The Promise and the Threat
10K/58/T
He'd left his shoes somewhere back in his room. His glasses were lost down some hall painted in other people's dreams. He walked on numb from the heart down, because he'd somehow managed to loose that too. In some hallway, some room far from here he'd cast away his innocence and his hope. He could only believe that they'd manage to survive somehow.
He pressed onward as he hunted those elusive emotions he had left.
He cut a bloody swatch through more shadows of nightmares than he could count; hazy things that he forgot about as quickly as he stepped over their melting forms and kept walking. Somewhere ahead of him his soul was screaming. He'd left so many things behind that he wasn't about to leave his heart alone in some dungeon. After the things he'd lost he should have been able to forget this one, stubborn feeling. He should have, but he couldn't…he wouldn't.
He almost smiled, he wasn't sure if that had been a promise or a threat.
His feet moved forward. Squelch, squelch, squelch; their wet thwacking on the tiled, blood soaked floor mute to his ears--all he could hear was his heart breaking. He prayed. For the first time in his God-hood he prayed, because there was no way he'd be able to live again with such a hollow chest. The wound and his eyes would never stop weeping for what was lost.
The minute, the absolute second the screaming died and the heavy, oppressive silence descended…he lost his sanity.
He ran, faster and faster until he couldn't run, couldn't walk, couldn't crawl, couldn't breathe. He wondered, blood and tears in his eyes, nose, mouth…soaking into his skin and bathing his soul, he wondered if he'd ever like the color red again.
***
Laying in the road, blood, rain and tears drowning him, he looked up at the sound of footsteps…and laughed. Well, maybe…he thought. Just maybe.
~Fin.