I Fell From The Dark

5

No one had any faces. She didn't know their names, or how they knew her. All she knew was she screaming at him.

She was enfolded by helplessness, tangled in it like a net. Nothing she could do would make anything better: even inaction would weaken her. All her paths lead to an abyss. All she could do was scream, in pain and fear and impotent rage.

She couldn't understand her words. Maybe they were in another language, or maybe there was no meaning, just formless desperation.

All through this he was impassive. She couldn't see his face, or the other faces around her, the ones who all stared at her silently; but she knew that they wanted her to be quiet, to take her rage somewhere else, bottle it, bury it, forget it. Their wordless disapproval was as loud as her anger.

He cut down diagonally with his hand, a dismissal. Her time to scream was over, and he had had enough. She wanted to grab him, gouge his eyes out, spit on his broken body... But she couldn't, because all actions were a disaster. Everything was ruined and nothing would ever be fine. She wept bitter tears of shame and rage, and the crowds closed around her and he was gone.