What's Wrong With This Picture?
What's Wrong With This Picture?
What’s Wrong With This Picture?
In memory of Jonathan Brandis. Title and writing in ~ ~ are taken from the Placebo song “This Picture.”
~Sometimes it’s faded
Disintegrated
For fear of growing old~
The stop button momentarily freezes the image of the smiling young man before giving way to the colourfully barred screensaver. (Press stop again or any key to continue).
The DVD is spewed into his hand and, as the tears burn his eyes- the first real tears he’s cried in years-he has to fight the urge to throw the movie to the floor. Had he ever been so young? Had that smile been real or was it also just for the benefit of a camera? He thinks, thinks hard until he feels the beginnings of a headache, but can’t remember.
~Beware this troubled world
Control your intake
Goodbye to open sores~
The phone rings and he talks to his mother. The talk is light and non-thought provoking. Who did this, who did that and what’s it like to work with Bruce Willis. When he hangs up the phone, loneliness washes over him leaving a lump in his chest.
Moving to the kitchen, he grabs a beer from the fridge. Another follows. Drunk to the point of honesty, he calls his friend.
~Sometimes it’s faded
Assassinated
For fear of growing old~
“What’s up, Jon?”
The voice is soothing enough to cut through the despair that often consumed him, “I just finished watching a movie.”
“Are you okay?”
He pauses; it’s a long pause. When he speaks it sounds like a terrible impression of his role in Stephen King’s “IT,” “I – I don’t…Can you come over?”
The intake of breath is clear; a whistle between clenched teeth, “Sure. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
~Hang on
Though we try
It’s gone~
The belt slips over his head with ease. His eyes, still a beautiful shade of baby blue, never leave his front door. The last thing he sees, feet helplessly kicking air, isn’t his friend running to his rescue. The door remains stubbornly shut, like his eyes eventually do, cutting him off from a hard, cold world.
~For fear of growing old
Can’t stop growing old. . .~
27 years old and the memories preserve his teenage years; like the years after nineteen never happened.