Jason

• Heather Wortes
• Short Story
• 2006

Tragic Accident: Boy killed by falling tree branch. That was all I had to read. I ran through the dusty, shadow filled loungeroom; down the old creaking stairs; and out the heavy oak front door. Through tearful eyes all I saw was the peeling wallpaper and the dark, sad pictures that lined the walls.

My nose tingled as I breathed in the overwhelming stench of the freshly sealed road. Leaves blew past my face as I walked down the road past the old, abandoned bakery and the leafless trees of winter. Then standing before me, rising into the sky like an open marquee at the fair, was the tree.

I saw the topmost branches where we used to race each other to; climbing faster and faster, hands blistered and red. The wooden planks where we made our first treehouse. Hours upon hours in the scorching sun, sawing and nailing, lifting and talking.

But all too soon came that fateful day when he walked out the door and out of my life, forever. "I'm going for a walk to the park" he told me as he pulled on a jacket and scarf. "The tree" I replied with a giggle. "How did you guess" and then he was gone.
Fifteen minutes later I heard ambulance sirens ringing through the chilly night air and tyres screeching on the road.

I walked out the door just in time to see the ambulance and a few cars racing around the corner to the park, the tree. With a pounding heart and a numb body all over, letting my feet lead the way, I sprinted up the road. Then I stopped dead in my tracks. On a stretcher lay Jason. Lifeless and cold. A couple of metres away a fallen branch lay split on the muddy, wet ground. I fell to my knees and screamed for justice because I knew, then and there, that I was never going to see him alive again.

Going up to the hospital the next day was probably the hardest and worst day of my life. I spent the morning in a large, white room filled with plastic chairs and anxious faces. Then the doctors came in and told us he was officially dead. Dead, dead, dead. The words pounded my head for the rest of the week and were still vivid in my mind a month later.

We left the room in complete silence. The faces of people were full of fear and incomprehension, pity for those affected most or red, wet and hidden in tears.

He was gone forever. I was never going to see him again. But I'm sure he'll always be a part of me, spreading joy and happiness through my world.