SAUDADE ; [ narry ]

PROLOGUE !!

One...

A dream.

I opened my eyes to an abyss of black. Not a thing stirred and yet the air felt stuffy and uncomfortable as if I was being mobbed. One minute I was alive and the next I was an illusion conjured up by some twisted mind. I couldn't tell left from right. I didn't understand up from down. All I knew was my hands were burning, my legs were immobile and my heart was aching to claw its way out of my chest.

Two...

A reverie.

I would reach out for something in the unknown and grasp nothing. My mind would swim in numbers, letters, phrases, algorithms. I was breathing in bad air that traveled to my lungs, caused them to wither and break off in sections. I could feel a scream in the back of my throat but there's no exit for it. My eyes are blinded by the color black and I can't keep track of my fears because I'm surrounded by everything and nothing at the same time and no one is here to let me out and that finally gives me the strength to let my scream erupt-

Three.

A trance.

I wake up.

And not on top of soft and sweaty sheets tangled around my feet but in the street.

After my eyes adjusted to the blue darkness, I could make out the height of the cookie-cutter houses on both sides of me, but I was laying on the curb of someones driveway.

It was a ringing silence that brought me to my feet. Not only was I afraid to be this far from home, but the fact that I managed to make it this far shocked me.

I turned slowly to take in my surroundings, the cars and hydrants and children's toys littered across yards.

Not my neighborhood.

And then it came into view. The only thing I could see at first was the waft of smoke rising like a desperate hand into the night sky. A street post whose light was flickering, the body of the post bent in an irregular angle. The large shadow of a damaged car was the last thing I could see and it took me awhile to come to the conclusion that it was in a wreck.

My feet moved before my mind gave them permission. I felt pebbles and God knows what on the soles of my feet but I never stopped. My eyes stayed trained to the car that looked so out of place in a neighborhood that seemed so much like a dream.

My head began to pound, the smell of smoke wafted into my nostrils and around my pajama clad body as I stepped up to the drivers side door. I recognized the person before I even saw their face. Pale skin shined in the moonlight but it wasn't the beautiful kind of pale. It was like glass stained in blood. It was the kind of glow that meant something deadly, something that made your heart stand still in fear.

And that is exactly what my heart did. It stopped completely and dropped down to my feet. Seeing him like this, hurt and unresponsive almost made me scream. Almost.

The man I hated but adored, despised yet looked up to was slipping from my fingers like sand. I could pick up a handful of him all I wanted but it would still slip through the spaces of my fingers.

He was slipping, metaphorically and literally and I could only allow myself to cry. In the back of my mind I knew I had a hand in this.

I hated myself and blamed myself and wanted to put myself in his seat to stop his suffering.

But all I could do was pick up the pieces of him that continued to slip and let the tears blur my vision with sirens as our background music.