METANOIA

Nothing

Crossing my arms over my chest and pressing my thighs together, I watched as the moonlight softly touched my body. I sat on the couch next to the bed where Jensen slept, listening only to his slow breathing, to which my eyes closed quickly, but I flinched every time I drifted into sleep. I decided to stay by my brother's side that night, wanting to constantly check on his condition despite the soothing words of the doctor who had left the mansion hours ago; periodically I would get up to push the heavy gates of Morpheus' realm away from my eyelids, then check the man's pulse and breathing, covering him with a blanket — it became a repetitive cycle that kept my anxious thoughts at bay.

Time dragged painfully slow, and it was becoming impossible to resist my own mind. After a few futile attempts to breathe in the cold night air through the ajar window, I couldn't stand it any longer and went to the ground floor to get cigarettes and a lighter. Closing the door to the balcony tightly behind me, I threw a glance at the sleeping Jensen before I turned away from my brother completely, bringing the fire to the tip of the tobacco roll. The skin on my knuckles and phalanges of my fingers quickly turned red, resisting the gusting frosty wind of the freezing night — perhaps the darkness wasn't actually as I'd described it, but it felt so empty and lonely inside me that it felt like the whole world was like that, depressing. Shaking hands slowly and tearingly brought the thick cigarette to my dry lips, with heavy breaths I drew the poisonous smoke into my lungs, instantly feeling my consciousness dulled as if everything around me was just a theatre production in which the scenery was falling apart. A dull pain seized my left temple, which I gripped with my free fingers, settling to the floor. I lay the painful part of my head on the cold stone that made up the balcony and raised my eyes to the black sky, taking another drag on my cigarette. With the smoke I exhaled the silent prayers that were in my soul, but not in my empty head — I must have been asking an unseen force for it to end, right now. A strong gust of wind awakened hot tears in me that rose in my eyes and wouldn't flow down. Clasping the cigarette with my lips, the ash from it falling onto my thin skin, my hair, I raised my palm to my temple. What a manic urge it was to crack my skull; to let the bones crack as they dug into my brain, to let the blood spill over this white, cold stone on which I lay alone that night, so that fear would no longer overpower my heart. My fingers dug harder into my scalp, pulling down my hair, and a tight feeling gripped my head, I could feel the throbbing beneath my hand.

I ignored the thoughts of being cold as I continued to shiver on the floor with the slowly fading cigarette whose light was the only light in this darkness. The tops of the dark trees that I could see through the hazy haze in front of my eyes were bending in the strong gusts of wind — I watched this as I switched from one cigarette to another, and until half the pack was empty and my head began to spin, I didn't think about going back to my brother. I continued to stare at the vast darkness that spread over me, just as I continued to run away from myself.

I didn't realise if my life had been meaningless since I was born, if I was too weak for this cruel world, full of violence and blood, where seconds were like blades cutting with every breath. How tired I was of the hateful problems I had to face every day, tired of the life I was wasting so stupidly. Was I destined for such a tragic fate? It didn't make any sense — I don't think I will ever feel alive again. Overly exhausted, I lay once again on the cold floor and tried to find myself in the darkness in which I found myself.

I shuddered at the cold that swept through my body like a few lightning-fast blows to my bones. I wiped my swollen face with the fingers of my cold hand in an attempt to wake up, but only the heavy grey sky overhead reminded me of last night's torture. My eyes were blurry, as if I'd siphoned all the fluid from my body while the rest of it pooled in my bladder because of the strong coffee. Biting my lip, I rested my palms on the stone I'd heated, rose to my feet, and picked up my cigarettes and lighter. The thought of smoking whatever was left in the pack flashed through my mind, as empty as the nature I was looking at, but nausea came quickly to my throat. Pressing my lips together, I turned around and walked back into the room where, under the shadows of the thick clouds that filtered through the old windows, where Jensen was — lying dead on the living or alive on the dead.