Hush


It was raining the night he came. I’d come downstairs for a late-night snack. The gallon of ice cream I’d started earlier that evening was still unfinished and I took a metal spoon from the drawer. A thunderstorm raged outside. I could see the war that brew against shadow and darkness through the lace curtains hanging above the kitchen sink. Each lightning strike illuminated the straining muscles of the sweating trees and the forgotten flowers ripped up from their beds and sent screaming into the blackness. I watched this through detached eyes as my soft slippers slid across the linoleum floor and I walked between the refrigerator and the sink. The only sound inside the kitchen was the steady metallic drip of the sink – it never stopped leaking – and the annoying tick-tock of the timer clock above the stove. I leaned against the counter and dug my spoon into the open container of ice cream. The back door blew open as I was taking the first spoonful.

I received a glimpse of the war that raged outside until he stumbled into the doorway, bringing a gust of icy air and rain with him. His shirt was dark and clinging slick to his body as he half-bent over the back steps. His arm clutched the door frame for support. His hair was wet and the rain ran in rivulets down his face. He breathed hard and his electric blue eyes sought out mine. Our eyes met. All I wore were bedroom slippers and a long t-shirt. The rain stuck his clothes to his body and outlined the lean muscles in his arms and shoulders. The rain brought out the savageness of his face, the taunting blue eyes, unreadable features, and cold smirk. He was built like some pale feline. Each time, he played with silky finesse, but watched with wary eyes as he waited for the right moment of kill. He terrified me. I found myself dropping my spoon.

It clattered loudly against the linoleum. Once, twice, three times, before resting to a stop. The rain was deafening as the trees howled and screamed as though they were being tortured. The icy gales and rain touched me from where I stood so that I shivered. I looked into his eyes again and was terrified by what I found there. His chest was heaving and I found my own heaving along with him. We shared the same heartbeat as it struggled to beat in rhythm against the mayhem. "Pietro?" I whispered.

Seeking out his eyes once more, the arrogance was gone, as though Hell had stripped him to a child. His face was pure helplessness and his tears – the rain – poured onto the linoleum floor. "I’m sorry," was all he said before collapsing at the doorstep. Half his body was inside the kitchen as he repeated the same phrase over and over again. I found myself coming to him and when I came by, he grabbed my ankles so that I started. "No, just help me." He started crying and I found myself kneeling by him.

His head burrowed into my lap and I held him soothingly. My long red hair bent down over his sobbing face as I whispered to him. My thin t-shirt soaked in his tears until they could hold no more and the rain continued to leak onto the linoleum. The back door was still wide open and every time lightning struck, I saw a bright flash of the war that cried outside.

I stared in horror-struck fascination at the sickness and beauty of what I saw. Smaller bushes and shrubs were ripped from their roots as their branches clung to hold on. They were released and sent careening and shrieking into the air. The dirt flew up and spattered the white flowers that still clung to the earth and the trees fought to stay in the ground with their bellows and straining trunks. The lightning smote, the thunder roared, the rain poured down. Sometimes hard, sometimes soft, always continuous and in great quantities. It never stopped. The rain kept pouring and the pained kept suffering.

His hands grabbed the hem of my shirt and I felt his icy knuckles against my thighs. He was crying though I couldn’t see the tears. His sobs bucked his back so that I could see the muscles jerk through his shirt. He kept sobbing and shuddering until I found myself crying as well, though I didn’t know why. He knelt at my mercy – my enemy – yet I could not break him.

He tried to speak sometimes. "I keep…keep making barriers to keep it out and I’m dying inside…" It was hard to hear what he spoke over the rain and thunder and his own sobs. A strike of lightning illuminated the backyard for a moment and I saw his face with startling clarity. His face – so normally arrogant and aloof – was begging me now. His eyes, those sapphire eyes, were begging me with clear tears I couldn’t distinguish from the rain. Begging me, begging me, begging me. "Please, please, please…" He was begging for help, for forgiveness, for love, for me to not push him away back into the darkness. "No, no, please…" No, not me, even. Everyone. Everything. To not be pushed away.

"You-, you have to keep pushing back to keep them from…from touching you, but you can’t hold back forever. It just gets you and you can’t freeze forever. Every night I-, I sleep. I cry every night because…it hurts so much…"

"What? What hurts so much?" I whisper softly into his ear. Silky smooth. I don’t think he even hears me. I can’t even hear him but this is what I decipher from his speech and in his madness, yet his words evoke something in me.

"…And I’m so cold…it was never meant to be-, be that way. I never meant-, it’s never easy. I want to die so badly…want to die. No one cares and I keep holding myself back…holding myself back so they can’t see. They don’t care the way I do. I love them, I love them so much but I can’t let-, let myself!"

His eyes beseeched mine and they were pure blue and begging. His lips trembled and his body shook. This thing I feared lay broken in my lap and it was crying.

"It hurts so much because they don’t care like I do…don’t love…they say they do but it’ll never compare to what I give…I can’t give because it hurts too much…I give it anyway-, please it hurts. Make it stop because it hurts so bad and it’s not enough for me, even-, even if I say I never-, never need anything. I need everything and I never got-, got it…they never knew what-, what it was to give it, even though-, even though…I gave it. They don’t know how-, how to…to receive it."

He was crying so hard as these words poured from his mouth, so hot and fast as though Hell were on fire and not even the freezing rain could quench his pain. I didn’t understand why he ranted as he did for it was too real and something deep and unsettling was awakened in me. Something deep I never knew that had existed and had only manifested into something tonight.

"I tell myself not to feel sorry for myself…sorry’s for pussies and they-, they make me sick because I hate them so much. I hate myself-, hate myself so much when I cry. It’s like I’m puking all the time and I hate myself for puking but I hate it so much that I puke even more. I try to hurt myself but it hurts even less when I do. I feel so much that I feel nothing and I feel so little that I feel too much. I want so bad to hurt myself, to kill and die, because I hate myself so much. God, please help me! I want…need to die. Please. I love you. I love all of you…everything. I’m begging you so bad but no one ever hears me and I want so bad to just die or for someone to kill my weakness." He broke down sobbing, his body jerking so hard he couldn’t even catch his breath and each breath of air was a struggle with the inner curse that was afflicting him. His thin shoulders jerked violently as his knuckles grew harder and pressed more insistently into my thighs.

"Please…" He begged me. He was broken by the monster and he lay in my lap. I could break him and he wanted me to even though he didn’t. Wanted to die when he was loath to live. Wanted to feel pain because he felt it so deeply. This door was swinging open and it was time to close. With one hand, I ran my fingers through his hair as I whispered to him. The other hand sought out the knife set that lay above the counter. My fingers ran along the smooth console before I caught the end blade of the nearest one and held it above his head. I looked at the smooth black handle and turned the blade so it caught a glimpse of the black war that raged outside. With one hand, I stroked his head and his back. He kept shuddering and crying. I looked back and saw the ruined kitchen before me. The linoleum was in puddles and the rain was overflowing terribly. My t-shirt was soaked completely. He kept crying and crying in this madness that would never cease to stop.

"Please…" Please have mercy on me. I stroked his hair again and sought out his eyes that were burrowed in my lap. His fingers kept clenching and they dug deep into my thighs so that it caused pain I felt too acutely, numb from the cold as I was. "Help me, help me." He was whimpering now. Like a little child stripped of all pride and defenses and is left completely nude and helpless. No one to help him now. I saw that he could never be helped and would always be in pain alone. His life was a curse and a curse to all that touched it.

I stared at the knife in my hand. Utterly smooth and cold the way he was. Utterly mocking and fast the way he’d lived. Both were this way because they had no choice. One was cursed to kill. The other was cursed to live in Hell or die by his executioner. God had granted this life and had ordered all these doors closed. The knife was utterly cold and sharp. I plunged it into his back where I was sure to pierce the heart. It slid in so smoothly as though it were meant to be that way and the two were joined because they belonged together.

He jerked in surprise in mid-whimper, then began whimpering and crying rapidly. He clenched harder at the hems of my shirt but his grip was already weakening. The blood poured from his back and chest and from around the handle of the knife. I had stuck it all the way through. The blood poured out in rivulets and mixed with the rain and washing it away.

"Jean…" He looked up and sought my gaze, his watery blue eyes begging me. "Please… please…" He started crying again and didn’t even struggle from the knife I had lethally drove into his back because he didn’t have the strength to remove it or fight back. The fight had taken him this far but he was broken now. Utterly. They were all after to destroy him. "Please, I’m begging you, just please help me." And he started sobbing and crying and his fingers sought to catch a grip on my shirt.

He looked up into my eyes again. Those cool, sharp eyes were completely lost and helpless now as they beseeched mine. Sapphire blues I’d feared and were now at my mercy. I stared in shock at him. "Please, Jean. Help-, help me. Please…" His words were drowned out from a rivulet of blood as it started to trickle, then flow from his mouth. "Please…" His eyes looked into mine and I continued to cradle his head as his eyes became more blank and his fingers became more still. The storm outside was starting to stop and the rain was ceasing and things were becoming quieter as we all waited for him to die.

Much later, when everything had become silent (the only sound was the steady metallic drip of the sink – it never stopped leaking – and the annoying tick-tock of the timer clock above the stove), and I was still holding him and rain was everywhere, though it was now silent. The backyard was utterly black, even though it had stopped roaring. Tick-tock. Drip, drip. Tick-tock. Drip, drip. He’d turned his head away at one point in the night but he turned back to look at me one last time. His eyes could barely see – though they were still sapphire blue – and the helplessness and pleading were replaced by a strange emptiness. His lips could barely move and it was a struggle for him. He coughed once, and blood spurted on his mouth and trickled down the left side of his face. "Please-," he whispered between the blood. "Just help-, help-, help-, hold me." And he died.

The rain started up and screaming again. The wind whipped back into action and the thunder and lightning smattered down in might from the well of human nature that was deep and stirring tonight. Black rain and sharp wind hit down against me through the open doorway and against Pietro, who lay in my lap. The rain soaked my hair, my t-shirt, his face, his clothes. I knelt at the doorstep of human weakness and its tears soaked into my dress. That night I held its head in my lap and let its tears fall. I held it close to me and though the words were lost through the screaming wind and crying rain, I whispered ever so quietly, into the deceased man’s ear. "Shh…it’s all over now. Shh."

Shh. It was all over now. Shh. The rain finally ceased and the thunder and lightning finally quieted. Shh. The pain started to die and the tears started to stop. Shh. The blackness began to cease and the crying finally ran dry. Shh. The back door started to swing shut and the darkness left until all that remained was the body I still held. Shh. It was beautiful and empty now. The knife was still stuck in its back. The eyes were still open and an empty, sapphire blue shone from it. Shh. "Shh." Shh. Everything stilled and became silent. I looked across the linoleum floor and saw the cold metal spoon from where I’d dropped it. On top of the counter, the ice cream had melted and was dripping over the edge in slow, steady gloops. Glop, glop. Tick-tock. Drip, drip.

I looked at the ice-cream, the timer clock, and the kitchen sink. The countertop, the stove, and the linoleum floor. "Hush now." I whispered. "Hush." And all was silent.

END STORY

End note: So…what’d you think? This story eludes to something real big, but I’m not sure if it’s catchable. I guess you either have to just feel it or not feel it. Either that, or I didn’t convey it properly. There’s a point to the whole story, though it’s probable very eluding.

Anyway, some quick questions. Pietro keeps referring to ‘they’ and ‘them.’ Was he referring to his family (i.e. the Brotherhood) or something bigger? Also, Pietro was sometimes referred to as ‘it,’ alongside the storm outside. Can you figure out what ‘essence’ (for lack of better word) his character is embodying? And was ‘human weakness’ referring to Jean and the rest of the people, or was it referring to Pietro? Tell me what you think!

Any reviews are welcome, especially constructive criticism or outright criticism if you think it deserves it. Or any reaction! I really don’t know what to think of this so please review!