Eight

• Edwina Stephenson, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2013

His ribcage is heir to a thousand demons, his flesh a construct of fever-dreams and half-awake sentences mumbled into the small, sunless hours before dawn. His limbs fold paper-thin inward (towards his heart, jumping below the skin like some tiny creature that's as frightened of death as he is), bones clinking against bones as he draws closer to himself on the stale hospital sheets. He is the child of patient silence and frenzied delirium and he is dying.

He is eight years old, but a small eight, an eight clothed in fluorescent light and silences so full of words you can feel them humming on your tongue and a hospital gown. He is a bed filled in an overfull hospital, he is a fee, he is treatments scheduled and meals prepared for one (1). But he is also human; he is also weighted silences and a listless gaze, the beginnings of a story and a heart so fallible, so easily broken, you could shatter it with the lightest brush of your fingertips (then marvel at the beauty of it when it’s broken on the floor) He is a brother, a son, a cousin, a distant relative you haven’t seen since the last wedding or funeral, and he is dying.

His mother is exhausted, is circles below her tired eyes, his father tearful and stony-faced by intervals, and his younger sister can’t for the life of her understand what’s going on. But he remains mute, a pale face against the sheets, a skeleton-child curled into its core. It is a silence they can’t bear to break, because even now they are a little afraid of seeing him cry, a little glad that he buries the words (the jagged blackened words that they tried to hide from, tried to destroy, failed to answer) where the scarring won’t be too obvious and picks at his food to keep them from fretting. Even now they cling to their silence (it’s terminal) and really, the only thing that’s new is now the perfunctory questions (which are renovated, the old furniture – “How was school? Did you have a nice day?” – removed and the new – “Are you sure you don’t want anything from home? Should I call the nurse?” – carefully worded around the worn spots on the carpet where it used to be). He shakes his head; he manages a smile; and all the while they refuse to acknowledge the only thing that matters; and he is still dying.

He is eight years old, still, when they lay him out in the half-cold and almost-grey of an early April morning; he is silent, he is still, he is perfect, and-
(he is dead).