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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Prompt

From this writing prompt on Reddit.  

“I'm sorry... She's gone.”

Gone? She was just... just gone? Jared's vision blurred, and he couldn't lift his hands to wipe the tears from his face. How was this possible? He was crying. Crying, crying like a child, like a bereaved woman, like... like a man who had just lost the woman he loved. Like a husband who had just lost his wife. He had broken his vows. She had broken hers. He was trying to contain himself. To sit straight, and let the sadness float around him, to be an island in a sea of grief. But there was no chance to float in this feeling. Instead, he drowned.

“But... she... we...” He didn't realize that it was he speaking until the other took his arm and held it tightly. Jared was torn between revulsion and a dangerous, dangerous attraction. It was against his faith to let someone not of the Devout touch him, and he reached up with his uninjured hand to push the other away, but when his fingers met skin he grabbed it tightly, and held on. His mind was still there. It was whirling, chaotic, but it was still there. But that didn't translate to his body, which was reacting by itself. While he processed what was happening to him his body doubled over, still holding on to the doctor like he was his only link to reality, heedless of the salty tears that were falling on the ground like watery meteorites. His brain was there. Unable to stop what his body had started, even if he wanted to.

The doctor was rubbing his back. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.”

Sorry? He was sorry? Jared's body continued to fold in on itself, collapsing into a single point of sorrow. His wife, his Sati. Gone. Gone. Gone. His mind was a dervish, a demon, finding every single memory that had ever meant anything to him and replaying them, over and over. He was clenching and unclenching his hands, barely feeling the left when the bones ground against each other. Damn the pain. No, welcome it. It gave him something else to focus on. Something that wasn't the unclean touch of the doctor's arm around his shoulders, something that wasn't the slimy feel of his own fluids dripping off of his chin.

He loved her. He loved her, and they swore before God that they would love each other until their deaths. Why would God take her away now? Why would he kill an entire village, and leave only one man alive? Alone, he was alone. Oh, God, alone. When his parents had died, he had been alone. He had lived his life alone, and hadn't even known how empty he was until Satalia had found him, and then he wasn't alone anymore. Now the only person in the world he had any connection to was seriously injured, the only other survivor of the freak disaster that had killed everyone else. Jared didn't even know who the man was, who had lived through that night. And he didn't care. It wasn't Sati. And if it wasn't her, it didn't matter who was lying in that other bed. He would still be alone.  

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