Asphodelus

Thunderstorm

23.24

I pushed the button and the screen turned black, the numbers disappearing. It was almost as if time itself disappeared too, dissolved in the shattered blackness of my phone screen. But I knew that it was still there, mercilessly ticking forward.

I sat alone at a cold bench with the sky looming broodingly above me, hoarding clouds and turning the late hour into a nightmarish landscape. A flash lit up the sky for a moment somewhere far, far away and a weak rumble reached my ears, a mere whisper. There was a tension in the air, as if I wasn't the only one counting every second. I glanced upward and saw a new lightning split the horizon. The rumble after seemed clearer this time, the thunderstorm approached quickly, but it was still miles away from the lonely and dark café. Yet it would come, it would strike down and change everything around it. It would rumble my world, turn it upside down and shatter everything in its path, just like you had done. Just like you, the thunderstorm would come raging into the world with energy and passion and danger and threaten and destroy everything old. And just as fast it would perish, leaving only haunted ruins behind. But there was still time. As of yet, nothing had happened, as of yet I was sitting alone on a worn bench in a small night café near the edge of the city, with my torn leather jacket tightly pressed around my shoulders and a striped scarf around my neck. You were still miles away. I still I had time to turn back, pick up my phone, pay the check and run home. There was still time for me to escape your world, as of yet I could lock the door and forget everything that had ever happened between you and me...

The phone on the table lit up but I turned the alarm off before it could sound it's first tone. The clock showed half past. 30 minutes left. My breathing accelerated and I turned the screen off with suddenly pale fingers, hurriedly pulling on thin gloves. In my head the hum of a landing plane echoed. I could hear your steps as as if you were walking right next to me, as if there wasn't still half an eternity between us. Carefully, my hand closed around my Betta 3032 Tomcat which, by old habit, was hidden in my pocket. It created a false sense of safety, it was my only defence against my past, against you. An eternity, 30 minutes... Time suddenly felt as liquid as flowing syrup when I heard your steps echoing in my head. Steps that I'd heard so many times before, steps that'd come to me in my dreams.

Lightning flashed in the distance and the thunder echoed between the skyscrapers, which reached their shining tops toward the black sky. They rose, proud and tall, with straight backs, giving no fearing for the incoming storm, just like I had once stood. I had been proud once, I had been fearless. I had stood with my back straight the first time I saw you. And you had been so charming, so beautiful, so innocent. How could I have resisted someone like you? Me, a daring girl of only 16 summers. What could I have done differently? Nothing... You came into my quiet life like a storm and shattered everything. You enchanted me, made me blind for everything except for you. How skillfully you wrapped me in your lies and how late I noticed the trap you'd laid around my throat. I gulped for air too late, tearing at the rope around my neck. You had dragged me into your dangerous game and I never found the way out. Nothing in the world mattered to me, except for the feeling of your heartbeat against my cheek at night and the sound of your even breathing.

The first time you returned home drunk shattered my world again. The first time you left marks, not only on my mind, but on my body...

But I fought, for us, for our so called love. Ignoring your violence, ignoring your debts. I faced the world alone and you weren't there beside me. You pushed me away and that, I realized now, was for my own good. You pushed me away then pulled me closer until I couldn't take it anymore and then, then finally, I understood. That was the first time I saw everything with my own eyes, not cameras, shielded by your presence. For the first time I saw what you had become, how pathetic.