Title: Stop All The Clocks
Author: Tabula Rasa
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, this would be in Japanese, wouldn't it?
Summary: She thought that love would last forever. She was wrong.
Author's Note: If you are sensitive, or not one for angst, consider yourself
warned. Scrolling past here is your responsiblity. That said, I hope you like
it.
**********
It hits her at unexpected times.
She is sitting in a meeting, not listening, as they get carried away about
inconsequential things like war and peace. She can feel it then, and she is far
away from the room. (Her heart isn't in it anymore, anyway.) Or she is
walking in the garden at lunch, crushed oyster shells under her sensible
shoes, green, alive things in her field of vision, seen but unseeing. The sun is
painfully bright one moment, and then it goes out.
The feel of the street under her knees is what she remembers most, and
always what she remembers first. The first sensation she recognized, as
she kneeled, was how hard and unyielding the road was beneath her. Then
she noticed the way the small points on the cement, its natural irregularities,
dug into the soft skin on her kneecaps, making little peaks and valleys that
mirrored the road. It took a long time for the pattern of angry red and
pocked white circles to disappear. It is after that when the wetness hits
her, slowly soaking through her thin nylons, spreading up and down her legs,
reaching and chilling her skin.
It is then, and only then, that she remembers how warm and slippery and
everywhere-all-at-once the blood was. It got on her without her having to
touch anything, it seemed. In the inadequate yellow light from the street
lamp it wasn't red but some darker color, glistening like oil when the light hit
it just right. She didn't know if all that was hers or not.
It was painful, on her hands, the contrast between the warm blood painting
everything and the small, cold, hard points of rain that landed on her skin.
Her senses were so heightened she could feel every drop like a heavy blow on
her skin, and she was sure it would leave bruises. Small, rain shaped bruises
all over her body. But later, when she checked, there were none. She was
surprised. But maybe there wasn't enough blood left in her body to form
bruises.
No, she remembers, there were five point six liters of blood left in her body
(she forgets this often, like she forgot it then).
His body was warm and solid in her arms and then not. It was not her blood,
but his, and it turned out there was a difference. There was a difference,
and now it was his blood on her and on the street and in the air, his body that
was not left with enough blood to keep it going, his heart that was stopping,
his lungs closing. And all this time she thought it was hers, and that night
she thought it was hers, and it was only later, when she did not die, that she
slowly realized it was his and not hers. She lived and he did not. She was
surprised.
His breath was warm on her face. Not enough to stir her hair.
She remembers the street and the blood and the warmth and the wet, and
the way he felt the last time she held him, but there was no sound. She
heard nothing, although they said they found her screaming, just sitting
there holding him and screaming non-words into the night. But she does not
remember that, so it did not really happen. She also does not remember
that she fought them when they tried to take him away from her. He was
already taken away, but she clutched at him and fought and scratched.
Eventually she died, too, and was content, but it did not last and she awoke.
They had unfairly tranquilized her and carried her away to the hospital. She
awoke to familiar, loving, kind, compassionate faces. They made her sick.
They were going to be forever this time. They would both stay, and stay
together, and it would all be all right now.
She wanted to die, but she did not die, because it was he who fell in the
street and not her, and in the end, there was a difference. He fell when the
gun fired and she only fell when he did, down to the cold wet pavement by his
side. Where she had intended to spend forever.
But it ended like everything in her life ended, too soon and suddenly and with
a BANG and then a whimper.
So now she lives, without him again but without the chance of Again.
It hits her at unexpected times, the feel of the road marking her knees and
his blood on her hands.
******
The End
*******
Feedback is saved forever at tabulaxrasa@yahoo.com
Poem by
W.H. Auden
_Funeral Blues_
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
