When the door crashed in, Toby didn't expect it. His examination of the floor didn't prepare him for the explosion any more than for the fist that shattered his face as he turned to see what had happened. The creature entered the room through the explosion as if birthed through it, firing and striking with a newborn shriek that consumed the room. Farr and Lambert threw against walls, painting them with their insides, and Mr. Turnmill grabbed the thing moments before finding his arms cracked and flung away as so much garbage. Toby blinked and quivered, half reaching for something comforting in his jacket.
The thing turned to him and looked into his face. Oh god, oh god, that face, those eyes looked through him and saw him reaching for his mother, reaching for the hope of comfort and finding nothing as her hand closed on him, the repeated blinking darkness of her strikes again and again stronger than any man could deliver to his adult form. Toby dropped to his knees, tears pouring from his eyes and a choked plea in his throat, when the creature lunged and closed his existence.
Frank looked around the room with a vision devoid but for the source. The cabinets nearby. the Kitchen cupboards. The rugs. He spit on the ground and undid his pants to piss on the floor. His vision scoured the room, quivering his lips as an involuntary shudder slid up his back. For a moment, tears gathered in his eyes before his head leaned back and they were swallowed as so much food for his hunger.
The cabinets he shattered, along with every container he could find. The rugs overturned, the bodies around torn open, the walls battered to extremity with his fists and yet nowhere was the box to be found. His teeth ground and eyes rolled and yet there was nothing where there must be something. Stamping on Toby's face, Frank clawed at his thighs and stamped again and again.
Frank left the room as empty as it was when he came.
Five years. It doesn't seem like it. It seems like longer, a lot longer. It seems like it was only yesterday. She smelled the same. She felt the same. She sounded the same. She even looked the same. Maybe better. She wasn't the same.
How much have I written about her, and how much of it extracted of pain and loss? How many months of life did I bake under that sun? And how much of hers cooked right there next to it? I called to her night after night, into the dark, radiating it out to god and the sky and my hopes, feeling the nothing between my fingers. I wasn't alone.
Five years. Everything changed and nothing. You gotta laugh.
Last Friday night I tried to kill myself. The bad news is I did a piss poor job of it. The good news is I was successful. You see a lot of tripe on TV about how this sort of thing goes about, usually with a happy ending or a lot of nail-gnashing by and over those who remain, and I can tell you now that in my case none of that garbage is on the agenda. What happened defies explanation, at least by me.
It was sometime before Friday night I was reading some trash sci-fi book and some major hero underwent A Massive Transformation and I believe the money quote was, "all birth is painful." I recall thinking that was some hamfisted writing. I cannot testify as to how painful birth might be, but I can tell you with some certainty that death is quite painful indeed. Not that I expected much else, at the time being in what some (like the author above) might call "a world of hurt."
Imagine a large bell, like the kind you see in movies where there are ancient Asians in orange robes who only ring it for inscrutable special occasions. Imagine hammering on that bell with the usual roped log and feeling that resonance more than hearing it. Imagine those blows continuing and each time striking harder than the last. The blow that shatters that bell creates a different sound than every other before it and it is that sound that remains long after the pieces have been swept away.
That's death. That's as good as I got. If you're confused by any of this, by all means write me a letter about it and send it to someone who can do something about it as this fella ain't your man.