Part 2

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He couldn't remember how long he had been wandering through the night. Suddenly he found himself lying on his back on the ground, as if a magical force had put him there. He didn't know the place, the landscape had changed completely. He sat up, feeling every muscle in his stout body aching, and looked for a nearby path where he could find some living soul who gave him information. When he succeeded, he continued his journey on foot to the coast. After a full day he'd arrive there, according to the news he got from the villagers who came across him. His goal was clear: getting as far away as possible, crossing the ocean to start a new life without her.
Getting on board wasn't that hard. There was always room for a pair of strong arms. And he knew well how to work like a slave. Too well he knew. Nothing could be worse. Although his brain probably couldn't cope with the memories so easily. Before sailing away, for a fleeting moment, he felt the urge to go back and do it: hurt her, make her feel the same horrible pain in her lungs, squeeze his fingers around her neck and wait until the air stopped passing through her throat... Her beautiful neck... Suddenly he thought he could never hurt an inch of that pure silky skin, something higher than he forbade it. After all, it'd be like killing his own reflection in a mirror, like committing suicide, and such an idea hadn't entered his mind during the long walk.It was not easy for an unschooled mind to develop a coherent thinking, so he kept jumping from thought to thought. He started at last to move into the ship, farther and farther away from the only home he had ever known. But it didn't matter. She'd leave, she planned on abandoning him without a remorse, to let him die in agony. Home —inhospitable, but his home in spite of that tyrant of Hindley— would break into pieces. He'd have to live like an animal thereafter, drinking rainwater and eating mud if he had to. None of that mattered, that's how he had always managed. He was nothing but an animal, a savage, an inhuman being, but HER animal after all. And he'd never be any other woman's animal, that was for sure.


He lost track of time and space as days went by, the blue horizon bordering his new life. His muscles had given him the passport among the unskilled crew, so he worked from dusk to dawn, afraid of being left alone with his plans of revenge. But when he finally fell to his knees he realized it wouldn't be so easy to run away from his own memories. It wasn't fatigue but the weight of his thoughts what sent his bones to the hard wooden surface of the deck. 


Reproaching, threatening, cursing, damning, and finally reaching a conclusion: it was the end. He'd never get back. He'd never see her again, not at least beyond his dreams, because her face was too much embedded in his retinas to fade away before a long time. She'd never set her eyes upon him anymore. That truth sent his body to the ground, as if his legs had suddenly broken in half. He started to tremble violently, as if his hard skin could feel for the first time what cold weather was like, as if he could feel its effects so many years after arriving at Wuthering Heights. Had he known how to do it, he'd have cried. If he'd have ever experienced the human relief of letting tears run from his eyes, he'd have tried to do so. But with a soul like his, he could only let wild moans get out of his throat, like a wounded wolf would.

Nothing mattered. Nothing mattered anymore. He knew that moment was worse than the end, it was the beginning of the end. It wouldn't come then nor there. He'd wander this world until he'd get to wander the other chasing the spirit of Cathy. He stood up with the new purpose in mind. His movements got slower, the feverish activity had to turn into calmer tasks. He couldn't exhaust all his energy, he needed it now he had a goal... Death. That was the answer, the priest who'd unite them forever. He'd wait, all the required time, to check which of the two would leave their flesh first. If his heart stopped before hers, from the pain of losing her, then he'd return to Wuthering Heights, triumphantly, in the shape of a ghost to haunt her every minute of every day during the years elapsing until she met him and they both ran the moors, hand in hand, for all eternity.

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