Forsaken

Forsaken

by Wade Hunter

Disbelief.

It washes over me in waves, trying to pull my sanity out into the depths with its undertow. I look down upon the slain body at my feet. Never has my rage boiled to such deeds, and my mind refuses to accept what my eyes can clearly see.

No, I tell myself. I could not be the origin of such violence. The proof is there, lifeless at me feet, to refute me.

The body now just a pile of flesh, bone, and pooling blood seems as if a dream. It is a trick, a prank, which holds no truth. I close my eyes, trying to blot the image from my sight, but my mind recalls all the gruesome details.

I hear a heartbeat build, slowly at first, but then the pulse, becomes stronger. Maybe I haven't killed him, I think, a fraction of hope returning. Maybe he still lives, barley alive, but alive. I bend down, watching for his chest to rise and fall even the smallest increment, but it remains as flat and lifeless as the eyes staring up at me, judging me for the hell I wrought. In my head I still hear the flub-tub of the heart beating, and I refuse to accept what I can clearly see. I place a hand on the body's chest, expecting to feel the faintest of life, but I feel nothing. The phantom pulse grows louder; the sound rushing through my mind like a banshee's cry in the night. I cover my ears with my hands, trying to block it out, but it only intensifies when I do so. I realize that the quickening heartbeat that I hear is my own. My temples ripple from the sheer force of the blood racing through my veins. My mind quakes with the never-ending thud.

No soul rests in that shell, my mind torments. You evacuated it.

"Dead," I whisper into the night air. The water from my breath crystallizes into a cloud as if the chilled air is trying to cling to the solitary word, to prolong it, but death wasn't prolonged. It came swiftly, and it stole the breath from the corpse at my feet. It did not come in a cold breath, but as a swift hand that pierced like steel. It came, and I commanded it.

Your weakness, a phantom voice torments.

I feel my stomach turn, and I fight the instinct to purge my gut of its acidic contents. I manage to hold the bile in my throat and swallow it back down. It isn't my stomach that needs to be cleansed from the bile that corrodes it. It is my mind. It needs emptied, turned inside out, cleaned. It needs an absolution that will never come.

I can't pull my stare away from the empty glass orbs that stare back at me. There is no spark left, no inner flame, no soul, just endless pits of nothing. I reach out to close the eyes, but my will fails me as my hand feels the last whispers of heat, rising from the body. Your fault. Forcefully I close my hand on my victim's face and close the lids on those empty eyes, hoping that it will ease my burden, but it does not. It only increases it.

Closed forever by your fury.

Weakness takes me, and I try to lift one of the dead, limp hands to my face. I want to feel the warmth of the touch while there is still warmth. No, I need to feel the warmth, the caress, the shadow of life that still resides there. The dead skin slithers across my face, and an overwhelming feeling of uncleanliness overtakes me. I know that it was not the caress of the once gentle hand that makes me feel filthy. It is the knowledge that my touch is the taint that this man must bear forever. I let the hand fall, and it smacks the ground with a fleshy thud.

Look at what you have done.

The night seems to close in around me. I can feel its endless ebony squeezing me, trying to still my breath. I find myself leaning over the body, which I slew, hoping to capture its escaping heat, hoping to find a haven in the carnage of my own action.

Whispers churn from deep in the blackness, and the very sound of them sends fear racing down my spine. I look around, hoping to spy some form of movement, some clue as to what demonic tongue wavers in the night air.

I look back at my victim, praying that I can find some reason in his death, but I only find the pain of the ending, the pain of the fact that I took the life. I took the future, the hope, the dream from inside of that body. I cut the cord, and now there is no way of retying it; no way of fixing what I have done.

A brisk wind snaps the hair from my face, and I shutter. I scream into the night. No words form, only harsh tortured sounds of anguish, and those sounds rebound back at me until it seems as if a hundred thousand voices are ringing in my ears, a hundred thousand souls as tortured are mine are calling back to me, pleading for mercy in primal prose, bleating, suffering.

As the screams exhaust themselves, the whispers from the darkness become chatter.

I grab the limp hand once more, and I try to wrap the arm around my neck in form of morbid embrace. I need the safety that those arms can no longer provide me. Your own fault. The arm falls from my shoulder leaving me barren to the ever-pressing darkness around me.

Something ripples the pitch, a cloak of black amongst the blackness, and my eyes are unable to follow the movement. The hair on my arms and neck pricks to attention. I kneel huddled over the body.

Soon, my mind tells me, soon the darkness will be complete.

I look down into the face below me. It is expressionless. Tears plummet from my eye to his cheek, tears that he can no longer cry for himself. How had this happened? How had my mind allowed me to produce such results? How could I hold to such a fate?

Something hits my shoulder, and I slump forward from the blow. I feel endless sorry fill me like a flash flood. Instincts tell me to fight, but my heart knows that fighting is futile. I should have fought sooner, before such a host held sanctuary for me.

I stand. The darkness leaks towards my like rolling tar, engulfing everything. I can hear the whispering again, and it is louder, threatening. The air grows thick with the acrid smell of sulfur, and I can feel my lungs burning, feel the hotness in my eyes.

I fall to my knees, and spread my arms to my sides. Why? To late for such questions. They should have been asked before. A high pitch squeal feels my skull. It pierces my brain like a knife, and I feel the blood began to flow from my ears. The blackness pushes ever closer, and any minute now, any second, it will have me cocooned in its web.

I fall onto the body, which I slew, and I wrap my arms around it. The darkness washes over me, and I am left with eternity to ask myself- why?

Why did I forsake myself?