Fan Fiction ❯ Atheist Camp ❯ Chapter II ( Chapter 2 )

Atheist Camp

Chapter Two

 

By Violet Dragon

 

-

-

-

It would be my fifth time at Atheist Camp. My sixteenth birthday was in April, but I didn't have a party—just a small family dinner with my two remaining grandparents. There were new kids at camp, as it were every year; I heard that a couple of them were my age, but mostly they were younger kids. I could look at them and tell straight away where they belonged in terms of friends, family, and society. Some were snobby, some quiet and shy, and others were loud or hyper. I knew where they all belonged. I just wondered if they were content with where they belonged.

 

“Hey, Eric!” A loud voice yells behind me, and I heard his feet catching up to my fast pace. I know exactly who it is.

 

“What is it?” I sigh, looking at Tye.

 

“Aren't you excited? This year we get to go to the dance with the girls! We can get dressed up and party all night and go dance with the girls, and then make out with them all night and drink beer—Alan's got a stash of weed too or something like that somewhere—”

 

I always felt dizzy after he spoke so quickly with so many words to take in. Tye was a year younger than me, and even though he was “popular,” he loved to hang around me. He was extremely feminine, although strangely straight, and was also quite the party animal.

 

“Not really Tye… I've been to a dance before, it's not that exciting.” I sighed and went into my new cabin, picking the first bed that came into view. I remember my first dance very well indeed—I had gotten drunk due to my frequent depressions and jumped up on a table, screaming out indiscretions like, “Free God from your unbroken hearts!” and “Fuck the world!”

 

“Hey, remember Mr. Jackson?” Tye continued to ramble on… and this time I was listening to his words. “I guess he's back for the summer… I dunno if he's arrived or not though—”

 

“What?!” I dug my strong fingers into Tye's shoulders and shook him hard. I could tell he was frightened by my power, which I displayed only in moments of weakness or of adrenaline.

 

“Geez, Eric! Will you cut it out!” He said breathily, his voice high.

 

“Dominick Jackson? He's here?” I persisted.

 

“Yeah, I heard that he was coming back… let me go now!”

 

I released him, and flopped down on my bed, staring up at the ceiling.

 

“God, you're such a freak sometimes!” Tye raised his voice to me, and practically ran out of the room.

 

Dom was here. I wondered what color his hair was now, if he had grown at all, or if he still dressed in tight shirts and loose jeans. He'd be thirty-one about now, or almost that age. I sat up suddenly, and looked down at my stained sky-blue shirt, wrinkled and messy. I started looking through my suitcase and backpack, and picked out a tight black dress shirt to wear with my loose, slightly ripped jeans. My face, reflected in an unpolished mirror, displayed long, light brown hair and a pair of dead brown eyes. My face was long and sharp, and handsome I think. I ran a hand through my hair and messed it about. My fingers went to run down my four piercings in my ear, and stopped to rest on my chest. Three fingers. My family always wondered why I was born with this deformity, and wanted to do plastic surgery to “correct my condition.” I never wanted to do it, and never would.

 

I ran down to the counselors' cabin, and slammed my knuckles against the door several times. Mr. Sawa, an extremely cranky and no-nonsense practical man opened the door, a cigarette hanging out of his sarcastic mouth.

 

“Um… is Mr. Jackson here yet?” I asked meekly. Although a youth of power myself, I had always been rather intimidated by Mr. Sawa's stature.

 

“Yeah, but he's out getting some supplies or something like that. Don't expect to see him until tonight.” He shut the door in my face.

 

I swore.

 

My life, my short life, had been filled with such intense loneliness. Only Dominick had erased that emptiness in my heart. And now, four years later, he was back. If God was life… then was he trying to tell me something about us? I wanted to be with Dominick forever, because I loved him. God was between us—life, and love. I had never felt this way for anyone, neither man nor woman. Apparently Dom passed over those lines.

 

I waited hours for him, sitting and staring at my ceiling. I kept on asking around to see if he had come back yet, and it seemed to be forever until one of the counselors announced that he was in cabin five. My breath grabbed at me, my heart pumping blood and fluid fast in my chest. I ran toward the cabin that he shared with another counselor, and rapped on the door. I heard loud music from inside, and figured he couldn't hear me. Opening the door shyly, I swallowed my spit nervously and went inside.

 

Beside the window, I saw him standing… his hair was black as night this time, his face white and sad. He took a sip from a cold bottle of beer, and raised a gun to his head while staring out the window into the night.

 

“Dominick!” I screamed.

 

He looked over to me, and smiled with an acknowledging look. He remembered me, I could tell. He remembered our talks, the games we played five years ago. I watched him with horror as the gun let out a bullet through his temple. Blood splattered everywhere. His body limply hit the wooden floor, his eyes rolled up and half-lidded. He died instantly, with that bullet delved deep in his brain.

 

I started screaming, simply screaming for nothing in particular. Tears flooded down from my eyes, and I fell down to the floor. I didn't remember when anyone came, because they had come too late. I had come too late for Dom. I just sat there… screaming and crying for my dead one.

 

It was at that moment I started searching for God. Without life between me and Dom—as he was dead—there was no longer God in my life. I didn't know why he killed himself, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to know. If life was that bad that he had to give it up, then why would I want life? Why would I even want to continue with life? I certainly didn't need to. I should have been angry, but I wasn't for some odd reason. You always hear in movies and novels that when the characters' loved ones die, they blame God and become morbid and atheist.

 

Dominick's death created quite a bit of controversy in our camp. Since we were all apparently atheist, the news and media accused us of creating a sense of life without a sense of morality and goodness. They persecuted us for at least a couple weeks afterword… but the horror didn't die down. Camp shut down the day after his suicide, and we all went home with refunds. Mom and Dad asked me if I wanted to talk about it. I told them that I didn't. They were obviously concerned, and I shut them out.

 

But I did want to talk. I wanted so badly to talk to Dom, or someone like him. However, there was no one else like Dominick in this world. I stared in the mirror for hours at times, playing with earrings. I wondered if Dom's sister had killed herself—he never told me how she had died. I wondered if things would have turned out differently if I asked him if he wanted to talk about something. However, I was such a young kid searching for my own self… that I wouldn't have thought of it, and I couldn't have done anything for him at the time.

 

Heaven and hell… I knew he was in heaven, or at least I hoped. I didn't care what the fundamentalists said about people who killed themselves, that they would always go to hell for their sin of suicide and apparent self-hate. Because Dom wasn't like that. He had to go to heaven, or at least go to someplace beautiful. He believed in beauty, after all.

 

I spent most of my time wallowing my self-hate; if only I had been there sooner, I could have stopped him. How could he do that to himself? I could never… it would be so intensely painful, I wouldn't be able to take the pain. Then again… what they say about people who mutilate themselves, like cutting, it takes away the mental pain.

 

I kept on questioning him and my own beliefs and everything he told me when I was younger. Maybe I was just stupid. Honestly, I think that the more we learn, the stupider we become. I felt my passion go out with a breeze that night Dom shot himself. He had such an influence on my entire life starting from four years ago, since that is when my life truly began—four years ago with Dom. So now what?

 

I suppose that it began to begin again when I met Allie and Jean.