Word: Death

Craig doesn't tell anybody what happens to him every night, when he tries to sleep. He tells himself that he doesn't tell anybody simply because it's just stupid, no big deal, nothing that really needs to be told. But inside, he knows it's more than that. Somewhere inside himself, Craig knows that he keeps this secret more closely guarded than anything else because he's afraid of what would happen if anybody found out. He isn't just thinking of the spaz attack that Tweek would surely go through at the mere mention of the subject – though he cannot deny that that is a factor, albeit a small one – and he isn't worried about any of the guys calling him names and his reputation suffering. Contrary to popular belief, Craig is not that shallow of a person. He has his moments of course, but then, doesn't everyone?

What Craig is afraid of, is being crazy. Really crazy, not just the offhand kind of crazy everyone accuses a person of when his opinion is different from theirs. Like, "What? You like that movie? Dude, you're insane." That, Craig can handle, because he knows that that's not really crazy, that's ignorance, and ignorance isn't something to be feared, at least, in Craig's opinion. Ignorance, he believes, is something that can be fought with a solid argument and a middle finger. You can't fight insanity, and that's part of what scares him so much. More than anything else in his life, Craig hates hospitals, and he knows that if he were to be deemed crazy, a hospital is exactly where he would end up. Each time he is jolted awake in the middle of the night, covered in sweat, his heart racing with fear, and he considers the option of maybe, just maybe telling one person, because maybe they might understand or even be able to help, the thought of being shut up in a hospital, isolated from everyone he knows, stops him.

He chooses to suffer, rather than take the risk, and he is perfectly aware that his decision is not an intelligent one. If he wants his constant nightmares about death to stop, if he wants to stop thinking about how one day he is just going to cease to exist and there is nothing he can do to stop that, he knows he is going to need some kind of help. He knows that it isn't normal for someone his age, someone still in high school, to be so afraid of death that it interferes with his sleep, but it is for that reason that he keeps his problem to himself. It isn't normal. It isn't normal to be plagued by the thought of death, it isn't normal to be terrified of just dropping dead one day for no reason, and it definitely isn't normal for Craig to be drinking as much coffee a day as Tweek, as Clyde points out one day at lunch.

"Don't you hate coffee?" his friend asks between bites of his ham and swiss sandwich, head tilted to the side in confusion. They – and Kenny, though the blond's upper half is sprawled across the top of the lunch table, and he appears to be sleeping – are the only ones at the table; everyone else is still in line for food.

Craig, who is barely awake and functioning after his eleventh sleepless night in a row, blinks at Clyde stupidly for a few seconds until he is able to form a coherent thought. "Yeah," is all he says, stifling a yawn. He looks down at his tray of food, but the thought of eating just doesn't appeal to him and he pushes it aside.

"So what's with the caffeine attack? Tweek finally get to you?" Clyde grins, completely unfazed by the middle finger he receives in response.

"I haven't been sleeping well," Craig mumbles, accidentally telling the truth and mentally kicking himself in the balls for doing so.

Clyde's grin instantly disappears and he looks concerned; leaning forward slightly he asks the question Craig knew was coming. "How come?"

"Just..." Craig stalls as he searches his exhausted brain for a lie. It doesn't even have to be that convincing of a lie, as long as he makes it sound convincing he is pretty sure Clyde will buy it. "Stress, or something." A spark of an idea ignites in his brain, the kind of idea that, had he been more awake and aware of what exactly he was saying, he would never have acted on. But he does act on it, now, because he's gotten almost no sleep in eleven days and his brain isn't exactly functioning on a higher, or even a medium, level right now. "I have – my cousin's been having some – problems. She—" Craig says 'she' because he knows Clyde is more sympathetic to the female gender. "—keeps having these nightmares..."

"About what?" Clyde looks mildly interested, and Craig instinctively glances around before cautiously continuing, his voice unconsciously lowering.

"About – like, dying. She's really afraid of it, about like, not existing anymore, and it's fucking with her sleeping. It's been like, two weeks or something. I don't sleep hardly at all. Because I – I'm the only one she says she can talk to." The last part of Craig's sentence comes out in a rush as he tries to cover his near slip-up.

Thankfully, Clyde doesn't seem to notice.

"Jesus," he says, his eyes widening. "She should really go see someone about that."

Craig shakes his head, hard, the strings of his blue hat whipping back and forth. "She doesn't want people to think she's crazy, because, like, fuck, it's a crazy thing to be worried about. It's not like you can fuckin'...stop death." His heart speeds up a little at his own words, but Craig ignores it. "If she tells anybody they'll just take her to some hospital somewhere for psychotics, and that's the last thing she wants to happen. She's not crazy." Craig realizes his voice has risen in volume and he shakes his head again, as if trying to clear all thoughts from it. "Just yeah, so I haven't been sleeping. Because of that. With her."

Clyde still looks worried, in part because in all the years he's been Craig's best friend after Tweek, he has never seen Craig give a fuck about any member of his family before, and something about this whole thing just seems off somehow. But before he can say anything else, all of their other friends start to arrive. Tweek nearly collapses onto the chair on Craig's right, yelping something about the latest government conspiracy he's sure he's uncovered; Token sits down next to Clyde and starts talking about a video game he just found out about that they have to play; Kyle and Cartman take seats across from each other, each of them slamming their lunch tray down angrily, arguing the whole time. Craig closes his eyes as the rest of them find empty chairs; dizzy from sleeplessness, he is hardly even aware of the conversations going on around him.

Unlike Kenny, who has in fact been awake the entire time. Kenny, who has heard, very clearly, in his short conversation with Clyde, everything that Craig wasn't saying.