Thursday, 24 March 2011

the end.

   The feeling was unbearable.
   The deserted streets of the town haunted me with their silence, staking at the pain in my heart and yanking it forward, like ice-cold hooks of anguish clawing at my soul. She was growing heavy in my arms as she clutched at my neck for her life. I could hear her hoarse breathing and, combined with my exhaustive panting, sounded like thunder in my ears; a whole ten thousand glaciers roaring and tumbling over and over through my head, inflamed with grief and ache and remorse.
   “Baby,” I groaned, stopping in the middle of the street.
   She looked up at me through murky eyes glazed with torture. It started to rain.
   “I don’t know where we are.”
   She strained to lift her head away from my chest and looked around.
   “Me neither,” she said. Then she buried her head back into my t-shirt.
   I continued to walk.
   Every part of the street looked exactly the same. Every house, every car, streetlamp, manhole cover and slab of pavement was splattered with raindrops and totally abandoned. Some of the houses still had lights on, even in the middle of the day. Everyone was gone.
Not a bird sang, not a dog barked, not a cat mewed. Complete silence bellowed danger in my ear.
   She was growing heavy in my arms.
   She whimpered my name.
   “I can’t go on any further,” she struggled. She coughed and it shook her whole body. I stopped.
   “No, we can make it. We’re nearly there, promise.”
   She held on tighter, shook her head. “No, I can’t.”
   I walked over to a car and sat down against it. I heard her sigh, heard her heartbeat loud and slowing, the panic in my head rising and my breath quickening.
   “Look at me,” I said. I turned her head and she stared up at me, the liquid gleam in her eyes glinting in the fading sunset. The clouds were pink and the air was fresh, but I didn’t notice.
   She whimpered my name again. It tugged at my heartstrings hard.
   “Shh,” I soothed. “It’s alright, I’m here.”
   “Don’t leave me,” she said. “Don’t leave me.”
   I stroked the tears from her face, the tears she probably couldn’t tell she was shedding. Her skin was ice cold and rock hard.
   “Your hand is so warm,” she said. Her eyes closed. I jolted.
   “No, baby,” I panicked, “look at me.”
   Her eyes opened again and she reached up to put a hand on my face. I felt it glisten with moisture, but ignored it. It scared me how she was still alive after everything we’d been through, and yet I wanted this moment to go on forever. I was disgusted in myself for the thought – the longer this went on, the more she suffered.
   And yet, I couldn’t face losing her. I wouldn’t face losing her.
   “I’m so cold,” she said. Her eyelids flickered and her features creased in an agonised frown. Her body convulsed, she tensed – like she did when she stretched after she’d woken up from a sleep – and relaxed. She focused on something behind me, past my head – something I knew wasn’t really there – like she was bordering on the edge of where the dying make the grovelling journey to the dead. “It hurts.”
   “Shush, now, baby,” I whispered. I wanted to hold her so much closer, and I would have if I knew it wasn’t going to hurt her. “Don’t leave me. Stay with me, baby.”
   There was a long silence in which I could hear the patter of the rain on the pavement get harder. The slash in her cheek was bleeding ferociously, the rain droplets dragging streaks of blood down her cheek and into her hair. I stared down at her, looked her deep in the eyes and was almost lost in the glittering dusk and the dazzling eternity she seemed to hold inside them. Many a time had I told her how amazing she was, and many a time had she laughed my favourite laugh, smiled my favourite smile, and told me: “Not as amazing as you, Benjamin.”
   I would never hear those words from her again.
   “You’re so amazing,” I whispered.
   She smiled and her eyes twinkled for a lingering moment. She opened her mouth slightly to say something, but closed it and nodded once – as if she, in this moment of excruciating bliss – finally understood how amazing she really was.
   The sunset faded and the clouds peeled back to make way for a clear night sky that showcased more than a million glittering diamonds, watching down on us sorrowfully.
   “There it is,” she said.
   I smiled. I didn’t need to look up. She was talking about our star – the one we had so often looked up at together, in a loving embrace under the thick blanket of gems and their absolute, infinite canvas.
   And it was fading.
   The one star that had been so bright and full was now waning into the darkness of the universe beyond it.
   She exhaled. Her grip loosened and her eyes closed. She looked as though she had only fallen asleep in my arms like she had done several times in the past. I leant down and kissed her, her lips still soft from the subsiding rain. I closed my eyes and breathed in her heavy scent – the one that had often been so much of a comfort to me was now mixed with ache and anguish, blood and tears.
   And she was gone.
   A mixture of emotion washed over me, overwhelmed me, consumed me wholly and took away my ability to breathe. I couldn’t think straight. Before me I held the empty soul of one I had once loved, and yet she looked somewhat hopeful as she lay there, still, in my arms. I gathered her closer and held onto her tighter than I ever had before, as if it could bring her back – save her from... But where she was going now would be peace far better than anything I could give her. There she would meet those that truly belonged to her, while she watched down and saw me shed tears for the life she could have lived.
   I could do nothing but bury my head in her sweet smelling hair and cry.

~

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