Voodoo: He Jumped

Konstantin jumped.

I was 17 when I saw my closest friend jump from the roof of my apartment building. My other close companion, Jason, stopped living for a while. I was more alive then I had been since I was only three years old.

I had known for years, since I was too young to even know what suicide was, that Konstantin would kill himself. From the moment we met, when he and I were just five years old, he had a morbid fascination with death, and a constant need to know what it was like. I used to think we were friends because we were both simply outcasts, but now I\'ve figured out that it was because, even then, I was attracted to the life he siphoned from himself. In his obsession with death and dying, he let his own life flow from him in a constant stream, and I picked it up like a starving homeless man for some sort of nutrience. My own life had been buried, so deep inside me that I wasn\'t really living anymore, and by picking up Konstantin\'s, I began to act like a child again. I was running, jumping, joking, I became what I should always have been.

I think he was attracted to me for the same reason. He gave me something I didn\'t have, and so he felt needed. he felt this feverish need to protect me, feeding me with his own energy. Konstantin and I became so close, we were easily able to read each others\' minds, possibly because of that unspoken bond of sharing his own life.

But when we were twelve, Konstantin told someone about what happens in my home. Despite our connection, despite his whirlwind of life that I sucked in desperately, I couldn\'t be with him any longer. The friendship ended, and so did the bright, active CJ everyone had known. I became quiet, somber, and shy again, as I had been before I met him.

See, my life had retracted so far inside as to be unreachable because my home had simply drained it out of me. My father and mother acted very sexual around me before I was five, and they fought each other like dogs. I love my father, and it hurt me to see the woman who was supposed to be Mommy hurting him so much. Dad and I had our jokes, but even then, I could see how terribly hurt he got. It drained me, and what little I had left, I dug deep down so no one, not even me, could get at it. My life was hidden, and it was to stay that way.

Before I went to boarding school (I was fifteen. The other kids were making my life terrible, and I wanted to be in a new atmosphere where no one knew me) Konstantin came to the airport. he hugged me and told me, even if I hated him, he still supported all I did. I didn\'t want to admit it, but the little bit of life he gave me that day, those seconds, fed me for the next week. I met a fellow named Peter, and we hit it off simply because I was still so high off my personal drug, Konstantin\'s life.

Peter obviously noticed my decline. He didn\'t give off any of his essence, his life, so I eventually receded back into my old patterns. We stayed friends, and continued to even when I had to move back home. People are the same no matter where you go, as I learned.

Over the years, I had never met anyone like Konstantin. I had another close companion again. Jason Kailyn. We had become very close very quick, but he was different. I\'ve noticed most people horde their life energy, whether conscious of it or not, close to them without letting so much as a drop leak out. For all this talk of suicide lately, a person\'s life seems to be their own until they choose to give it all up. It\'s not something people give away, Konstantin was the onyl one I had met who let even a bit leak out, let alone his constant stream of his self.

When we were seventeen, we were friends again. Jason and Konstantin hit it off, as well. We became a trio. For that eight months, I watched Konstantin, watched as he siphoned even more and more life until I thought there was no chance the force could get any stronger. That night, I knew it was only a matter of hours, and when he walked out of my apartment, I knew it was then. That\'s why I ran after him. Jason ran, too, seeing me go, he knew something must be amiss.

I didn\'t freeze, if that\'s what you\'re thinking. We got to the roof, and there was Konstantin on the ledge, the only thing keeping him from tipping his own center of gravity. That moment, the first and last time, I felt just a wisp of Jason\'s vitae. He froze, and I didn\'t. It would have taken seven, eight strides tops, and I\'d be there before he could so much as lift a foot, but I stayed where I was. Perhaps I was shocked by the sudden blast that ripped through the air towards me, the blast of Konstantin\'s very soul teeming toward me in a torpid wave.

He dropped. He simply tilted back, and I ran forth. It\'s amazing I didn\'t simply jump after him, in a desperate effort to stay close to that energy. He hit the ground (I had always imagined a \"thump\" sound, but I heard a splat. This barely registered in the moment, but I did recall this after in a state of morbid shock) and I ran, galloping down the stairs, pushing my way through the gathering crowd. I strattled his waist and leaned in close, tears streaming down my face at the loss of the only person who ever completely knew me, breathing in his whole life, his whole essence which was coming out in a rapid waterfall more powerful then the wave earlier, as if that had merely been the warning. I breathed it in, and it filled me, and while I was in deep pain from my loss, I never completely lost the energy for another ten years.

I didn\'t realize, until after the paramedics had taken Konstantin away, after the crowd had gone and Jason had woken up from his state of shock and joined me at the ground, that I had an erection.