The Last Tears
Graving attention from the cold, a small knock came from the window. It was a branch of the grey dead tree in the yard, invisible because of the snowstorm. The wind whistled against the house, where a small man sat on a bed. The room was warm. A strong contrast to the stinging weather filling the outside air.
The man’s eyes were filled with tears. Having lost his only love just hours ago, he couldn’t think properly. The darkness of the night was flooding from the window like an overflowing bucket. The man couldn’t stand the feeling of being looked at. He stood up. Rocking from side to side, he minced to the stairs and down to the living room.
The big gothic windows didn’t help the gloomy feeling of darkness. A small pair of glinting eyes stared at the man. After a while the owner of the eyes kept on with its voyage thinking nothing but future acorns.
An enormous clock kept ticking, measuring the time in even paces. A small picture in front of the dark window meant too much for the man. He couldn’t do anything but walk to it and weep. The darkness shivered as the man started moving again. He found himself at the kitchen sitting down to the table. He watched his brittle fingers touch each other. The strengthening blizzard left a black shape to the window.
The kitchen was verily large, but the man didn’t notice it for his sadness. The darkness kept pushing against the window, breaking its void like tentacles to the falls, consuming the pictures that made the space feel like home.
It didn’t take long for the man to move again. His sadness was eating at his home, breaking it into a house he couldn’t recognise. He walked to the last room of the house. The room had already been consumed by the darkness as the door was left ajar. Small snowflakes were coming from the tiny opening.
A voice, made of something he couldn’t place, spoke to him. The words didn’t feel to mean anything but, put together, they meant the world. “You! You lonely! Come to us! Come to us, to those who don’t care! To those who don’t sleep! To those who remember everything!”
The man was reluctant. He looked over his shoulder. He felt the warm lights of the kitchen sinking into the darkness and snow which came down from the ceiling. He tried to gather any memory of his wife, but he couldn’t. Tears were preventing him from remembering her voice, her eyes, her rheumatic fingers.
He chose to continue. He opened the door. He felt the gust of snowflakes pass him. A dark shape stood in front of him. It was unrecognisable, but it still stood there. It moved to the right giving the man space. The man started to walk. The snow buried his blue slippers as he walked farther and farther away from the house.
He looked around himself. Nothing to see. Just the emptiness of snow against the black background, now calmly floating down from the sky. He looked at the ground. Whiter than white, the small dunes of snow led his way. He kept his head down. A short, crooked finger poked through the snow, once so full of love, now grey and lifeless.
“Oh, Charon, you who lead the doomed,” he said looking over his shoulder at the dark figure dragging itself through the snow. “Would you grant the dead one more wish? Just give the breathless one more mile.”
