Outside, the perpetually grey sky roiled and slid across the firmament, like mercury. The liquid sky, the dark clouds that would not bring rain.
He lay on his back, watching the charcoal sky through a skylight. He took deep draws on a cigarette, and breathed the smoke out through his noise like a dragon, watching it curl upwards towards the pane in the window. He lay under the sheets, naked, thinking about the woman next to him, who slept , breathing softly. His above-ear-length black hair was unevenly cut, and hung limply because he hardly ever bothered to wash it.
Only when he came to this house did he bother to clean himself up. It was always a bath right when he got there, and right before he left. She liked him clean, fresh, pure. She said it reminded her of the way things used to be, and he would reply each time that the past was dead and buried, in the same casket as his brother. This would make her flinch, and pale.
It used to be that this caused her to cry. At first, he had taken her in his arms, and smoothed her hair, and kissed her eyelids, calming her, telling her things would get better. Then he had stopped saying things like that.
Things didn’t get any better, as he had promised. That fact broke something inside her, something inside him which had been broken the day his brother died.
His brother had always made promises to him when they were young. He promised that they would be safe, that things would get better, that life would go on, that his scars would heal and his bruises would fade. He had done the same for his brother, he liked to think.
But then there had been that last promise, as he held his brother in his arms... “It’ll be alright... I’ll live... You’ll see... Things... Things will be fine... Just...” And then the life had passed from his body, and with it, the light in his eyes, and the color in his skin, and the spirit that had possessed them all and bound them all together.
The woman had cried, then, and would cry afterwards, every time she thought of the death. Sometimes she would whisper, “I loved him...” and he would take her in his arms. Once the comforting gave way to melancholic silence, it didn’t take long for other things to progress. Soon, instead of just holding each other, their pain would burn in their veins as he moved on top of her, and their shattered hearts would skip the same beat.
He snuffed out the cigarette, and lay back down, turning away from the woman’s body so that he wouldn’t have to look at her or think of her while he slept, nor be reminded of any memories her face carried with it.
Continue
Back
Back to the Story Index
