Louis Rask
I am not a good writer. In theory this will change over time. You’re welcome to stay and experience that with me.
Louis Rask
I am not a good writer. In theory this will change over time. You’re welcome to stay and experience that with me.
I am not a good writer. In theory this will change over time. You’re welcome to stay and experience that with me.
I am not a good writer. In theory this will change over time. You’re welcome to stay and experience that with me.
“Why are you here?”
The question hung in the air for a moment as he looked at me. He wore the same blank expression that he always had, devoid of life or emotion, but I could see the malice dancing in his eyes. He had never been to hide that from me. I knew where to look.
“I don’t need you anymore. I killed you for a reason. How are you here?”
Again, silence. He took two steps towards me, calm and collected. His movements as deliberete as the words he was about to choose.
“We both know you could never truly kill me. I’m a part of you. Or don’t you remember that there was a time when neither of us was sure which was the facade?”
My throat tightened, his words almost forming a noose as my stomach prepared to drop out from beneath me like the trapdoor on the gallows. I had been rid of him for so long. Why here? Why now?
“You owe me something, a great many something’s really. You’ve stolen so much time from me.”
“I didn’t steal a damn thing from you Damon! It wasn’t yours, it never had been. You had to go. You served your purpose, and were nothing but trouble by the time I decided to get rid of you. I didn’t want to hurt people anymore.”
He smiled at that, a thin line lacking any semblance of warmth played across his face. It was a rare sight, and not a comforting one.
“When have I ever been one to care about what others wanted, Louis?”
I didn’t bother to respond. The anxiety was beginning to fade now. The initial shock dissipating, and my heart returning to a normal rythm. It always ended this way when he came around.
I always tried to resist, but it was token effort at best. I never needed any real convincing. He was right, of course, whose to say which of us is the facade? When has what I want ever truly mattered? He’s never done wrong by me, only by those around me. I offer him a small nod. A moment of tangible submission, if but a small one.
It’s always easier when he’s in control.
In time gone by, I knew you. I knew you, just as you knew me. In time gone by, my heart would mourn for the feelings that I allowed to die on my tongue.
Their death was necessary, vital even. For had they been allowed to live my whole world might have died. In time gone by, I loved you. In time gone by, I believed you loved me even if you would never speak the words aloud. I still don’t know which of us lied to me more.
In time gone by, I laid my heart bare for you. In time gone by, you kept yours locked away from me. You dangled the key to the cage with words of promise, and signs of hope. In truth the key never existed at all.
In time gone by, we were inseperable. But time has gone by, and it has separated us.
But it will never separate you from my memories.
From my dreams.
From my nightmares.
You were one of the greatest joys to have ever crushed my soul, and I would do it all again with a smile on my face. But for whatever remains of my life:
Farewell, my almost lover.
The afternoon was crisp, and clear, without a cloud in the sky. The cool breeze felt wonderful against my flushed skin, even if the sun was a bit much for my taste. An altogether pleasant day when separated from the gunshot wound I was currently nursing in my lower abdomen.
I groaned in an attmept to stifle the burning ache as I righted myself against the rooftop parapet. Despite the pressure of my hand against the wound, crimson tears welled up from between my fingers falling as gently as those shed at a parting of two lovers who knew they weren’t right for one another.
One gentle cough turned into a cacophany of abusive ones. Each ragged spasm sent a lightning bolt wreathed in flames dancing across my body. I raised my eyes to find Paul. What I found instead was a cheap imitation of the man that I had come to call brother.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
His voice was low, cold. The hatred held within it was almost tangible, as though i could reach out and grab it if he were just a few steps closer. Whether it was hatred for me, or for himself, I couldn’t tell.
He looked at me for a long while before he spoke. Silence had always been something comfortable for us. Something safe, where nothing mattered but the job and we could find peace in knowing that the man beside us was do or die. Now it was suffocating.
“You knew we would end up this way. Maybe not now, maybe not here, but you knew.”
The gun in has hand trembled, even if his voice didn’t. My eyes were heavier than they had been a moment before. The words came, but not as quickly as I would have liked.
“Knew what, Paulie? Knew that you would turn on me like a fucking snake? Either you and I have been living in different worlds, or I’m missing a piece of the puzzle because I didn’t know shit.”
He shook his head, as I licked the blood from my lips. Paul ran a hand through his salt and pepper beard before taking teo steps towards me, his eyes almost the color of coal against the backdrop of the afternoon sky.
“Did you really think I wouldnt find out?”
He knelt down, resting the gun on his knee, as he leaned into me. I could smell his morning cigarette on his breath as he spoke.
“You can’t fuck with my family Danny, and those stunts you’ve been pulling are dragging in way too much heat. It’s falling back on me, on us.”
“I didn’t think about that.”
“That’s the problem, you don’t think about anything.”
He stood and leveled the gun at my head, before cocking the hammer back. There was no trembling now.
“But don’t worry, your services are no longer required. You won’t have to worry about thinking anymore…”
We live in a land where the footprints of ghosts linger. Each moment in time repeated by a parade of the dead. Everything that passes before our eyes, and each step that we take, bear the markings of those who came befote.
Each towering strucutre like a tombstone standing proudly within the graveyard of our cities. The writhing of traffic upon our streets as the clattering of bones within the crypt. The spirit of man persists within the things he leaves behind.
Slowly, meekly, all will turn to dust. All will return to what it once was. Or, perhaps as close as it can be to what once was. For nothing may ever truly be restored. No matter how ancient a wound may be the scars persist. An echo of remembrance, the faintest hint of a memory playing at the corner of our minds.
If you take a moment of pure silence and compound it into a lifetime of solitude you can just begin to taste the lonliness of a lifetime forgotten.
Forgotten by the world.
Forgotten by their family.
Forgotten by themselves.
We live in a land where the footprints of ghosts linger, but the ghosts themselves stand still.