🪐 𝚟𝚒𝚐𝚗𝚎𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚜 🪐

𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚍𝚛𝚊𝚐𝚘𝚗𝚜

•short story•

Chasing Dragons - A love torn in two by drugs

I watched you chase a dragon last night, across the streets and down the alley but it caught up and it caught you. I watched you burn last night, like a witch at the stake. All your sins and sorrows lay before you, your very existence laid to waste, and you stood and you smiled. You had no regrets, I envy you, my love. There is much in this life that I regret.

Your friends were desire and discontent, mine was cowardice tainted complacence. Perhaps that is where it all went wrong; I was complacent, never with our love but simply with you. Should I have fought? Should I have fought harder for you, for us? I think not. You should have fought but instead, you welcomed him like an old friend, arms wide open like a child embracing its father.

I've tasted dragon fire my love and I will live on. You lived the dragon chaser's life and now our love is gone. It's dead. But the fact is that death is inescapable; the undeniable truth of life is simply death. Life, like love, is a cruel lie but death and disappointment are just harsh realities, simple, cold, unavoidable truths. The dead don't live to tell the tale, so why must I tell yours?

It didn't hurt. Not at all. It just shredded my heart and shattered it into a million shards but it didn't hurt - I'm strong. Stronger now thanks to you. Stronger yet, yet so broken. Just like the glass, illuminated by the blue lights, lying flush to cobbles and all the while the screeching sirens reverberate off of its rugged, coarse edges. The glass in my feet like the knife to my heart. But it didn't hurt.

Oh how cynical the world, how you, made me. Me, one made of proud, strong yet so naïve, so fragile glass smashed by the unrelenting and wild whims of the world. Am I to be like the glass at my feet - lying here on the cold stone, broken beyond repair - lost in the chaos of it all? It's not unlike our love, is it? Both ruined by you, just like the dragon ruined us.

You, my love, were my hairline crack. You were such an elegant flaw. Glass must be so fragile to be floored by a hair's width of impurity. You ripped me open and left me so. Vulnerable. Exposed. Your tongue a serpent, weaving its wicked malice through my world. I was none the wiser. You said you loved me. Oh, how you bested me but at the end who has won? You may gloat while you rest and wither away but I live on and I will outlive you. This I know. This I promise.

You, you broke your promise, you lied. You said forever but forever is a ludicrous fantasy for dreamers and pretenders. That was you, my love that was us. You left me here in this mess, your mess not mine. I wanted simple love but instead, you left, leaving nothing but let-downs and liabilities. You were a liability - just simply a lie. You held jurisdiction over my body, over my mind. I was yours. But just as you retained me in your clutches, the dragon fire had a hold on you. You had no chance, my love I promise you, not even you could outrun the dragon and despite all your best efforts you, like the rest of us, will fall.

Still, what is the greatest lie of all? Your love? Perhaps merely your whimsical promises of life and a love for the ages. My romance was not so simple; it was love, not lust. Do you understand? You craved the adventure, the euphoria, the thrill and my caution amounted to nothing in the eyes of a ...a debauchee - that's all you ever were. You had an insatiable desire for more, a lack of contentment that could not be kerbed, not by anything nor anyone. Not by me. That hurt, it hurt that I wasn't enough, that love - our love - wasn't enough.

Enough. I've had enough and I had enough too before but, but lies they bridge the fear. Your lies polluted even the very depths of my universe. Unfathomable depths, ones not even I knew existed. Not till you poisoned them with your lies. They seeped in, exploiting me in a most wicked yet addictive way. I craved you my love but by playing with fire - the burning passion of our love - I was burned but you, you were decimated by hellfire, the breath of dragons, the Reaper's elixir. I will live on, I will endure. Endure the pain, the loss.

I lost everything to dragon fire. I lost you, my love, and with you went my heart - both lost to the raging flame and fire. We burned bright but we burned quickly. Quickly into the night, we hid and I dearly hoped that there was more to life than this but somewhere between the town square and the cobbled streets I lost you and with you I lost my heart.

Yet above all my sorrow and pain what hurt the most was losing love, our love. But why, why didn't the confusion go with you, the long nights and blinding lights? Weren't the bars, and the burdens, the heartache and the anguish, weren't they all meant to go, you were meant to take them away, far, far away. They should have all burned that night, up, up in flames. But still, they roam my mind leaving but a cloudy grey abyss that dominates me. I now see that I was empty with your love but yet you empty me still. Drain me. Why? Why must you plague me? You torment me. You, my love, are my Gordian knot, my all-consuming enigma, my impossible predicament.

Did it hurt my love; was it painful when you looked it in the eye? When the dragon's talons locked into you. When it gained control over you, over everything. It hurt me. I felt pain. I felt excruciating, agonisingly crippling pain as I watched on helplessly as the little that remained of our love was drained from your eyes, foggy orbs all that lingered. They weren't your eyes.

Your eyes are an ocean, vast and clear. Your eyes are the morning dew on the overgrown grass. Your eyes entrance me and they entrap my very soul. They were not your eyes, they were nothing but a cruel reminder of what used to be.

They were pools of deepest darkest turmoil, a gateway to agony, pure anguish. They were a wicked embodiment of malice and misery. They were oblivion - the darkest abyss. Oh, what has become of you, my sweet dragon chaser; your eyes are not yours.

I envy you though; yes I do, for even if but a moment, my love, you lived. I just didn't die, at least I survived. I survived you. Just. Barely enough. Yet you haunt me still, when will you stop my love? When will you leave, when will you finally be content? When I join you in oblivion? Is that what it takes? Is the dragon calling me as it called you? Is it because I watched; is it because of what I saw?

Because I watched you chase a dragon last night

Across the streets and down the alley but it caught up

I watched it catch you

I watched as you burned last night

Like a witch at the stake

All of your sins, all of your sorrows lay before you

And you stood

And you smiled

You had no regrets

None

I envy you, my love

There is much in this life that I regret

But I promise I will never regret you

Ever

1300 words