silence

Trigger Warning: The scene you are about to read contains attempt of suicide, it is not

heavily detailed but thoughts and feelings that lead to suicide are

incorporated. Read at your own risk.

The night had grown heavier, all under the influence of heavy sleep. It was as if the lights had dimmed, and the moon had been patient in making its light radiate over the city, for though the sky was only alighted with faltering stars, which would too fall into the steady pace of the resting city, for once giving into exhaustion. Nothing could have disrupted the night. For though the lights didn’t heat without a command and the sirens didn’t penetrate without an order, and humanity was half dead to give any.

No humming of traffic rested on the streets, only the gelid breeze that breathed on the pavement cradled the city, but in a neighborhood, drowned out by high buildings and shivering trees, walked a faint shadow through the maze of still houses. He walked in the middle of the road, cars parked inside the garages of the homes, no light coming from inside the houses, no sound or faint singing of a cricket that indicated the world still held living things. It was dead silent.

The only noise that he had heard that night was the clicking of the doorknob when he had exited his house, leaving no note behind to his whereabouts nor his intentions. Abandoning a family who had yet to figure out what that felt like. But either way, his fingers had created the small strength to open the door and had invited the frenzy breeze inside when the door had groaned in annoyance, but it only made a sound for a few seconds before it fell dead. His feet had stepped outside into the entrance of his home, his lungs breathing in the last bits of breath he would soon get rid of. And into the night he strode.

His figure weighed a dark hoodie that held his knotting hands in its oversized pockets’. The hood falling limply over his head, almost as long to cover the hair which hung over his eyelashes that let fall the heaviness that his chest so desired to get rid of. He walked as calm as the first drops of snow would fall, his footsteps basically vapor on the rippled street, and his lips pressed tight, not daring to perturb the silence around him. But as he walked, his hands only tugged angrily at each other, tears kept swelling and collapsing on the delicacy of his skin, the urgency in his head only grew, and the thoughts that gave strength to his numbing legs were so loud that it drowned out the racing of his heart. Although he didn’t want to disrupt the dusk, his throat and his chest ached to do just that. Though for a reason that didn’t happen, and his pain was just mixed in with the dead of the darkness, but it was the closest thing there was to living, simply because there was nothing as vivid as this.

Licking his lips, he felt the swelling that his teeth had created and tasted the saltiness which his tears had caused. He had imagined that by this time, they would be ripped. His lips marking his haunting emotions more than the mask he was beginning to remove. But when he finally did gain the weakness to remove it, the world was dead. Gone, completely removing its hand from lending care. A pull at his chest only picked up his pace as a swollen tear fell to the undisturbed floor.

It was then that he stepped out of the rows of houses, and faced an empty road, yellow and white lines directing vehicles where to go, useful in other times, useless now. No cars rummaged in the streets, but he found that to be of no importance because his only focus was the fence, opposite of where he was. His breathing grew heavier and his brain more demanding, if he thought he felt a weight in his chest, it was right here and then that it felt as it were finally going to kill him. Because it was. His feet went from walking to strides, and although his hands gripped at each other, the cold still snaked into the open parts of his sweater, sneaking inside his sleeves and falling behind his ears, but like the breeze, gently. As he approached the slick fence that separated pedestrians from falling off, he saw the darkness that lied below it, the sleeping city lights unable to glow all the way downwards to the pit of the ebony. But he knew what met. The empty canal which was meant to prevent streets from overflowing with rain was empty. And it too appeared frozen in place, not a flicker of a light or a holler of laughter from a drunken unknown proved him that time still existed, only the distant movement of his shadow and the beating of his hands proved to him that this wasn’t a dream.

Slowly, his body pressed against the fence that was waist high and unexpectedly, his chest pulled, grasping on any bone, any beat, anything that still longed for his life, that still pleaded for him not to give up. But there was nothing he felt like he could lean on. Nothing that felt like he could fall on, and the one thing that could, was right in front of him, almost chanting him to collide into comfort. Though his tears kept swelling and the pain was inevitable, it was as if he were disappearing but appearing again, like going unconscious then receiving his conscious repeatedly. His soaked eyes stared at the emptiness below, and it no longer felt like he had to comply with the silence.

So his mouth released a yelp of hurt he didn’t recognize his chest was holding, and his hands gripped on the freezing, metal fence in front of him, tired of frantically holding onto each other. He sucked in shaky breaths as his tears painfully slithered away from him, his back aching, his legs numbing, his arms shaking. His lips stretched and let out a painful yelp, his hands still holding his slouching figure, preventing him from collapsing to his knees.

“Please,” the hoarseness of a voice broke as he whispered. “Please, take me home.”

He didn’t expect anything to change, but he desired nothing more in the world for exactly that. For the glow of the moon to point him out, for the lights to blind the city awake, for the streets to get overrun, for the breeze to collapse down trees and shake off buildings. He wished that the door had creaked louder. That the lights in the homes were bright, that the stars in the sky would notice. That someone could stop him.

With full awareness, he felt as his legs had begun to climb over the fence, his chest leaning towards the darkness. But his hands still keeping him balanced.

“Please,” he said, a whimper tracing after his words.

But the heaviness, the emptiness, the hurt still persisted, as a tattoo would’ve. Nothing had stopped for him, but he had realized before that he had not expected anything to change, but yet, the pavement that lied 70 feet below him swallowed his supplications. Leaving his hope to no avail, like a stone would sink into water.

“Please!” he yelled, his chest constricting as he let out every word.

The pain tearing him inside as his throat yelled at the below. A body sitting on a fence, slouching to the emptiness, supplicating.

“Help me!” He cried, his hands tightening on the fence.

“Help!” He yelled. “Take-” he breathed, his voice sobbing to no one, yet anyone.

“Take this away…” He whispered. His eyes shut and his throat felt hoarse.

His hands slowly weakened, he felt relaxing in his muscles as they stopped keeping him together. There remained the pain that stuck to his chest, his tears doing the same to his face. He breathed in the cold air. And his hands slowly began drifting upwards, the beat in his ribcage pounding in his ears.

“It will be okay,” he whispered.

He breathed.

“It’s okay.” He breathed.

He stopped. Breathing.