Death's Sin
She’s dead.
She’s dead, dead.
She’s dead.
Dead
These words seemed to play a game in his head, toiling and tumbling through the fractures in his skull. They gnawed at his mind, testing how long the human soul could suffer before breaking into fragments.
He stood motionless, constantly trying to piece together the information he was being hit with.
“It—,”
“Accident—,”
“Sorry.”
Fragments hit him hard, balls in their little game of baseball. Then the laughter came twisting into uncontrolled sobs that clutched at his already broken heart. Then it came again, the laughter, cold and raw, the kind that echoes in an empty room.
He still remembered her smile, a sun warming everyone she saw. He remembered the tasty and inviting breakfast she had made for him this morning before going to work. He remembered the smile she had given him before leaving, the last she would ever have.
And now? Now, she was gone.
Gone to the cold and wretched embrace of the void.
Gone to a world he could never reach.
Gone, because someone had drained a bottle of alcohol and gripped a steering wheel.
Anger surged through him, igniting his body and setting his emotions on fire. How dare he? Why didn’t he die? Why was she the only one to pay for his recklessness? It wasn’t fair. He remembered the man’s breath that stank of alcohol and his rumpled clothing that screamed he wasn’t fit for driving. He gritted his teeth. He wished- oh how he wished- that man had been death’s victim that night.
His home, now an empty cave, seemed to hug him, trying to comfort him. Its walls wrapped around him, trying to keep him warm, yet he remained cold. The silence filled his ears, echoing memories that refused to fade. They bounced all around him, suffocating him in their dense emotions.
He screamed, collapsing to the ground, and clutched his head as if trying to block the flood.
It didn’t work.
Her voice resounded in his mind, ricocheting off the hard frames of the wall, twisting his thoughts. It didn’t want him to forget, wrapping its tendrils around him and pulling him into a never-ending pit of despair.
He pulled himself off the floor with shaking limbs and staggered to the mantle, where her picture rested—the only light in this house. He gazed at the picture, at her smile, which seemed to mock him, a wicked reminder of the sun that had escaped his life. Her laughter echoed in his mind, making him turn his head. He thought he’d heard her voice, but it was all an illusion. She was gone, and she would never return.
“Why?” he whispered, his voice low and full of grief. “Why did you leave me?”
There was no answer. The only sound was the creaking floorboards as he swayed toward the couch. The couch panted and sagged, protesting the weight on it. He gripped the picture in his hand and stared at her smile.
Tik Tok Tik Tok
The clock went on with its daily business, indifferent to his pain.
The world didn’t seem to care that a soul had vanished. Life continued, as it always did. But not for him.
Time didn’t seem to care, trudging forward as if nothing had happened. Soon night came, He didn’t see any change around him, but he knew it was night. Sleep came for him, pulling at his eyelids, whispering, “Rest and just dream”. And so he did.
He closed his burdened eyes, rested his head on the couch, and let the dreams take him. They were good dreams, positive and warming, the kind anyone would smile at. But he didn’t smile. The dreams would not last. Eventually, that pit of darkness would reopen and swallow him again. Reality would break through.
Because Death never really left, it hovered like a moth to a flame drawn to the delicate life one had, and sucked out everything, leaving nothing. That was Death’s eternal sin.
