Sam was sprawled out upon the potato-chip wrapper strewn floor, one hand half wrapped around a forty ounce of bad, cheap beer. This was not the first time he’d passed out, all alone in his apartment, singing his own sad songs of remorse and self hatred. No, and to his way of thinking, it most certainly would not be the last.
It hadn’t been long enough; Sam was still distraught over the death of his best friend. A friend he’d loved till the day he’d died. Tristan was a bright guy, always laughing, joking and playing. Even his features had been bright and pure, blond hair, bright green eyes. A drastic contrast to Sam’s own black hair and intense brown eyes. Their friendship, and Tristan’s life, was cut short six months previous by a couple tons of metal slamming into each other.
To compound matters, a mere couple months after Tristan’s demise, Sam came home to find his high-school sweetheart in bed with his brother. Things just couldn’t get worse for him, and soon Sam had spiraled into a never ending pit of despair. He’d taken a couple terms off of college, unable to complete the work when his mind was in such anguish, and soon fell into a habit of drinking himself into a mindless stupor each and every night. Tristan would have slapped him senseless.
In fact, Tristan was contemplating doing just that, as he stood over his dearest friend, watching him sleep the mindlessness of his drug haze into wakefulness once more, only to repeat the same old thing again the next night, Halloween.
“Wake up!” he snapped, kicking at Sam with the edge of one spectral, yet fully corporal toe. “Wake up you worthless drunkard!” he said again, raising his voice as Sam turned over, groaning and shaking his head.
“Leave me ‘lone.” Sam huffed out softly, and then his breathed whooshed out of his lungs with sudden surprise when Tristan kicked him upside the back of the head. “Owww!”
“Get up!” Tristan tried again. “Dear god, if I’d have known you’d have wasted this much of your life crying over spilled me, I’d have crawled from my grave months ago!” Tristan crossed his arms over his chest, giving a good glare as Sam tried to cover his head, still completely and utterly asleep. Tristan pondered, tilting his head to the side as he regarded Sam. “Hmm... I bet you still hate sunlight as much as you did months ago.” Tristan muttered, walking over to the window and pulling the blinds. Sunlight streamed into the room, and finally Same sat up, taking beer bottle in hand and tossing it at Tristan across the room.
About mid-motion, it dawned on Sam, that indeed, this man he was throwing his bottle at was dead. Blinking, he watched Tristan dodge the oncoming projectile, then give the same grin he’d always given him. Playful, childish, and utterly charming,
men just shouldn’t be allowed to have a look like that
, Sam thought absently,
that’s a look reserved for woman who want something.
“Trist?” he asked in a small voice, then groaned. “I knew it, I knew it! I knew I was going to go insane. Now they’ll have to put me in a mental institution, and pretty soon I’ll walk around mumbling ‘I see dead people’ with drool leaking out of the corner of my mouth.”
“Dramatic as always, dear friend o’ mine, I always did say you had enough drama to be a Queen.” Tristan smirked as he stepped closer to his friend, who scrambled backwards until his back was pressed flush with the wall, wide eyes staring upwards.
“Your not real. You are a f-f-fig – Figment of my imagination.” Sam stuttered, closing his eyes tightly and giving a groan. “Figment of the imagination!” he repeats, voice growing a little frantic. “You know, how clichéd is it that I begin imagining my dead friend on Halloween? Really, Sam, one would think that I would have the good taste to manage this feat of mental instability on a perfectly meaningless day!”
“Its really me, Sam, though I wont argue about you being mentally unstable.” Tristan said, kneeling down beside his friend, grinning slightly. “Its good to see you.” He whispers, biting his lower lip, then reached out to touch Sam’s hair. “God, I cant believe I can touch you.” He said, staring as Sam’s face began to grow more and more terrified.
“Haaalp!” he screamed, “There’s a dead man in my apartment!” Sam was utterly distraught, and after a moment of watching his friend scream, Tristan just began to laugh, helpless laughter that rang through the room. He always did have a rich laugh, smooth and sweet, contagious in the way that most good laughs are. This startled Sam so much, that he stopped yelling to stare at the apparition in front of him.
“Sam, calm down or you’ll give yourself a brain aneurism and fall over dead, and this whole thing will have been a waste of every ones time.” Tristan told him, voice chiding, and incredibly amused. “Yes, I’m dead. Yes, I’m really here. Yes, it’s just a coincidence that it happens to be Halloween. I need you to listen to me, buddy.” He said, snapping fingers in front of his friends face. Sam simply stared dumbfounded and shocked.
“Okay, I can see we’ve got a problem. So lets see here...” Tristan pondered for a moment, watching Sam’s big brown expressive eyes. “In that stereo that my mom gave you, the one that used to be mine before I died. I wrote a special letter to some one, and I hid it in a compartment in the back. Not even YOU know about that, so you cant say that as a figment of your imaginations I’m playing off your memories. I know you have the stereo, go on, look.” He said, sitting back on his haunches and crossing his arms over his chest.
Tentatively, Sam crawled to his feet, one eye on the ‘ghost’, the other eye on the stereo across the room. Once standing, he bolted for the thing as Tristan watched on, “In the back, no, no, flip it over, yea, beneath that plastic, its not ‘spost to come out but it does.” Tristan informed him quietly, comfortable in the supreme knowledge that his letter would indeed still be there.
Sam sat on the edge of he shelf on which the stereo had stood, fidgeting with the back of the box for a moment, and then finally the back popped open, making Sam blink in surprise. Inserting a couple fingers, for that’s all that would fit, he began to pull out a folded up envelope, and finally, when unwrapped, the front held the name “SAM” in the bold scrawl that Tristan always used. Before Sam had a chance to open the unsent letter, however, Tristan was beside him, snatching it away and blushing slightly.
“You can’t read it.” He told Sam. “You can read it when I’m gone, but not now.” He muttered, his cheeks flaming to the point that Sam absolutely knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that something unbelievably embarrassing was written in that letter. Eyes narrowed, Sam made a grab for the letter, only to have Tristan hop back and clutch the crumpled paper to his chest. “No! Not yet!” he shouted, cheeks aflame.
“Fine, Rat Bastard, always trying to make me go crazy—“ Sam stopped, stared at his friend, and the dawning slowly came. This was Tristan, and suddenly tears began to roll down his cheeks, and he threw himself at his friend, wrapping strong arms around Tristan’s lithe form. “Tristan, your back, your back.” He whispers, not trying to make sense of what is so obviously true, just trying to accept what he couldn’t understand. Tristan was there, warm arms wrapped about him. “I’ve missed you so much, I thought... I thought I’d never be able to breath again, and I cursed myself when every day I continued to do just that.” He whispered, sobbing softly. Tristan just held him close, stroking his friends back.
“Sam... Shhh...” he murmured.
“No, Tristan... I felt as if part of my heart was missing!” Sam explained his voice thick with his tears as he buried his face in against Tristan’s neck.
“Yes...” Trist replied, “I know.” The seriousness of his voice was so intense, that Sam blinked softly and pulled back, looking at his friend. “You need me.” He told Sam, who sniffled and nodded his head, a thick lock of black hair falling across his forehead, only to be swept away by Tristan’s caressing fingertips.
“Yea...” Sam said, not quite catching on to what Tristan was trying to say. “I need you.” He murmured, finding himself closing his eyes as Trist’s fingers moved from his forehead to brush away his tears. “Why are you here?” he asked quietly, big brown eyes wide with innocent curiosity, the kind that comes with grief, and the abatement of said grief.
Tristan bit his bottom lip, watching his friends expression carefully, then nodded his head. “I convinced certain important powers that my coming back would help a few people.” He said quietly, “Namely, You and I, but not just the two of us, there are others who will be affected by my return. However... there’s a catch.” He said, heaving a soft sigh. “I can’t exactly tell you why I’m here, if I do... I get hauled back. And... if I manage to accomplish what I’m here to accomplish, I wont come back as a human, but... something a bit different, sorta like a strange kinda angel.” He explains, “Although ‘God’ isn’t exactly what one would expect, and neither are the ‘angels’.” He explained for a moment, making a face of confusion before shrugging his shoulders.
