred into his flesh and he shuddered quietly.
“Because,” America said, climbing the stairs. “I got pulled aside twenty times on my birthday party with people tell me to check up on you. Twenty times. A bunch by Canada.” He had reached England’s bedroom, and he propped him on the bed. Within a few minutes, he was wrapping his wrist tightly within white bandages. It hurt, but England didn’t let it show on his face. The sleepiness numbed it some.
“I forgot it was your birthday,” England said. It was all just one long hallucination. America here, America there, America. It was always America. And it was America who was tugging his wet shirt off him, awkwardly trying to stuff his limp arms into a dry one, clumsily doing up the buttons, Nantucket bobbing up and down.
“What were you doing up there?” America sat on the foot on his bed, glaring at him behind his glasses. He looked almost human, almost real.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.” America pushed up his glasses. “Great. That’s real great. Hey, did anyone tell you that you look horrible?”
“I’m fine.”
“You jumped off a third story building.” But America relented from his tirade, and looked at him honestly, with open eyes that looked almost concerned. “You look really crappy. You know that?”
“I don’t.” England tried to rub his eyes, but the sharp jolt of his injured wrist stopped him.
“You look tired. When’s the last time you slept?”
He didn’t say anything, and America took that as an answer. After another lingering moment, he reached over and gently pushed England into the bed. Clumsily, he folded the blanket up to his shoulders, and, clothes and all, laid down next to him on his stomach. He glanced at England, challenging him to object, but when England only looked at him quietly, he rolled onto his back to stare up at the ceiling.
“Go to sleep, England.”
“I got you a present,” England said miserably. The words felt hard in his throat. “You… crashed your motorcycle, the other day… so I got you a new one. It’s… the keys are in the drawer, and…”
“I’m not leaving.” America turned his face and smiled at him, half self-consciously. “But thanks.”
England felt his eyes flickering shut. Everything suddenly felt so heavy, and the pillow deep and comfortable. He could smell America beside him, and with the last of his strength, he pushed his good hand to touch his shoulder, to see if he was real. But it proved nothing. Nothing could prove reality.
“Are you real?” he murmured sleepily. The warm presence beside him washed over him, deeper and deeper, lulling him to a quiet darkness. For the first time, it felt almost peaceful. The cold room seemed smaller, and when he gently pushed with his fingertips, the solidness of another person comforted him.
“Yeah. I’m real.” America grasped his hand tightly. “You made a lot of people worry. Canada wouldn’t stop talking about it, and Hong Kong got kinda angry at me, and Australia tried to hit me, and New Zealand was New Zealand about it, and… You need to sleep.”
“Couldn’t…” England breathed shallowly.
“Couldn’t?”
“Couldn’t.” For a second, England managed to open his eyes partly, enough to see the blurry shape of America curiously staring at him. “Happy birthday, America.”
It was silent, and he thought for a moment that he had already fallen asleep. Then, he felt an arm wrap around his shoulder, and a soft kiss to his forehead.
“Love you, too.”
And then there was only sleep.