Falls the Shadow
A one shot.
I'm fascinated by that moment, that space between breath or thought from where most of our actions originate, seemingly of their own volition. TS Eliot captures it best with his beautiful poem The Hollow Men:
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
She fell into a sea of agony, and falling, she understood that she would never exit it. A grey, monochromatic future stretched before her feet, a narrow but long passage that had no end, no exits and no relief, maiming but not mercifully killing.
She felt a hand at her elbow. She recognised the touch and yet... swimming into her consciousness was an awareness of the absence of the spark, the mutual pull that they always – always – shared. There was no longer a soul deep communication that she had taken for granted and finally understood by its withdrawal.
She looked up instinctively, searched his eyes again, hoping to see anything, any shadow of meaning that proclaimed him hers. Instead, they were filled with pity, and that pity crippled her, bringing her, retching, to her knees as she gasped for air. A hand, his hand, helped her back to her feet, releasing her elbow as soon as she had balance. When she looked again, the pity was tempered with slight impatience. Anyone else would have missed it, but she knew him, knew his beloved face and its features better than her own. It was that impatience that granted her a modicum of strength, allowed her to fill her lungs and push back her shoulders.
One glance more, all she would ever get, stopped her breath again. The devastating irritation writ clearly on his face had shifted to reluctant admiration.
She turned slowly and made her way to the door, slowly but steadily, placing one foot in front of the other with deliberate consciousness. She opened it, closed it behind her and step by step counted her paces down the corridor, itself a shocking metaphor of her future. Another door opened and she blinked at the street outside. Without warning, the pain ratcheted even higher, scoured her chest, grinding her heart into fine dust. She kept her feet moving, gasping for breath and fighting the suffocation. She stepped carefully off the pavement, afraid that her legs would collapse beneath her.
She had no warning, no premonition. Cloaked and smothered in pain, a distant high pitched wail made her head turn reflexively. Her eyes met the wide, terrified eyes of the car's driver before he struck her. Her last thought was a dull relief that she felt nothing.