Loss.

Feelings.

I looked around with a wild look in my eyes. All around me were people, trying to soothe me, trying to mitigate my pain. I could see them but I couldn't understand what they were saying. The silence around me was too deafening. I looked around for somebody, anybody, who I could recognize. Their faces were hazy, blurred out. Somewhere, subconsciously,my brain registered people caressing my head and wiping my tears that had gone astray, down my cheeks. Slowly, I could make out some of the voices. The women were weeping; the whole house was filled with their loud wailing. I tried to feel; something, anything, but in vain. Everything inside me was silent, all I could feel was silence. There were people around me who kept asking me to cry my heart out, but my tears and my mind refused to compel. All I could feel was silence, inside and outside me. Deafening silence.

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I was still stuck in that wild evening. The evening which took away everything, everything from me. The phone call..... My aunt's cellphone falling from her hand.... My mom's loud, shocked sobs.... And I stood there... Helpless. Defeated. Stunned. Crushed. My emotions and feelings went into turmoil. I could feel the dull, deadly pain in the center of my rib-cage. My whole body was aching, aching with the throbbing pain, as it spread through my body slowly and gradually. I don't know how long I stood there. Seconds, minutes, hours. The clock kept ticking, and after what seemed like centuries, I suddenly registered what had happened, and I felt the floor giving way underneath me. The last feelings that I registered before falling unconscious were extreme disbelief, and the feeling of losing half of me. I had lost half of me in the walk of life. Darkness enveloped me as I felt the tiled floor hit the side of my face. Blackout.

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Wetness. Somebody was splashing water on my face. With great arduousness I opened my heavy eyelids, and looked up into the red, watery eyes of my cousin. "Get up, Zylen," his voice cracked, "Your daddy's here." I shot out of his large arms, disbelief etched over my face as my eyes searched around the room for any signs of the oh-so-handsome face I know just as well as my own. I practically fled out of the room and down the stairs, and the large horde of people ceased to surprise me, as I scrutinized the crowd for his handsome face and tall, muscular frame. And then I saw it. It. His lifeless body. His closed eyes. His blood-smeared shirt. And still, his eternal, unwavering smile was flashing in front of my eyes. All around me, I could feel the crowd parting, making way for the son of Mr. Osias Witt, who had been shot dead on the evening of 23rd January 2015 in an enemy attack. He, my dad, HE was lying lifeless on the wooden slab. I walked towards him with small, slow steps, almost stumbling over my own two feet. Zylen! You're so clumsy, you'd trip over a cordless phone. I heard his chuckle in my ears; full of zeal and life. And now here he was. Lifeless. Gone. I reached the slab and fell to my knees. Some tears slipped. Some whimpers fled from my heart. "Aw, come on, stop with the waterworks, young man. Boys don't cry." He had laughed. "Be a man, my man. Come here,lets fix the problem with this little tear tap." He chortled, while acting like his hand was a wrench as he tried to make me laugh. Dad. Oh, dad. DAD. Get up. Please. The walls heard my silent plea. I could feel them mocking me. Oh, the defeat. I surrendered myself to darkness, once again. Pitch darkness.

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