Then

I had lost track of time. I had lost track of place and reality. I didn’t want to be bothered in that time. My family came to visit me in my apartment. They helped me clean the place; I wasn’t able to do that. It was too much hard work and all I wanted was Niall’s muscles to do the hovering instead. Not my mom, not Gemma.

The boys’ visited me a lot. Every day for a fact. But I did never spoke to them.
I remember Liam being angry and furious. He screamed at me often. I don’t know what he said though, I never listened. It was all just a big blur to me. Sometimes he lowered his voice and talked calmly to me. Sometimes about the weather, sometimes about Danielle. Yes, remember what I told you about death gathering people? A few days after the accident, Danielle realized Liam needed her, and she run straight to him to give him comfort and now they are lovebirds again. It is strange how I lost the one thing I couldn’t live without at the same time Liam got his back. Life is unfair and cruel.

I know I’d never been so close to Zayn but he came as often as Liam and tried to cheer me up. Sometimes he managed to get me crack a smile but it disappeared as soon as it came. I wasn’t worthy of happiness anymore. Niall struggled, I should struggle too.

If you don’t count Niall, Louis was my best friend through all times. He came to me in my hardest and all he did was sitting there, waiting for me to speak. It was comfortable and I liked it. I did not speak though. At least not about the things he wanted me to speak about.

At that time I missed Niall more than you could imagine. I missed his crocked teeth before he got braces, I missed his wonderful voice and his geeky top buttoned polo shirts. I missed feeling his lips on mine and I missed his gentle touch. It hurt so much. My heart was in two pieces. You know when they talk about getting their heart broken? That’s real. It felt like a knife was cutting through my heart every day and every time I thought about the blonde little Irish boy who loved his life so much it was cracking and that stone in my throat made it impossible for me to breath.

I actually had lost track of reality. Niall started visiting me. He looked at me with his ocean colored eyes and he talked to me with the familiar thick Irish accent. Sometimes we were lying in our bed and he was playing in my hair with gentle fingers. It was all so real. I started believing it had all been a terrible nightmare.

One night I told him this. I told him about my nightmare and that I was scared that this might actually not be real. My wonderful boy took my hands and looked me in the eyes. He said that he would never leave me. And I believed him. Because I always do. Niall has never lied to me.

The other boys stopped visiting me after a while. Louis came from time to time. He was upset. I could see that but I had actually started talking and I told him too about my nightmares. That all this was just a bad dream and soon I would wake up and Niall would lay next to me, arms wrapped around me and maybe give me a peck on the cheek.

I don’t know what happened but one day Louis came and he had brought two friends whom I didn’t recognize. They took me with them and I was scared. But I knew they wouldn’t hurt me because it was a dream. Just a bad dream where Niall was dead and all my friends had left me. Soon I would wake up. But then I didn’t.

I saw the blue eyes slowly fade and begin to lose their beautiful color that I loved so much. My hands were trembling to hold onto something that didn’t exist anymore. The life that was laid in my arms wasn’t a life anymore. Just a shell with beautiful blue eyes, a pale skin and thin muscles that resembled their owner.

He wasn’t there anymore and I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t remember how. How was it possible that I was still alive and he wasn’t? My beautiful boy with hair blonde as ashes and hands so thin. I didn’t want to close his lids. That would confirm my worst nightmare. But I couldn’t run from it. It was there. Right in front of me. Screaming the truth in my face and I couldn’t handle that.

Death is strange. It can gather humans. It could divide humans. And it could kill even more. Death is something nobody should witness. Not even if the death that brings something good. Because with something good comes always something bad. And that bad thing is so hard to handle.

That’s how I felt when I embraced Niall’s dead body that morning in October. That’s how I felt when I saw the bullet pin its target. That’s how I felt when I saw the red blood dripping out of his mouth while he struggled for air. And when that target was Niall’s thin, scattered and exposed body in the autumn morning. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. I’m convinced that Niall will come through that door at any second and laugh his beautiful laugh again and tell me everything was just a bad dream, and that he will take me from this terrific place. But he won’t and that’s what scares me the most, that’s why I’m placed in this room.

I’m telling you all this because this isn’t a story about how a 22 year old boy died in a tragically accident. This is a story about how hard it is for the near ones to keep their heads up, to struggle through the pain that sneaks into the chest every time they even think to laugh at something and about their guilt that torment them in an inhuman way.

My name is Harry Styles and this is my story.