There weren't a lot of boxes, just about six. Vyvyan's skeleton was stuffed messily in a box that was far too small. It looked slumped and somehow even less alive than it usually looked. There was another box next to it, with 'Vyvyan's stuff' written on it, with a black marker and in ugly handwriting. Probably Neil's.
In the box were Vyvyan's padlock, nose ring, studs, SPG's old hamster cage, his Walkman, his study books on medicine which were covered in violent doodles, the war comics that Rick had once borrowed him, and his now empty potion bottles which had become dusted overtime. If you looked closely, you could see some flakes of a red substance being burned to the sides here and there.
Vyvyan had never bothered to properly clean his bottles, or anything really, no matter how many times Rick had pointed out how unhygienic it was. Also in the box where his studs and nose rings, and his denim jacket, neatly folded in the corner. Vyvyan had sadly been buried without them.

Rick stared at what was left of his friend. Completely depressing, just like he said. Getting back to his original point, that's exactly why he would never want to read or write a book about something like this.
But if he would write a book about it, which he totally could do because he was a natural writing talent, he would probably end it right about here. Sitting here in the front garden in the dim yellow glow of the morning sun, staring at the moving boxes spread out over the lawn. It was a boring ending, but it was as good as any, he reckoned. Like he said, beginnings and endings were fairly meaningless in the big scheme of things anyway. Vyvyan would agree, and he would certainly agree with him on his point about books with this subject.
Who would want to read a book about some bloke dying from cancer and his sissy boyfriend being all sissy about it? He'd say. I suppose you would want to make it into a movie as well so you and the other girlies can have a girly cry about it.

Go away, Vyvyan, Rick thought. Get out of my head. I can't have you right now. I'm trying to have a moment of peace and reflection, thank you very much. Of course, Vyvyan's voice didn't respond. It was only in his head, and he could silence him whenever he wanted to, something he'd often wished he could have done with the real Vyvyan. But he hadn't talked to the real Vyvyan for so long now. It had been a little over a year since they visited him in the transplant room and he had died the next day.
In hindsight, the doctors had told them Vyvyan had been at great risk anyway. The high-dose chemo had destroyed so much of his immune system, he had been too weak. When an infection stroke and affected his liver and digestive system, his body simply hadn't had the gear to fight back. It was that simple.

He had always imagined Vyvyan to go out in a blaze of glory, in the midst of the action, maybe as a result of one of his own stupid experiments. An exploding car, maybe, or on a wrecking ball. Not the way he did. He'd just thought any ending was as good as any, but that wasn't true, he realized. Vyvyan got dealt a rubbish hand of cards when it came to endings. He would rewrite his ending if he could.

Neil came out of the doorway with something draped over his arm. It was his dress, Rick realized in a shock. Damn. He'd hoped he could have hidden it beneath the sink so no one would find it.
"So I looked around to see if I could find more stuff, right, but all I could find was this dress", Neil said. "So, like, I think we've got everything".

Mike, who was standing a few feet from Rick, nodded solemnly. "Well done, Neil".

"Give that here immediately!" Rick snapped, sitting straight up. "That dwess cost me eight dollars!"

"I thought you said it wasn't yours, Rick", Neil said, sounding confused.

"Oh well, what do I care", Rick sighed. "It's not like Vyvyan's still here to insult me about it. So, yes, I wear a dwess sometimes, and it's vewy conservative to think men can't wear them, actually! So the joke's on you".

Neither Neil or Mike seemed impressed. "Shall I put it with the rest of your stuff then?" Neil asked.

"No, give it here", Rick said crankily. He ripped the dress out of Neil's hands. "You'll make it all messy". He folded it neatly and put it with the rest of his stuff.

"Right then", Mike said, "are we still agreeing on doing this?"

"Of course we are, Michael", Rick said, a little impatient. "We've been over this".

Once they'd made the decision to move out of the house, they'd had a discussion about what to do with Vyvyan's stuff. It would feel wrong to throw it away. Vyvyan probably would have told them to just burn it, but according to Neil, that was a really negative ritual. To be quite fair, Rick hadn't wanted to burn his stuff either.

Rick lifted up the box that said 'Vyvyan's stuff', and quickly turned his back on the other two, so he could softly stroke the denim of Vyvyan's jacket just for a second. He didn't want Mike and Neil to see it. It was his last goodbye gesture to Vyvyan, and he wanted it to be for Vyvyan only. He smiled when he thought of what Vyvyan would say if he'd see him like this, but the smile withered almost immediately. He widened his eyes as he felt them sting, and took a silent deep breath. Now was not the time to cry. He just wanted to get this over with.

He took the box to the small, box-sixed hole just in front of the window Neil had dug especially for the occasion. The potion bottles tinkled softly as he walked. Then, he put it down and they stood looking at it solemnly.

"It fits perfectly", Mike commented, then carried on: "All right, we'll do as we said: if anyone wants anything from the box, now is the time to take it".

Rick got a sudden overwhelming desire to grab the jacket, but he restrained himself. It was only right for the jacket to be buried too. If it couldn't be buried with Vyvyan, it should be buried here. It was the second best thing.

No matter how much they had tried to convince her that it was what Vyvyan would have wanted, Vyvyan's mother had absolutely refused to have her son buried in a sleeveless jacket that said HURT YOUR DOG, U.R DEAD and VERY METAL. She said that he'd been a nice boy, and should be buried that way.

"Now don't get me wrong, Mrs Vyvyan", Rick had said. They'd sat around the kitchen table to discuss the funeral, and Vyvyan's mother was up to her third sigaret. "Vyvyan was my boyfriend. But of all the terms I would use to describe him, 'nice boy' isn't one of them". He smiled, so she knew not to take it the wrong way.

She'd just sighed, smiled a feeble smile and said: "Oh, I know. Believe me, I know. I've raised him. But I believe he was still a good boy at heart". She looked at him and exhaled. "Don't you think?"

Rick had nodded.

They had eventually decided on Mike's light blue buttoned shirt, the one he'd borrowed months earlier. Vyvyan's mother had agreed he could still wear one of his heavy metal shirts underneath. But when they had finally seen him lying in the coffin, they had buttoned the shirt all the way up. It had made him look very un-Vyvyan-esque. When Rick got some time alone at the coffin, he'd quickly unbuttoned some of the upper buttons of Vyvyan's shirt, so the heavy metal shirt had showed a little. It had looked slightly better. "Sorry, Vyvyan", he'd whispered, briefly resting his hand on his cold and stiff chest. He'd known Vyvyan would hate looking like this.

The padlock nose ring, studs had obviously been missing too, but Rick had had time to get used to that, since Vyvyan hadn't been wearing them in his last months. Still, the combination of all this had made him look bare. Naked. His face had still looked like his face, which Rick had been glad for. But something had been missing. After staring at him for a while, he'd realized it hadn't just been the clothes or the lack of his accessories. It was Vyvyan himself that had been missing.

Approximately thirty people had showed up at his funeral, which was held at the local funeral in Bristol close to their home. Vyvyan's classmates and friends from school had all been there, among which the ones Vyvyan had always so lovingly called: Scumbag, Pissface and Dickhead. Then there had been some teachers and uncles, aunts and cousins from Vyvyan's mother's side: people Rick neither knew nor cared to know. Neil's friend Neil had made an appearance, and to his faint surprise Helen and Doctor French had been there as well, keeping low-profile. Helen had given him a nod, though.

The service had been concise and to the point. At least that Vyvyan would have liked, Rick had thought. He'd been fairly certain Vyvyan would have rolled his eyes at most of the other stuff that was done and said. Some speeches had been held that Rick hadn't paid attention to –mostly family saying what a lovely little boy he had been, which Rick had scoffed at. He'd imagined how Vyvyan, if he could see all this, would lean back in one of the front rows and comment: "GOD! I never expected my funeral to be so completely BORING".

Shut up, Vyvyan, he'd have told him.They're doing this for you, have some bloody wespect.

But since Vyvyan hadn't been there, he'd had to do all the eye rolling and scoffing for him. He'd reckoned he could do Vyvyan that much of a favour. He'd done it subtly though, as not to really disturb the service.

He watched as Neil shovelled the soil over the box with the shovel, closing the hole. Then he tamped and loosened it, making it look as if nothing had been buried there in the first place. As if Vyvyan's last remains weren't down there.

"Do you think we should… mark it somehow?" Rick asked.

"Best not, Rick", Mike had said. "We don't want anyone to find it, do we?"

"No, no, we don't", Rick and Neil mumbled almost in unison. The whole idea of burying Vyvyan's stuff was so that it would never have to go anywhere. It would stay right here, where it had always belonged.

"What do you say?" Mike asked. "One last drink before we leave?

"Yes", Rick agreed.

It had become somewhat of a tradition. The first time had been on the day Vyvyan died. Rick hated remembering that day, so most of the time he didn't. But he remembered what had happened after they had driven home that day. They had just sat on the couch together, each of them as much in shock as the other. Mike, whose face was wet from tears, said with a distorted voice: "Oh God, I can't stand this. I need booze. Does anyone want vodka?"

Rick and Neil had just kind of vaguely nodded and mumbled in agreement, upon which Mike had gone up to the kitchen and come back with Vyvyan's bottle of vodka from the fridge. He started swigging it down right away. No one said anything. Rick, who didn't usually drink, had snatched it out of his hand and taken a swig as well. It was the most disgusting thing he'd ever tasted and it burned like hell, but he hadn't cared. Everything that normally seemed important, had now seemed laughably futile. So who cared if he drunk himself to death there and then? Vyvyan wouldn't have, and he didn't either. He'd quickly become so drunk he had to lie down and fell asleep.

Inadvertently, he'd dreamed of Vyvyan. Nothing had really happened in the dream, they had just sat on the couch together. Vyvyan had been smoking, and they'd held hands. That was really all that had happened, and yet it had felt so real. Vyvyan's sweaty palm in his, his skin. He had even been able to smell the smoke in his clothes, a scent he had always detested. When he'd woken up, his mouth had been dry as sandpaper, and reality had crashed down on him like an avalanche. He'd wanted to be buried in it, anything to escape this awful truth that was now their lives. He'd never considered what being dead must feel like, because it seemed really boring, but it hadn't seemed so bad then. Death meant no feelings, and that meant no pain.

The second time they'd drank vodka had been right after Vyvyan's funeral. When everyone else had been drinking coffee in the coffee room, the three of them had sneaked away to Vyvyan's grave, which was almost completely covered in brand new flowers. Vyvyan had hated flowers, Rick had thought. Anyway, they'd stood gathered around it, and Mike had reached into the pocket of his suave jacket and pulled out a small Vodka flask. The same brand as the bottle they'd chugged down days before: Boru Irish Vodka. Vyvyan's favourite.

"To Vyvyan", Mike had said raucously, and he'd taken a sip before passing it onto Rick. After they'd passed it around a few times, they'd poured out the rest of over the fresh soil on Vyvyan's grave.

"Enjoy, you bloody bastard", Rick had mumbled. He'd tried to sound steady, but the tightness in his throat made him fail miserably.

He'd dreamed of him more often, but never quite as realistic as that first time. They were more like weird, silly dreams where Vyvyan had come back from the dead as zombies or one where Rick had travelled back in time to save him from ever getting sick. They'd just been stupid dreams that didn't mean anything. Every morning when he'd woken up, he'd felt equally terrible. Like being hit by a train, over and over, and it hadn't seemed to start hurting any less. Or maybe it was more like being run over by one endless train that never slowed down. Once, after having been holed up in his room for days, he had tried expressing his feelings by writing a poem about it.

Train, train
I don't want to complain, train
But you're driving me insane
Please get out of my brain, train
I'd rather sniff cocaine
Will you be to blame, train?

The minute after he'd written it though, he'd crumpled it up and thrown it away. "Useless", he'd muttered under his breath.

As the took a swig, the vodka left that familiar burning feeling in his throat. It never became any less disgusting, but this was the last time he'd ever drink it anywhere near this house. Anywhere near Vyvyan. His remains may have been buried about two miles from here, this house was where he would always feel his presence the most. Which is exactly why they had to move away. Even a year after he'd gone and months after they had cleaned out his room, they would still find traces of him around the house every now and then. Needless to say, they were mostly traces of destruction: some hole in the wall that he'd smashed, a seat leg he'd sawn off, a shard of a plate he'd shattered, an obscene doodle inside of a kitchen cupboard. And it wasn't even just that. The house had just never felt quite the same.

"I still think we should leave something behind, you know", Neil said, after having taken a sip. "To indicate that he's lived here".

"Neil, it's very rare you have anything useful to say, but I agree", Mike said. He grabbed the marker. "Here Rick, write something on the door".

Rick took the marker and stood indecisively in front of the door for a while.

"What about: 'Vyvyan was here'", Neil helpfully suggested.

"Oh come on Neil, don't you ever have something owiginal to say", Rick snapped. Eventually, he wrote something. He took a step back and they all looked at it.

The front was now scrawled with big, black letters saying: Vyvyan Baste(a)rd was here.

"Brilliant", Mike said.

As a means of a last sort of goodbye ritual, they poured the last bit of vodka over the spot where Vyvyan's box was buried. They then took the remaining boxes with their own stuff, and slowly started walking towards the car Mike had hired. Rick really did try to bite back the tears, but of course, like so many other times, he failed, so he had to be consoled by Mike and Neil patting him on the back. God, he was a girl.

"He's at peace, Rick", Mike said, patting him gently. "He's at peace".

"You know I don't believe in that sort of thing, Michael", Rick answered, giving him a stern look.

"So if you don't believe in heaven or anything like that, right, where do you think he went?" Neil asked.

Rick shrugged. A thought came up, but he didn't say it out loud. It probably sounded poofy. That's probably what Vyvyan would have say about it, anyway.

Rick looked in the direction of the box as they drove away, and directed his last thoughts towards it. Goodbye, Vyvyan. You bastard. He knew it would be a while before he would stop popping up in his mind. It wouldn't be the last time he failed not to cry. He knew it would be a long time before things would be... better. He knew that this wasn't the end. But it was a start.

Thanks everyone for reading.