The Parasite of Summer

His sister never came in front of him.

She was always behind him, with the wisps of her white dress hesitantly brushing against the nape of his neck. When they did, the man would uncurl from where he lay limp against the door of his room. For the man knew that she would fade away in an instant, he didn’t glance back. Instead, he was content with attempting to reach back for an embrace, yet feeling the cold nothingness rush through his fingers, as if it had never been there. And he felt his chest dry with the scorching heat of summer.

He hated the summer.

The heat that bounced off of the concrete ground weakened him, and it was always nearly impossible to handle the freezing cold. Every time he lay down on his bed, the icy, choking fingers would find him. So he would tremble, alone in an empty house that rang with the nostalgic whispers of the past.

Then, when he realized that he was dying, he would stumble away from the bed and into the kitchen to fish out a box of liquor from the icebox. After emptying a dozen bottles, he would take a few pills, and stand out in the night among the light of a pack of cigarettes.

It had been a summer day.

On the day, many years ago, too painful to count, the man had been trying to find his sister. His father left his mother’s grave, and was now a person that the man didn’t know. So the man also passed by his father like a stranger, numbly staring off into the blue summer sky, craving someone to lean onto. He had to see his sister.

When he came back to his house, the living room was steamy, heated up with the sunlight coming through the windows. He searched the kitchen, and his sister’s room, and his room. The last place that he had to look into was the bathroom. Yet, his fingers hesitated, freezing. He knew that something would end. Something would leave him. And the something was too cold to touch, stark in the murky heat of the summer.

He fell when he finally opened the door. His back hit the slippery tiles, yet he couldn’t feel it. Breathing faintly, he reached up to wrap his stiff arms around his sister’s legs.

She dangled from the ceiling by a black string. Her legs were blue, with dark veins that popped out like spiderwebs. The man ran a numb hand over her skin. It was cold. It was too cold.

He remembered scratching at the string. The ends of his fingers began to bleed. The feeling didn’t reach his brain. Instead, it seemed to be pouring out of him along with the blood. After a while, he stumbled out of the bathroom for a knife, and managed to cut through the rope.

The hardened body dropped onto the floor like a sack of sand. The man hugged it to his chest, frantically rubbing the blue legs, trying to warm them. “It’s too cold,” he murmured helplessly, “you’re too cold.”

After a while, the man made his way to his room, and sat slumped against a wall, tightly holding the unfolding body of his sister to his chest. For a time, he didn’t move, half conscious. It was where a friend had found him crying.

Now, after years, she wouldn’t let him look at her.

She hung behind him on the hottest summer days, when the man emptied a bottle or a pack, alone, fearing for the icy night that would find him. The alcohol burned his chest, and the smoke covered his eyes. And on some days, he would come to a realization that he needed a rest such as death.

Yet, he feared that maybe, death would be nothingness.

Then the moment that he craved would never come. He had to tell her that everything was fine, that he would love her even if she were a murderer. If he failed to reunite with the only person he could lean upon, he feared that the light would finally disappear, leaving him in the darkness.

The darkness didn’t disturb him. It was what he had been walking in for his entire life. He was only afraid that the darkness would show through his skin, and his sister would shy away from him.

The summer would kill him.

Inside the house in which only he was left, the laughing sunlight beat against the windows and slammed into his lungs. When the sun was up, it was hard to breathe from the heat. Whenever he looked in the mirror, he would see only the shell of a living thing, pale, thin, seeking for comfort that wore the mask of an end.

When it became night, the sly cold found him instead. Not only when he attempted to sleep - wherever he was, the ice would seep into his bones, and when he realized what he was doing, he was opening the liquor bottle, pushing an empty one under the bed along with a couple dead cockroaches.

And on some days, he cried for he had imagined he couldn’t.

Feeling his sister disappear through his fingers, he would weep and sob without tears. Beg for her to come back, just once, so that he’d know he hadn’t been dreaming everything. Promise that he still loved her, so much, so hard, he didn’t think that he was alive anymore.

Then a part of him would wonder if he truly needed light.

Light is useless now, it said. This darkness is what you’re used to. So just walk in it, and simply hope that it will comfort you some day.

His emotions flew like a waterfall.

They erupted all at once. All his life, he had taught himself how to hold back. Not how to take it out. He didn’t know. So he beat his fist into his chest, wondering if the dress was back behind him again, and he just couldn't feel it.

Yet the rock in his heart wouldn’t disappear, or crack.

Save me.

And the summer was giggling, snatching at his hair, clawing at his lungs, telling him that one day, it would kill him. It would strangle him in the day and cut him in the night. Until all his senses died, and pain couldn’t reach him.

Sometimes he knew that she wasn’t hearing anything that he said. She couldn’t. Then his chest would sink so painfully, that he had to beat it until bruises formed and blood beaded. The burning heat was his only company then.

After a while, in the house that had iced over a long time ago, he would wait again for another whisper of the white dress.

One day, the liquor, cigarettes and sleep would all disappear, and he would lie with chattering teeth on his bed. The cold would freeze onto him under the thin covers, whispering for him to await the choking grasp of heat.

And on another day, the heat burning his heart gray, he would die with the parasite of summer.