Not-Quite Hero
Written in under 15 minutes, because the ending just won't leave my mind, and if I don't I might end up writing about it in a freaky major exam this afternoon.
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"Because not all heroes get to choose a happy ending for their lives."
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She smiled at him through dull, dead eyes, and he clutches his wrist where she last touched his skin, and it burned with raw pain. His heart cries in anguish and he forgets to breathe, until his eyes prickle and remembers that it must not cry.
With one deft movement he gathers his child, runs through the skittering of a half-remembered past in his brain. It was a spectacular confusion of lapping flames, and the screams and the cries and the howling fury coalesced into an insane laughter in his right ear. He clutched the wailing bundle in his arms, thinking for a minute that the sulfur might be bad for his tiny new lungs.
He forgets this as the building crumbles, swallowing her and all that remains. His nostrils flare at the pungent odor of blood and burning human bodies, and he caught a waft of her ashes which made him run. He runs amid the confusion in what he swears was the longest road in all his nights, and the lapping frenzy of the flames and the howling background of misery all danced in strange, perfect rhythm in his eyes. And then he clutched the child tighter still, because he was the only thing left and he was very angry and was very afraid, afraid of the lighted night.
For a moment he holds back, wants to disappear to himself and vanish in thin air. He hoped that everything would become too great for him, too heavy for him – for it was too heavy for him - that he would simply crumble under it and die. But he's been goaded this far and believed in this far, and he remembers he was the village head, and things like death and personal loss and mangled bodies strewn all around, and the accusing glares if he lives through this and the village dies - but he shakes his head at that one for he knew that he will not live after this night, not even for his son, not for anyone, because all of them had died with the building that crumbled before his eyes. Wild nights of blissful existence, the pornographic books and his kids who will die, and the smiles and the unrecognizable faces of a thousand and one under his command, and all and one of his village and their bright hoping eyes; perfumed nightmares with the a scimitar of a smile in his night and his cries, and the past, present and future dance in tiny pinpricks through his mind.
As the mountain broke and his unfinished face loses a cheek on the right, he had a rare moment to look up at the sky. The ghost of fiery ringlets dance before the backdrop of the offendingly bright stars, and he thought he understood – he convinced himself he understood – the sensation of thick, warm blood on his hands. He flexed his fingers to feel its freshness, though there was nothing there but his new-born son. And maybe that was why they all laughed at his goofy jokes, and adored his insane laughter, or why there were such great ramen cooks in town, because maybe his village loved him as no one person could be loved that much. And he was right along in suspecting that he will die young, because it is not possible to be that happy and live this long.
He clutched his son to try to smell her essence or to remember his, but he knew it was gone. And the child wailed loudly as he cast his last furtive look on it, that maybe, though his eyes were not yet open they were blue like his as he imagined them to be, and that alone would be enough to remind the child that he was his father and that it should not make him any proud.
For the last time, he ran. It was all a haze and a giant frog, and a few more borrowed minutes of life, trying to remember why he should be smiling, while weaving his own hand-work that defined his mortal time. And he thinks it was unfair in what a short life it had been; and thinking about eternity he began to believe that maybe heaven existed afterall, and what could have gone differently had he knew back then that all who killed a person were condemned to hell.
For a split second he stops his hands to wonder what eternal struggle really was, and he does not dare look behind to have a glimpse of its terribly hideous face.
It was only a split second though, for his last hand seal was complete and he made to smile – for, who knows, maybe it is the last time he can, and didn't he love his smile? When he felt the last of his soul leave his beautiful mortal body, he finally remembers who he was; a hero through and through, and not all heroes get to choose a happy ending for their lives.
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meroe
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