Chapter 6: Ramblin’ Man

There was a rustling sound outside Henry’s bedroom, pulling him from a sleepy daze. He stands, fighting the nausea that now overtook his mind and stomach as he reached around his room for a pipe stored there. It was a little insane to be running around with a drain pipe as a makeshift machete, but Henry knew better than to question his instincts these days.

 

Something was wrong.

 

The hallway seemed to stretch endlessly as he stumbled through it's dark, suffocating walls and towards the dim light at the end of them. Henry had a habit of creeping up without much of a warning. He hated when others would intrude on his space, yet had the horrible habit of turning up when people least expected it himself. It was different, in his eyes, he had a reason for asking. Other people were just nosy. No matter how he justified it, he still hesitated before asking.

 

"You're leaving again?"

 

Murphy looked up from the backpack he had been stuffing, watching Henry cross his arms and shift his weight nervously as a long, slender pipe in his hands. It was a simple question, but the air in the room suggested otherwise. He often wondered why Henry could never seem to tell the whole story. Why he appeared to fight his own tongue in an attempt to get any sort of speech out. In the end, Murphy chose to say nothing and pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

 

What had he told Henry that warranted this entitlement to information?

 

Some things were best left unsaid. Attachments were dangerous, and this one was already growing too big to handle. He couldn't bear losing Henry the way he lost Charlie or...the way he lost Carol. The last few nights made that all too clear. He couldn't live with himself if he ever hurt Henry.

 

"Sorry, sunshine, you know me and the road. Might as well marry it, huh?"

 

It was a risk, making a joke like that. He felt his own heart breaking, the more indirectly he reflected on leaving the only other home he'd known throughout his years wandering but Henry wouldn't understand it anyway. Jokes never seemed to land with him, always met with vacant stares or confusion. It made deflecting topics harder.

 

He slings the battered bag over the shoulder of his weathered, aging coat.

 

Henry's feet grew roots, stretching deep into the floor and wrapping around his ankles as his lungs coated themselves in heavy iron. He swallows, blue eyes vibrating in a way that made it hard to tell whether they were actually darting around the room. Whether he truly had a fever. He felt like he did. He felt as if he were dying, as if Walter had finally wrapped his cold, dead hands around his throat.

 

The room stopped spinning the more he focused on the spot above Murphy's head. He inhales softly, exhales silently.

 

"Damn."

 

An expletive. One of two that Henry frequently used as filler words when thinking was too hard. Murphy knew him enough by now to recognize it. He felt heartless for this. Cruel. He was one of Henry's only friends, but maybe that was the problem. Maybe... maybe he wasn't ready for that type of closeness again. Maybe he didn't deserve it. Henry didn't need to suffer the contamination that followed Murphy like rain clouds. The only solution was to disappear again.

 

The pipe was allowed to hit the floor, no longer needed. It had brought safety in his metallic grip, comfort following its burning chill, but that was a place Henry didn't want to think about right now. Or ever again.  It scared him how comforting it could be...that Other World.

 

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Henry stared at Murphy's dark shape beneath the flickering bulb, and felt his chest squeeze every ounce of oxygen from his lungs. How could you tell someone it was easier to stop an impending apocalypse than admitting your own feelings? He was a grown man and still found himself frightened of the very thing that made him human. There was something wrong with him. He was certain of it. Normal people… normal people didn't act this way.

 

"That girl I saw down the hall. Eileen. You know her?"

 

Murphy nodded towards Henry's front door, one of the only things visible in the dim light of the entryway, and felt himself feeling emptier by the minute. The clock in Henry's room ticked every now and then, suffocating Murphy in its cursed, inaccurate mathematics. What was once a source of steady, stable sameness was now starting to mess with his head.

 

"Yeah. Ah. Yeah. She's... a friend of mine."

 

Fuck. Fuck, he was helpless . This was stupid. This was so stupid.

 

Henry's intestines shrieked and clawed at the walls of his abdomen as he fought the urge to double over and scream in gut wrenching agony. It was his fault. It was his fault, wasn't it? He'd done something wrong. Murphy was leaving again. He was an idiot for ever getting comfortable around someone. They all do this. If only he could talk. If only his lips would move .

 

But... he was no better. He knew this.

 

Eileen deserved more than what he gave her. The day she came to check on him had been looped forever in his mind. He retreated so far from everyone, how fitting the one person he truly felt safe around did the same to him. And often too. How evil, the hands of change. If only they could stay locked in some sort of happy memory. But happiness didn't stay long in this room. Henry wondered if he had somehow gained the power to steal it from others, as if he had awakened as some type of Magic Eraser one day and never noticed. He wondered if this was why his parents hated him.

 

"I saw her down at the office. She was asking about you, I told her you'd been holed up in here again and might appreciate a day out. You should go, have fun for once. You're going to turn into a corpse here, Hen."

 

Murphy shuffled his way past Henry and placed a hand on the door. The handle burned through his flesh, knives sticking in his tendons with the thought of even turning it. Leaving here was always hard, he'd come back, but that wasn't the point. He didn't deserve to be sitting in this house, shitting on Henry by breathing.

 

Henry said nothing, unable to move or speak. He had used up what little energy stores he had saved for the day, the emotional damages were far too great to recover from. He didn't want to see Eileen, he didn't want to see anyone. He wanted to curl up in a ball and play with his camera. But he couldn't. There were pictures of Murphy on it, that camera belonged to the past again. He wouldn't touch it until he came back, the unspoken laws of Henry's mind being stronger than any real logic. To touch it would be a crime.

 

“I'll… give her a call. Later.”

 

Henry swallowed and moved Murphy's hand from the door, opening it himself and standing aside. It was a small comfort, kicking people out himself. He'd left his family, he didn't have many friends. It was easier to blame himself and to let them go himself, than to be a victim of something. This felt more… proactive. More adult . This was easier to spin around as something necessary and done by choice.

 

He'd get over it again. Eventually. Despite how much it hurt, he always did. That was how things went between them. Two broken people, coming and going, trying their best to find themselves in a world that wasn't built for them.

 

But ain't that just the way?

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