"heaven is a place on earth with you"
-Lana Del Rey
(video games)
These words rang in Adam's racing mind. His mother had said these to him once, and with pure glee and delight he had said them back to her. It was their way of saying 'I love you'. But now his mother was dead, shot right before his eyes. Was heaven still here or did she take it with her in the afterlife? As Adam covered his mouth to preventing puking out the last meal he had shared with his family before he became an orphan, he stared at the carcasses before his eyes. She took it.
Almost a week ago he had woken up on a regular Saturday morning. His father was downstairs, on a call with a glass of bourbon in one hand. His mother was in her room, his parents didn't stay in the same room ever since his father had found the company of a bridge table and bourbon. "I'm now a complete man" he would say when Adam asked him about the growing distance between him and his mother "I need no other company" He had said, and that was that. Now he lay buried in some yard or thrown in some sea with three bullets in his heart to keep him company, he lay as an incomplete man.
Adam only saw his mother once in a day, during lunch time for she refused to eat breakfast with her husband in the same room and it was the same story for dinner. He wasn't going to see her that day, his father was going to be home. Some time after breakfast the house had resounded with his mother's scream and the sound of guns. His father had grabbed Adam and rushed, he had hid the young boy and gone out with his gun to investigate. "What about mother?" Adam asked him with wide eyes. "What about her? She isn't my heir, its you. She may be dead for all I care." Adam found it strange that the harsh things hadn't phased him as much as witnessing his mother's death had. What had he expected, she hadn't died out of any natural cause in either of the scenarios. Was there a part of him that loved an idea of her rather than her and had his father stated the death of that idea?
Adam had ran, he didn't know who to go to or where to go, all he knew was the only thing worthy of his trust was the gun that he held in his hand. After three days he had found a place to claim as sanctuary. Surrounded by death and sickness and stricken with poverty Adam had now a slum to call home and ash to call his companion. He started to work for a crematorium to earn his daily bread.
Blue, he found was such a strange colour. Whoever said that 'feeling blue' was supposed to be a phrase for all things sad? He craved blue. He thought himself stupid for relishing grey skies, splashing in the puddles as water drenched his hair. Oh how he craved blue skies now when his were plunged into ashen grey. His world was grey. Grey skies, grey concrete walls, grey contaminated water and worst of all, his own grey hopeless face that stared back at him whenever he found a found a mirror.
As the body caught fire before his eyes, He took a deep inhale, feeling the smell of burning flesh. He wanted to smell his uncle's flesh instead of the young slum dweller who had succumbed to pneumonia. He let his eyes flutter open and then realized, that maybe he didn't want his uncle to burn. He couldn't let even the residual ash of such a man taint this earth, not when there was a possibility that the piece of heaven may have existed in the spot.
The sky cracked with lightening as Adam walked back to the confines of his dilapidating concrete walls. The first drop fell before his bare feet, the next on his head and so the rain fell, cleansing the soot covered boy. It was then that he found the boy who clutched a kitten to his chest. "You look sad, here you can pet Tripsy, he will make you happy." The boy said as he held the kitten towards Adam. A soft smile graced his lips as his fingers ran over the white fur of the blue eyed feline and he found himself wondering Could there be just more than one piece of heaven on earth?
