The longest march

content warning: language

Two young men stopped at the end of a T intersection. Same height, both wearing light blue pull-overs and grey pants, they could have been mistaken for brothers were it not for their vastly different faces. One of them had blue eyes, short hair and an oval shaped face. The other, a Bob-cut hairstyle which always covered a piece of his line of sight. They had met in class when someone pointed out they were wearing the exact same outfit. Since then not only had the matching outfits become a recurrence. They also discovered a shared passion of running. Always trying to one-up each other during training, most of the time it ended at a draw. Some of the time one of them puked their guts out. Right now, the only thing they shared was the knowledge there wouldn't be much training in the near future. Neither of them admitted it but the verdict fell heavy on their stomachs. Now the visible part of the brown eyes looked worried as they stared into the one's of his short haired friend.

"See you in a month!" The blue eyed boy said with a

jest in his voice.

A month, that's what everyone said. Just a couple of weeks of

lessons from home, working from home and not drinking yourself into a hangover

at the local bar. Couldn't be that bad right? Just a minor nuisance to keep the

old, the ill and the people you cared about safe. Just a month inside and then

you could enjoy your liberty again with a new-found appreciation for it, as one

of the experts had said with a smile on his face.

"Yeah, see you in a month, Matty."

Matty could barely hear the words pass his friends lips. He

looked at him with compassion.

"Come on Rob, it will all be over soon, then we'll go and

hydrate ourselves in Luigi's bar after training again."

Rob went through his hair to view all of his friend's smiling

face.

"Yeah I'd like that, maybe you can set me up with someone and we can go on a double date with your girl."

"You betcha Rob, now I gotta go catch my train, wouldn't

want to be late for the curfew ey?"

They both smiled at that, but not a single laugh could be heard.

"See you later man", Rob said, bumping his fist into

Matty's.

He nodded and walked towards the exit sign of the campus. Rob

stood still for awhile, looking around him, noticing the coming and going of

students and professors alike, all of their mouths covered by a piece of fabric.

He closed his eyes for a moment, taking in their silent marching combined with the rustling sound of the

green esplanade into himself.

"Just a month", he whispered to himself.

When he opened his eyes again, the sound of a soft breeze now

only filled one side of his hearing. He looked down to see the

flickering light of the ON/OFF button next to the ventilator telling him his

computer was going to run out of

juice in the next couple of minutes. He got up, reached behind his screen and

plugged the charger into the port. The 21 inch screen popped on like a petard

made of light and produced a glow so bright it forced him to avert his eyes.

"Goddamnit," he

mumbled. “Forgot how annoying

that was.”

Fiddling around the keyboard he managed to press the right

command to lower the brightness setting.

"That's better."

On display, Rob saw Matty looking outside of a window, the once

vibrant blue eyes now surround by dark circles and the playfulness replaced

with a dull, bored expression. He couldn't tell whether it was the quality of

his screen or if the face of his friend really looked that numb. He decided it was best not to dwell on it for too long.

"You still there Matty?"

No reply came.

"Matty?"

The boy turned his gaze away from the window and directed it

back at the screen again. Something that bothered Rob the most about the zoom

meetings was the lack of eye contact. It was physically impossible to look both

directly into your laptops camera and at the same time meet the stare of the

person you were talking to.

"What?"

"I asked you how things were."

"Things are fine."

"Matty."

"What the fuck do you want me to say Rob? My mom's dead, my

girlfriend left me I may get kicked out of University, in the fucking graduation year no less, I haven't been out of my room for..."

He paused.

"I can't even go downstairs without feeling like dying,

because my lungs feel like they're made out of swiss cheese, even after I've

supposedly been deemed cured for over three months now. On

top of that, now everyone is vaccinated, playing around like all’s well, but I’m

still locked behind this fucking screen. One and a half year for everyone, except

for Matty, no one knows when gets to live again . Life is

fucking shit right now Rob."

This wasn't the first time this conversation had gone like this.

Rob trying to be supportive while letting Matty yell his lungs out about how

everything was ruined, until his face got all red and he started coughing

violently, at which point his father ran inside his room to administer oxygen

from a small tank. The father was never angry at him, he was glad his son had

someone else to talk to. But Rob couldn't take it anymore. He could not bear the

father trying to be polite, saying; "I think he needs to rest now."

one more time. he could not see his friend as this helpless little being,

gasping for breath, frightened at the lack of life flowing through him.

"Then fucking die, you cunt."

"What did you just say to me?"

"You heard me."

Matty's face lost it's red colour, now only confusion poured

from his eyes. Before he could say something, Rob started again.

"Every week it's the same thing, every week the same

problems, every week and nothing changes. You're right, your life is shit now,

I have no idea how hard it is to lose a parent, I was already single going in lockdown so I didn’t

experience any loss, my lungs don't feel like they've been perforated by an

overzealous bureaucrat. But don't you

dare think for a second that I had it

easy. My mother lost her job, I couldn’t visit my

grandmother who's slowly but surely getting more demented with each passing day

and on top of that I didn’t have sex even since

before this all happened. Everyone went mad,

but we all tried our best. And maybe you feel like dying when you walk

downstairs, but everything you're doing right now doesn't even remotely come

close to living. So you might as well fucking die."

Matty's nostrils flared open and close like broken elevator

doors. His eyes lit up with pure rage, but behind that, Rob saw the spark

again.

"Watch me you cunt", he simply said as his screen

blurted to black.

Rob felt a wave of fear flowing over him. Had he gone too far? He wasn't even sure where he wanted to go

with this. He picked up his phone and scrolled through the contacts until he saw "Matty Home". His finger

hovered over the green sign, wondering what he was going to say to Matty's father.

"Hey there mister Jackson, you're son may or may not

contemplate suicide because I pushed his buttons one too many times. Would you

be a sport and check on him for me?"

Before he could react at his made up scenario, he received a

notification on his screen. It was Matty, trying to start a video chat with

him. He quickly pressed on accept, fearing the worst, but all he could see was

the dirty grey carpet of Matty's hall floor. Suddenly the view shifted towards

the door, one staircase below him.

"This time..... I'm gonna be the winner", He could

hear Matty pant out between coughs.

A warm feeling overcame Rob, this, this was what he was hoping

for.

"Do it then, I'm waiting", Rob replied, barely able to

hold in his happiness.

Every few seconds the view of the camera shifted slightly

towards the stairs, Matty coughing and cursing all the way through on the

background. When he began on his descent, his fit of coughs got so loud his

father came out of the living room and yelled.

"What on earth is going on? What do you think you're

doing?"

"I'm going for a fucking walk."

The view of the camera shifted towards the father with a gaping

mouth barely able to comprehend the situation. Rob simply made a gesture, that resembled him saying "what

are you gonna do?". The father sighed and disappeared off-screen, moments

late he could be seen pushing a trolley forward with a grey-green cilinder and

plastic mask on it.

"No! Get....that shit away from me.... I'm breathing me

some real air in today.",

Matty yelled as he took a couple of steps at once, immediately bursting out in

a cough-fit again. The screen lowered for a moment.

"Keep it close, just in case", he managed to get out after awhile."

Two coughing fits and a lot of pauses the camera of Matty's cell

phone was pointed at the white door.

"Come on Matty, you've got this!" Rob yelled through

the phone.

"Your...Damn right." He said as he barged open the

door, blinding Rob's screen with the contrast of the shadows in his home. After

the computer adjusted, his monitor revealed the green fields Matty lived next

to. The screen lowered again, first Rob heard the two deepest, cleanest breaths

he heard in a long time and after a while he could see Matty laying on his

back, exhausted, but grinning like an idiot.

"Well Matty, I suppose you won this one", Rob said

clapping his hands at the effort.

"Hehe, I suppose so as well", Matty replied. They

stayed quiet after that for a while.

"So, when do we meet for training?" Matty finally

blurted out between coughs.