Pay attention now:
a heart that's all by itself
is not a heart.
- Antonio Machado, 'Fourteen Poems Chosen from Moral Proverbs and Folk Songs'
Last Days of the Roman Empire
In the dream, he is throwing himself from the vacant helicopter pad of the Hotel Carmilla, flying straight for the brightest corner of the sky. Curls of smoke funnel madly in the slipstream, the trace of his passage through this life.
He doesn't look back. Tucks his head in, pushes his body for the light.
Godric once crouched down on a mound of weathered ruins, and told him: Stand in one place for long enough, everything comes to its end.
Sometimes, Pam is there, fingernails bloody where they raked his cheek, daring him to leave in a voice trembling, and terrified. Sometimes Sookie, eyes red with clear salt tears, glues her lips to his:
Goodbye, Eric.
He can taste the sunlight on her skin. When he falls, finally, through the air, he doesn't feel a thing - not even grief.
THE END
4 September 2009