Threads

When Robert Grey was very young, he began to see strings attached to human beings. 

Looped like a thin noose around their throats, the threads steadily coiled upward as if reaching to the grip of some invisible puppeteer. They were various different shades and colours, and always stretched to a unique degree. 

When he looked in the mirror, his throat was bare: no thread, no colour, and no tension. Reflexively, childhood instinct made him hesitant and self-conscious. Not only did the absence make him fear the worst, he soon became crushingly aware that no one else could see what he saw.   

His initial curiosity yielded no answers. No playground friend or classmate reacted when he dared to address the loops tangling at their feet, and asking an adult took courage that he never managed to collect. Instead, he summoned up all his nerve trying to touch one, hoping to relieve the strain on a woman whose noose stretched skyward. His bravery earned him no reward and brought him nowhere closer to an answer; like trying to hold smoke, his fingers slipped right through. The threads wouldn’t respond to his touch, but they stretched and loosened under their own will, obeying a pattern that he couldn’t quite puzzle out.   

He hadn’t asked his mother, so much as been discovered with knowledge he shouldn’t have. One day, his eyes followed a man on the street, drawn by the way his thread abruptly swept up from his heels. Grey watched him long before a car skidded out of control––and when the two connected, his bright blue string snapped sharply upward before it disappeared entirely.

When his mother tried to shield his gaze from the accident, before it even happened, he realised she could see them too. It made the absence of her own noose suddenly so clear, rather than an idle mystery that he just associated with the power of being his mother. 

“Bobby,” she said, and she was the last person who still called him that. Robert had always been too formal for a child, and Bobby soon became too childish for a teenager. From high school onward, his surname stuck, and he never could quite remember why. “It’s very important that you don’t tell anyone about this. Do you understand?” 

At ten years old, he didn’t, but he nodded anyway and once the shock abated, reality settled in.

Usually, the strings were loose on other children his age; so much that if they were actually tangible, their owners would trip over them with every step. Adults, however, would hold them in varying tension, as if they grew steadily tighter with the passing years—but Grey quickly dismissed  the idea that the threads only related to the steady crawl of someone’s age. He’d seen grandparents with their strings slack and pooling around their feet, and young students pulled taut like a fish on a line. He knew the pattern didn’t hold true; it had to be more than that. 

It was always the simplest explanation; he just hadn’t been prepared to face it. 

He grew up and kept a world of secrets to himself. Pretending he didn’t see a senior teacher arrive at school one day with a cough in her throat and her pink string tensely drawn. Feigning ignorance when a classmate returned from a doctor’s appointment with new medication and a red thread slackened. Averting his eyes when a stranger’s black noose tightened a final time. 

The weight of it sunk onto Grey like a ball and chain, but he shouldered it––because there was nothing else he could do. It left him quiet, reserved and usually solitary, but it worked in his favour. He figured he managed to get a decent handle on it, at the least, until Ernest.

Robert Grey had always been aware of Ernest King’s imminent demise.

Grey met Ernest when they were seventeen and stupid. Gym class was kind to Grey because he was built like his father had been: broad shouldered, thick in his middle, and taller than half the boys his age. Ernest, however, had only a few pounds more than a skeleton and his body seemed to fight him every step of the way. Poor eyesight left him with thick lensed glasses, allergies had him placing pills on his tongue every time he stepped outside, and his lungs required an inhaler to be constantly at the ready, at even the slightest exertion. 

The latter was what drew Grey to him first. Ernest sat hunched over on the bleachers, shaking his inhaler with a steady rattling as his chest rose and fell. Their gym teacher––a heavyset man whose leg injury robbed him of a future in college football––regarded Ernest from the field with a sigh. 

“Let’s go, King!” he barked, phrasing his surname like a taunt, and the boys around him barely stifled their laughter. Grey didn’t join in, his lips curving with a frown as he watched Ernest’s string tighten. 

“I just… need a few seconds,” Ernest called back weakly, stuttering on even that many words. 

“You’ve had more than a few minutes,” came the rebuttal, and as Ernest winced, his thread began to pull. 

Before Ernest could stand, Grey moved. He couldn’t say what made him act now, when he knew better than to interfere before, but his feet kept moving until he found himself seated on the bleachers at Ernest’s side. 

For a moment, Grey wondered if he made a mistake, and his sudden presence might give Ernest an asthma attack anyway. The other boy startled, his body tense, and his eyes went wide behind his glasses. “Um, hi,” Ernest managed, and now that they were this close, Grey could hear the wheeze in his breathing. 

“Hi,” Grey answered simply, which was more words than he had ever said to Ernest before. Frankly, Grey didn’t speak much at all, and he was very aware of the reputation that followed because of that. It wasn’t a favourable one, which is likely why Ernest tried to usher him away.

“You don’t… have to do this,” Ernest continued quietly, his whole chest moving with his gulps of air. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.” 

Shaking his head, Grey kept his eyes on the field. Apparently unconcerned with discipline, their teacher turned his attention to the rest of the class. “He won’t write me up,” Grey said,  matter-of-factly, not boasting. “He wants me on the football team.” 

Which was something Grey had very little interest in, given how he had watched tangles of threads on a field grow tighter and tighter with every concussion or collision. He was built for it, and their teacher couldn’t possibly fathom why Grey wouldn’t say yes, and the only answer Grey gave him was a shrug. 

“Oh,” Ernest uttered, taking a moment to swallow down another gulp from his inhaler. “Um. Thank you.” 

Grey hummed a little in acknowledgement and said nothing else, not wanting Ernest to speak just yet. He waited, keeping his head turned towards the field, though his gaze kept a surreptitious watch on Ernest’s string. Ernest’s noose defaulted to more tension than anyone else their age that Grey knew, likely due to the everyday strain he endured simply by existing. As Grey stayed with him, it loosened––not significantly beyond its usual state, but the excess from the impending risk of his lungs closing eventually relaxed. 

“I’m Ernest, by the way,” he said, after his breathing levelled out. “I know you’re… um. Do you like that people call you Grey?”

The question took him off guard, and Grey turned his gaze from the field to Ernest instead. Ernest shrunk a little at the attention, suddenly busy with adjusting his glasses higher on his nose.

“Some people call me Ernie and I hate it,” he elaborated, his cheeks reddening deeper than the flush of his strained breaths. “So I just… I like to ask, in case you do want someone to call you Robert.” 

He honestly wasn’t sure how to answer. No one really asked him if he liked it; his surname simply became the norm and he went along with it. He wasn’t really used to someone taking care to check in with him on something so simple, even at their first real introduction. 

“No one calls me that,” he replied blandly, with a noncommittal shrug. 

“Yeah,” Ernest agreed, though Grey wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to. “I guess Grey sounds cooler than Robert. Or Rob. Or… I don’t know––Bert.” 

Ernest considered this for a moment, a thoughtful frown forming on his lips before it was replaced with a beaming grin. He laughed, very abruptly, so much that he took another puff from his inhaler. 

Grey stared at him, waiting for some explanation, and even when Ernest caught his breath, he was still chuckling, gesturing between them. 

“Ernie and Bert.” 

For the first time in a very long time, Grey laughed. 

From that moment, Grey found himself hovering in Ernest’s orbit. To an outsider, it would’ve seemed like the opposite: that skinny, lonely Ernest took one favour and latched himself to Grey’s bulk as a means of support. Instead, Grey was the one who sought Ernest out––much to Ernest’s surprise as well––and then Grey began to follow him like a second shadow. 

Ernest didn’t mind, once the initial shock passed. He liked to talk, now that he had someone to talk to––or at. Grey didn’t say much, not that Ernest didn’t give him the opportunity to try. He just never had much to offer other than a hum or a shrug. Ernest showed him mathematical equations breaking down, Ernest rattled about a poem from their English class, Ernest talked about anything and everything and Grey was hooked on every word. 

“One day, I’ll figure out something you want to rant to me about,” Ernest joked, after Grey sat and silently absorbed a lecture on their chemistry homework. Ernest glanced up and down at him, as if hoping Grey would take the invitation, but he managed little more than a tight shrug.

“I like listening to you.” 

Listening allowed Grey to learn more than people expected. His size coupled with his quiet demeanour often left people unsure what to do with him, and generally resulting in them thinking very little of his wits. It suited Grey fine; it meant people underestimated him. It meant they said things and didn’t think that Grey would notice. 

Ernest’s parents were no different. They were polite and they smiled, but something almost unconsciously unkind lurked underneath. Ernest had said 'some people' used his beloathed nickname and Grey learned early on that this included his entire family. Grey knew better than to correct it, but each utterance came so casually: across the table when Grey was invited to dinner, or paired with a patronising ruffle of Ernest’s hair. 

Grey doubted they believed themselves any less than ideal parents, but their bias showed in how they treated the two of them. Ernest’s father eagerly asked Grey about sports, even knowing how he didn’t play, and waved Ernest off when he tried to talk about his classes. His mother joked about dinner, apologising for how Ernest’s allergies left them with such a limited menu, as if nuts and shellfish were meant to be served with every meal. Ernest took each barb with a flinch and Grey didn’t indulge the bait with a response. 

They wanted a son more like Grey: big and tough and solitary. Ernest was too soft, too frail around his edges and talked entirely too much about all the wrong things. 

Grey never voiced this revelation aloud; he knew Ernest was keenly aware of it. He saw it in how Ernest’s expression tightened and how he would take a puff of his inhaler without any physical stress. If Ernest tried to be the son his family wanted him to be, it would kill him. They acted like they had no idea; their own strings blissfully loose around their shoulders. 

Grey wasn’t brave enough to fight them at their own table, and he doubted Ernest would’ve liked him to, but he made up for it in other ways. When they retreated to Ernest’s room, he asked him a question about one of his books or posters and let Ernest answer him: an entire universe pouring passionately from his lips. 

Grey tried to deceive himself. He wasn’t sure why he thought Ernest’s thread would loosen simply by association with him. It wasn’t like Grey fixed his asthma, or made him less allergic to the world at large. His string kept its steady, threatening tension, and while Grey thought he might be able to ignore it, he only grew more intimately aware of it instead. 

Nonetheless, Grey did nothing to stop their forward momentum. They applied to the same college: Grey barely scraping his way inside while Ernest slid in easily. Ernest was overjoyed, wanting to share a room together, and when Grey said yes, his eyes didn’t meet Ernest’s, but instead focused on the strain of his thread. 

The threat reached its peak when he brought Ernest home. Grey didn’t know why he didn’t anticipate this coming, or maybe he was resigned to it; maybe he hoped his mother would look at Ernest and see something different. 

She didn’t. Her face fell a little at his introduction -- so briefly that anyone else would have missed it, but Grey knew her too well for that. 

“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” she told Ernest, her smile bright and radiant. “Bobby talks about you all the time.” 

Ernest’s brows raised, his mouth hanging open a little. Naively, Grey thought ‘Bobby’ was the origin, but he was wrong. “He talks about me?” he parroted.

His mother’s expression softened and she glanced between the two of them. “Oh--I only mean good things. I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?” 

“No,” Ernest said quickly, though his gaze went to Grey -- who, in all of their time together, would rarely talk at all. 

When Ernest was gone, his mother sat him down. Across their tiny table, she held one of his hands in both of hers. “Baby,” she said softly, which was a step even further than ‘Bobby’ and meant the worst. He was ‘baby’ when they first had to move houses. He was ‘baby’ when his grandfather’s thread went taut. “I know you see what I see.”

Grey said nothing. Her thumb rolled over the skin on the back of his hand, soft and reassuring. “I know it’s hard… to meet people, when we’re like this. It’s hard to get close,” she continued. “And this boy is the first person you’ve brought home and to see that he’s…”

She trailed off, her eyes casting downward. She always worried about him; Grey wasn’t stupid enough to not notice, but he wished she wouldn’t; he wished he could spare her as much pain as possible. He also wasn’t stupid enough to miss her phrasing, and how she didn’t call Ernest a friend.

How she put her finger on something that Grey still hadn’t yet. 

“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” she concluded honestly. 

Grey was quiet. He was always quiet, except with her -- and that was when he finally asked. 

“How long did you know about dad?” 

He never wanted to ask, the same way he never wanted to make her worry. He knew it would just upset her--and it did: her eyes shone and she glanced away in an obvious attempt to rein it in. but he wanted to hear it now.

“I knew before,” she admitted, as if using the fewest words she could would minimise their sting. “I knew he was sick.” 

Grey sat quietly, letting the confession sweep over him in a wave. His father died when he was very young: his only memories formed in vague fragments, shaped by old photographs that look so similar to the face he saw in the mirror. 

Her expression changed as she looked at him, as if she knew what sharing this fact meant for them both. Despite what Grey expected, her expression wasn’t despairing. There was sadness in it, without a doubt, but a softening in its corners looked a lot like love.

“Can I ask one more thing?” Grey said, and his mother’s shoulders softened as she nodded her head. 

“What colour was dad’s thread?” 

She smiled wider, laughing just a little, and she released Grey’s hand to wipe her fingertips across her cheeks.

“Gold.”

Ernest’s house was just a short drive away. He was very aware of the time when he knocked, and very aware of the oddity of being here at all, when he’d dropped Ernest off less than an hour ago, and he couldn’t blame the expression on the face of Ernest’s father. 

“Hey, bud,” he greeted, surprise replaced with an easy grin. “Ernie forget something?” 

A nod of his head granted him entry; he'd been a visitor often enough that he was encouraged up the stairs with no fanfare. 

“Grey?” Ernest startled at the sight of him, adjusting his glasses nervously as the door was shut behind him. Sitting up in his bed, he set aside a book so thick it was a marvel he could hold it. “Are you okay?”

Grey wasn’t sure how to answer that. He stood still in Ernest’s room: filled with books and notes and posters of space and science fiction. At his sides, his hands clenched restlessly into fists, relaxing only to quickly tighten up again. 

“I need to tell you something,” Grey began, and when Ernest didn’t argue, he confessed. 

Grey told him everything. He told him about being ten years old and watching a man die, knowing it would happen. About the rainbow of threads that occupied his vision every day. About knowing someone was sick before they did. He told all of it, what he kept between his teeth. He told him about the noose that he saw around Ernest’s throat, and how he spent every day expecting him to be hanged. 

He told him how his thread gleamed in front of him in brilliant, shimmering gold. 

Ernest stayed frozen on his bed, his face -- his narrow, handsome face -- twisted up in something like misery. The expression was almost more than Grey could stand, and it worsened when he spoke. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked, as if Grey was being cruel on purpose. 

Grey took a stumbling step forward, uncertain of his own footing, until he found himself on Ernest’s bed. He’d said more here, in Ernest’s room, than he’d ever spoken in years, and he condemned himself even further. 

“Because I’m in love with you.” 

Grey wasn’t sure what he was anticipating. For rejection, above all. For anxiety to close Ernest’s lungs. For Ernest to order him to leave. For anything other than the way Ernest surged forward, hands twisting in the front of his shirt to hold him steady as he pressed their lips together.

Shock let Grey’s mouth hang open, and Ernest took the opportunity. His tongue pressed to Grey’s and the heat of it melted down to the very core of him. Grey moved, bracing one big hand against the base of Ernest’s skull, and their teeth clicked together in clumsy eagerness. 

The contact shocked Ernest into laughing, and he pulled back just enough to breathe, his forehead touching Grey’s gently. With an unsteady sigh, Ernest rubbed their noses together and his voice shook.

“I really thought you’d never say it,” he admitted, sounding nervous and blissful all at once. “I was so scared that it was just me.” 

Grey pulled back, ready to reassure him -- but what he saw made him freeze.

Ernest’s thread, always pulled so taut since the moment Grey had laid eyes on him, now slumped in a limp, loose pool around the mattress: a brilliant gold loop that shined like sunlight. 

Ernest watched his expression change, concern bleeding into him as he squeezed Grey’s hand. “What’s wrong?” he asked. 

Grey quickly shook his head. 

“Nothing,” he said, his hands framing Ernest’s face. “Nothing at all.” 

End