Alive//z.m. au

Alive ➸ "I promise."

"What?"

"You heard me."

With that he let out a short laugh releasing a puff of smoky air, a result of the low temperature.

"Why do you care?"

"Who said I do?"

She felt her eyes sting, again, out of humiliation this time.

"Leave me alone."

She struggled to get her words out.

"You couldn't jump the first time. What makes you think you'll be able to do it the second time?"

He shoved his hands into his leather jacket and looked at her, challengingly.

"That's got nothing to do with you."

"You're a coward."

That's when she lost her sanity. Having a nameless person label her was the last thing she wanted.

She jumped off the wall and jolted in the man's direction. Anger, frustration and fury was boiling hot that led her to push him, hit him, right in his chest.

Never could she have judged that he'd be strong enough to withstand it.

"I hate you."

"You don't even know me."

He caught her wrists in his to cease all her movements.

"Stop. Okay? You don't know what I'm going through."

"You can tell me."

She stared deep into his eyes as he stared back, and that's when she melted. She squeezed her eyelids shut, while still under his grip.

"I'm just breathing. I'm not alive. If I killed myself I'd only do people some good."

"I know what that's like and I have a way."

Before her thinking capacity could judge his train of thoughts, he slipped out a blade from the pocket of his jacket and ran it down the fleshy part of her open palm.

It was when her blood oozed out from the fresh cut, was when she realised what had happened. As if her eyes controlled her brain, she felt pain shoot from her hand straight to the rest of her body, splitting her in half.

"Do you feel that?" He asked her barely having her nod in return while tears flooded her face. "If you can feel this, you're alive. You're not just breathing."

By now both their hands were covered in her blood, red and nauseating.

"Give me a week and I can show you what being alive is. Seven days and I'll give you seven reasons to live."

"And what if you are not able to do that?"

Her voice quivered thinking of another failure, the pain forgotten for a while.

"Then we'll come here and jump together."

She looked at him, unsure. She stood on the wall, minutes ago, to be done with this world. Yet here she was, hoping he wouldn't fail her.

"I promise." He added.

And that was the first thing he had unknowingly instilled in her. Hope-which until now, had no existence for her.

~to be contd.