It's strange, the way silence fills a city when death takes over.
I'm sitting here. Alone. Only the tapping of my leg against the cold floor is heard in these empty walls. I used to dislike the noise from streets.
People yelling
Cars driving by
Life pressing from all sides
Now all I hear is the wind moving through empty streets and the soft sound of decay. That's how I know it's real: the silence, and the smell of bodies left too long in the sun. Nobody even bothers to bury them anymore.
I didn't meant to stop visiting her. Not at first. God, I tried, i really tried. But what was I supposed to do? Sit there while she rotted from the inside out? Sit there and pretend that hope still mattered? And then the fear... What if I ended up like her? What if I got too close?
The roads are full of them now, full of bodies like hers. Unmarked graves in the open air, left for the crows or whatever comes next. People don't even bury the dead anymore.
What's one more body? What difference would it have made if I had stayed?
She was already gone. Wasn't she?
No... no, that's a lie. She wasn't gone. She was still fighting, still breathing. And I... I left her. I left her before she was gone. Because I couldn't handle it. I couldn't watch her die like that. I couldn't be the one to say goodbye.
I wasnt the one to kill her.
I did what I could. I called her. I sent... I tried to sent letters to her, didn't I? I wanted to believe that the care she was getting was enough, that someone else could do what I couldn't.
But it wasn't. It wasn't enough.
And I knew it.
I knew what she really needed, and I still walked away.
...
It took me three hours to dig the grave.
She didn't deserve to lay there with every other body.
When i finally laid Chere in there I couldn't look at her face. I had covered it with blanket before I got outside, and since then I didn't even dare to lift it.
I thought I would feel something—relief, maybe. Or closure. That's what they say about burial, isn't it? That it's supposed to bring peace, like putting a period at the end of a sentence. But there was no peace. Just the wind moving through the trees, and the soft thud of the earth covering her. Just me, standing alone by her grave, the shovel heavy in my hands.
Now I'm back in my apartment. It was always quiet here, aside from the noise from outside. But now, knowing she's gone, the silence feels unbearable. It's a different kind of quiet—heavy, suffocating. The kind of silence to dig into your bones.
My gaze went to the shovel leaning against the wall, the dirt still clings to it.
She wasn't the first, she wont be the last.
I killed her, didn't I? I ran away because it was easier to left her to die than look at the light from her eyes slowly fading away as she still clung to the hope.
I did.
I did.
I didn't.
He killed her.
He caused all of this.
I grip the shovel again in my sore from digging hands, my fingers curling around the rough wooden handle. He did this. And I let it happen. We all did. We let him get away with it, let him pretend he was saving the world when all he was doing was tearing it apart.
And now she's gone.
I should have killed him a long time ago. What was stopping me? The law. Or more likely, the fear of it. After all, the detective herself becoming a case?
But now theres no law. Theres barely any law. Who cares? Everyones rotting either way.
I look at the shovel, the weight of it comforting in my hands, and head for the door.
I did what i could for her.
I did.
I did.
I didn't.
(note: The narrator is my oc - Seberang.
lore: Seberang used to be a detective, and Chere was her friend, later love interest as well. But her ex friend raymond few years ago worked for a bussines that started to destroy ecology, yk, toxic waste for example. from this all a sickness started to spread and get out of control (which also caused zombie apocalypse later) andd yeah.
spoiler: seberang kills him in the end yippe!and then she gets burnt alive, but about that maybe other time :Palso this all happens before the main timeline of my universum)
