I stand outside, a light rain falling like reluctant tears. The three cars had peeled off an hour ago: one content, one crying, one enraged. It was that last one I kept thinking about; a young man having lost all he thought was owed to him.
Reminded me of someone.
I stand outside, letting the chill of the air and the moisture seep into the cracks of my skin, until I'm consumed in cold. The sensation was an abstract: acknowledged but ignored.
I couldn't move, because there wasn't anywhere for me to go.
After a while, I turn my head, looking at what I was left with:
A battle-scarred palace. A monument to success, greed, and death.
Be it ever so humble…
I stand inside, drops of rain darkening the red carpet worn thin by running feet and gurney wheels. I pass my eyes around my inherited kingdom; my castle a storehouse of memories and questions. Every ten feet was someone's final resting place, put there by me.
I have only one grave worth visiting.
I stand where she fell, the blood stain darkening the red carpet where her head had laid. I inhale deeply the air that had carried her final breath. Already I question whether I'm remembering her face the way it really was.
In my mind I see her picture, curling at the edges from the flames that surround it. She smiles at me, and it's forever, but the image begins to bubble and split.
It all gets taken away, no matter how hard you hold onto it.
I stand in a private study, one I hadn't found during my last visit. Bookshelves line the walls, a thousands spines proclaiming their names to me. And between two sets of shelves, a display case: cherry wood and glass. A store window. Selling firearms.
I smash the pane with my fist, releasing the instruments of death from their confines. I grab one; feel its weight in my hand. I raise it.
I stand in my tomb, gifted to me by my enemy, a gun to my head and the single question I've had no answer to since the day my wife and child died ringing in my head, but this time with one
extra
syllable:
"Why not?"
I place my finger on the trigger.
(More…eventually. God I love a cliffhanger. – CM)
