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'warning: mentions of suicide that some readers may find distressing'
LIKE HAIL ON A GLASS PANE, the drumming of her fingers was as relentless as it was loud. Each click of the french polished nails on the table echoed the tumultuous thudding of her heart beat. Her face, rigid with tension, belied her youthfulness, she seemed to have aged a decade in the past few minutes.
Cold sweat glistened on her furrowed brow. With hands clasped tightly in front of her stomach she constantly fiddled with her knuckles, weaving her fingers in and out of each other.
"What the fuck are you doing here Marie?" John questioned once again, never moving his gaze from her eyes.
"I came back." She said softly, staring into his eyes.
"Yeah I fucking know that why the bloody hell are you here?" He asked removing the small stick from his mouth.
"Mum passed..." She returned her voice slightly breaking as her eyes glazed with tears.
All the colour seemed to drain from Johns face. The only sound he could hear was his own heartbreat, thumping though his ears.
"What happened?" His voice wavered, as he swallowed thickly.
"Poliomyelitis. She couldn't deal with it. It was taking parts of her, bit by bit each day and I couldn't do anything. I just had to sit there and watch her soul wither away. Her happiness wither away." A lone tear trickled down her cheek, reflecting the moonlight that shone through the glass windows.
"She killed herself John. She put a bullet in her forehead."
Emotions swirled with the ice water circling the cold metal drain as streaks of fire burned his cheeks. Each new wave a hot trail of agony as her slim, bare shoulders shook in each rake of emotion through her frame.
"I...I walked into the house call...calling her name, and she didn't respond, so I went up to her room. She was just lying there. At first I thought she was asleep, but when I looked at her all the pain, the suffering, it was all gone from her face. She looked peaceful and that's when I knew."
By this stage John was crying too, the tears were a never ending flow of heartbreak.
"I couldn't stay there anymore John I'm sorry for coming back but I couldn't..." The end of her sentence was not comprehensible due to the sobs that racked her body.
As John embraced her Marie's sobbing was the sound of a heart breaking. Hearts don't snap like brittle caramel or burst like an overfilled balloon.
A heart breaks in the heaving waves of a new disturbing reality that has arrived uninvited.
