Hush

(Here’s the story based on the introduction proposed by Serge. If you haven’t voted yet, you can still do so.)

The wall was not there. But it should have been, right there under the pourring rain, under the wet foggy cloak that the downfall was provoking. Instead there was nothing, only suspended waterdrops in a void.

Was he losing his mind, here in the typically bad English weather? Surely some missing bricks (and in a bad condition as is) would not endanger his mental balance, not after what he had been through before.

The raindrops intrigued him. He slowly turned his head and looked at the one frozen in front of the point of his nose. He had the feeling of moving through a strange sphere where neither time nor any other law of physics applied. He clearly had taken leave of his senses.

A moment later, or hours – of that he was not sure -, the raindrops were released. The water streaming down his cheeks felt like tears, and maybe there were tears melted within. A drop hit his opened right eye and burst. The driving rain had already formed a wall that made seeing difficult, but the drop in his eye still intensified it all. He was standing in front of an uneasy nothingness, the few things he could catch a glimpse of were washy. As the present was flowing away, he suddenly saw the past clearly in front of him: there it was, the wall. There he sat on top of it, dangling his legs.

He had given himself the solemn promise that he would never become like him. He had promised her that he would never treat her like he did. Who was he? By then, he was merely a vague image of what he once saw as the greatest evil in the world. He was the one that hardly ever vouchsafed a reply to the simplest questions. He was the one he had never been able to avoid yet loathed.

Deceitful peace was everywhere, but he was in front of that wall. He had come because it would have been her anniversary. The rain couldn’t wash his blood off his hands. Nor clear his conscience of her blood. He didn’t want to succumb to grief. His head was turning faster and faster. He noticed he was bogging down, but the sludge was a problem he didn’t have energy to consider. Maybe he was drowning himself into self-pity, though if he could have drowned himself into anything, it would have been the rain coming down in sheets. The drops teemed down so fast they felt like bars, though he was unsure if he was being imprisoned or saved from the outside.

The wall. Dangling. A promise. Again and again it hit him. If he hadn’t abandoned her, maybe he wouldn’t be standing there. He wasn’t even really mourning her. Was he selfish? Perhaps, but the fact that he slightly asked himself this very question was proof enough to him that he wasn’t. A strange demonstration, he knew that, but he had to occupy his mind with something other than the reason why he stood here. It all felt wrong: Her having been abused by him and die. But it was his fault and that feeling was right. He had left her behind when he had run away from him. He had been severely mistreated and had taken the first opportunity to flee. Of course he would have come back for her – that was his empty excuse.

The raindrops began to feel like Santoku knifes. Death was preparing its dinner and his flesh was to be the main course that wouldn’t even be tasted. He rejoiced: he had been quicker than sudden death, he wouldn’t let anyone else decide when it was time to die.

The blood on his hands was washed away by the rain. When the police found him lying in the sludge all that proved his suicide were a few sleeping tablets in his right hand and a broken bottle of whiskey next to it. He had gone quietly. Just like he did a year ago, in the middle of a moonless night when his little sister slept in their adoptive father’s bed.