Synopsis: This is a strange piece. It involves one of my favorite methods of writing... action/thought connection. As the character interacts with the world around him, the reader gets an insight into his thoughts and feelings. It's almost like a dream-sequence.
Anyway. I warn that this piece is relatively morbid, and by no means a happy work. In fact, due to the connection between the reader and the characters, the piece will be downright hard to read. It was extremely hard for me to write, so I do hope it provokes an emotion. And yes, there is a message hidden in the symbolism.
It always hurt to be there. Yet something always brought him back.
He stood in the doorway of the rundown home, and for a moment could remember the room before him the way it should be. The way it was supposed to always be. Brightly lit, flooded with tail-wagging, bounding dogs, beautifully decorated. He closed his eyes and could remember the sounds -- the barking and happy panting of the dogs... the jingling of the tags on their collars... the sound of her voice as she giggled and tried to settle the group. It all came back so fast, like a whirlwind of senses he just couldn't help but get swept up in. And his heart couldn't help but surge with a cold, fiery pain when the tones of her voice came running back to him like a haunting nightmare.
He blamed her. Oh, God, he blamed her. For all of it -- all of the misery he felt on a daily basis. She was so selfish! The thought that ran through his mind almost all the time was, "How could she?"
How could she. It had been two weeks since that fateful morning.
He took two steps forward -- each one felt like ten eternities -- and paused. His eyes stared at the staircase, and he shivered. Those stairs would lead him up to more reminders, if he dared to torment himself with them. And he dared, though he never knew why. Every step hurt his body from the sheer amount of effort needed to make himself move forward. Each stair creaked beneath his feet. She had always told him the stairs needed to be fixed. Every time a step creaked, he heard her voice playfully chiding him.
And every time he heard her voice, he asked, "How could she?"
They had been out on the docks. She had been sitting on the side of the docks, staring out into the waters. She hadn't said a word in quite a while. She had been angry -- they had been at war. But damn if he knew why.
The pictures on the walls at the top of the stairs were hanging crooked on broken frames. He just couldn't motivate himself to touch the pictures to correct them, for touching the pictures would force him to look at them. And he just couldn't stand the images kept within. They told haunting stories of long-lost happiness and the death of a dream that was never supposed to die. Oh God. How could she.
He had approached her and sat next to her. He felt the tension radiating between him and her, and inhaled deeply. He was intending to start up a conversation and try to mend things. But he had no idea where to start, as he couldn't determine what had caused all the turbulence in the first place. She had watched him intently, as if asking him to speak. But he had said nothing.
Somehow his body moved into the master bedroom. The air immediately curled around him and whispered mocking taunts. He felt like an intruder -- no, he felt like a ghost. A lost and confused spirit forever trapped within the confines of this dilapidated structure, doomed to never find his peace and leave it forever. Doomed to never move on.
His eyes moved to the corner, where the bed used to be. He could vividly picture all of the naughty cats that would lay on the bed despite being restricted from such a privilege. He could see her silhouette sitting at the edge of the bed, brushing through her long hair at the end of a busy day. He closed his eyes. How could she.
The next exchange of words they had was hostile -- no screaming was involved, but silent and sarcastic stabs were thrust into one another. She had gotten up and began to storm away. He had jumped up and chased after her, apologetically asking her to stay. But she kept walking. He had stopped after a moment, watching her walk away until she was simply a speck on the horizon of his sight. He had looked down at his feet and sighed sadly when he noticed a rotting hand emerging before him. It was no longer time to mourn -- it was now time to fight.
His body was empty of all feeling now -- nothing physical nor emotional was coming in nor out. His heart may have been beating, but it had stopped long ago. He thought two weeks was "long ago." But he had lost all concept of time as that fateful day progressed. His brain had slowly become diseased, and while he was one of the sharpest men anybody knew, he was slowly becoming insane. He was slowly dying.
Sometimes he wished he could rush the process. He knew he was going insane -- during the rare moments where he could actually feel, he felt it. The proverbial nails on the chalkboard, digging holes into his fragile mind. Insanity's progression was painful. At night, he would pray that he would close his eyes and slip into the depths of eternal sleep, for temporary sleep brought him no rest. She was always there, plaguing him with her demonically angelic voice and the horrid image of her beautiful form. Oh God! How could she!
He had taken his sword into his hand and began to fight off the masses of creatures that had been spawned from the soils beneath him. But his heart wasn't in the fighting, and his defense suffered severely. Plus, the numbers against him was enormous, and the probability of his demise was increasing with each passing moment. Yet he just couldn't make himself care. But then, out of nowhere, a flash of silver. And there she was, thrusting her sword through one after another of the damned things. They had turned their sights on her, and before his frightened eyes, she disappeared into a swarm of slashing, biting corpses.
He stumbled awkwardly over to the corner where the bed used to lay, and slowly laid himself upon the floor. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes dilated and burning. The flashbacks were becoming stronger again, and he couldn't make them stop. He tightened his hands into fists. His eyes began to flood. His body began to ache with a trembling pain that signified the worst was about to come. He braced and shakily whispered, "How could she..."
He jumped into the massive horde of creatures, tearing them away with the strength of twenty men. He frantically searched the swarm for signs of life from the redheaded woman, but could find nothing. He continued to swing and fight until no more of the damned creatures were left. He was practically hyperventilating as he slowly turned back towards her. But his rapid breathing suddenly ceased, and it was then his heart stopped. He made a strange sound in his throat, unable to form it into a logical word. His knees buckled beneath him and he fell to the ground. He tried to reach for her, but his body had turned to stone. It wasn't possible. There was just no way.
He trembled severely and curled up into a tight little ball. The tears spilled down his face uncontrolled; rivers of sorrow that would never wash away the pain that had strangled his heart. Rivers of agony that would never flood and fill the emptiness in his chest. Streams of emotion that should have flowed all along, but had arrived too late.
He blamed her. He wanted to blame her. His anguish and eternal torture would not have been sentenced had she not come to his aid in his hour of need. If only she would have stayed angry for a few more hours! Maybe none of it ever would have happened.
If only she had never managed to steal his heart to begin with. If only she had never come along and taken it from him. She had taken his heart and bonded it to her own -- he should've resisted. But he was foolish and he loved this woman... he was unprepared and ill-equipped. He believed it was forever -- she convinced him it would be. She had stolen his heart, and it died when she did. How could she.
Finally, he got up and made his way slowly towards the entrance. He stood in the doorway and looked once more into the lonely and broken-down room. There used to be so much love and affection in that room -- in that house. There used to be so much love and affection in his body. But no more.
"How could she," he murmured softly to himself as he slowly walked away.
The house stood alone in the middle of an overgrown wasteland. Much like the poor boy's mind, the isolated structure had simply been left to decay.
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