Dark fingers wreath the lawn, merging as twilight descends to create a veil between day and night. In the distance you hear the screams and cries, the chanting of the advancing mob. Now and then an explosion rattles the glass and you feel the reverberations rise through your feet. As darkness hurries towards you, you see the glare of golden light and smell smoke and fire on the breeze. The acrid stench of burning flesh singes the hair of your nostrils. It won’t be long now.
You turn away and gaze at the room, once so familiar and comforting, now a prison cell. Doors that once opened to the garden are barred. Doors that led to other rooms are closed, having shut gradually over the past months as the house offered fewer options for protection.
You turn and gaze at him as he sits, head in hands, staring, without sight, at the floor.
How different it could all have been.
You told him several years previously that you had no faith in the shifting sands of government. You saw the people’s hunger and their lust for blood. You said, “See, this is how it is, this is how it will become.” But he looked at you and said, “I believe you are making more of this than is real.” You shook your head because you knew, even then. You could feel it in your bones, see it looming because this was your way, you saw things that others did not, would not. You watched the signs, reading them as they appeared in the stars, on the breath of the wind. But you knew too that fear does strange things to men, blankets their minds in shrouds of denial, rooting them to the earth in which they believe they were born. It was like this with him and you knew it, had always known it. But you believed in change, forgetting that he did not. Not realizing that he looked to you to change, to his way.
“They’re coming,” you say, your voice dry as the dust that gathers in the corners of the room. “We have one last chance before it’s too late.”
He doesn’t answer you, remains motionless, his shoulders hunched.
One door remains unlocked and you look at it, knowing it was never what you would have chosen when the choices remained wide open.
You had such big dreams, such attainable goals. You knew what you wanted and how to achieve it. You even set the plans in motion, moving step by step towards the opportunities that life was offering, knowing in your heart that you had finally found your path, but knowing too that timing was everything.
You had watched as he turned away, unwilling to follow you, deadlocked by his own fear. You had tried to reason with him, encourage him, all the while knowing that he would always choose his own way because his fears were greater than your knowing.
As the years passed you watched the advance of all your own fears - growing, bearing the fruit of terror and strife. You’d had to close up the house, locking the doors one by one as the danger increased and opportunities fled before it.
You remembered how he had first asked what you were doing. You had taken a crayon and written on the back of one door. “Too late, opportunity gone, door closed”.
He had stared at you reproachfully and you had tried not to feel guilty, because you knew you were right. Your sight gave you that.
A scream shatters the darkening air. The shrieks of the unleashed mob swim through the trees, shredding the leaves, destroying the stillness that had once been. A child wails… is silenced mid cry. A momentary stillness flits through the garden before the mob advances again.
“It’s now or never,” you say. “This time I will go alone, if I must. I will not become a martyr to your fear.”
“I don’t deserve you to rescue me,” he murmurs, his voice cracked and rasping. “Not now, not after all I’ve…”
“I am not rescuing you, I am saving myself,” you say, “and I am willing to do this one last thing, to take you with me. But it’s up to you, your choice, as it has always been – only this time I will not subject myself to the results.”
“You don’t know what’s down there,” he mutters.
“I don’t need to know. I trust, as I have always done. There is a path.”
“No,” he says, as you expected he would, “I don’t believe they will harm me. I fought on their side many years ago, they know me. They are only coming for the ones filled with greed – I’ve never been one of those. I will take my chances, rather than risk where you are going – into the unknown.”
You nod, trying not to think of all the times before when his words had contained the same hope and fear. You move towards him, go down on your knees and enfold him, one last time, in your arms.
“I love you,” you say. You kiss the top of his head, rise, and move away.
You are on your own now, as you have always been, as you have always known you would be.
You pull the heavy handle, dragging the door upwards and open. You feel his eyes on you but you do not turn around. He never believed that you would finally go; he always believed that you would stay with him, fearing that you would leave, but praying you would not.
“Wait,” he calls out.
You turn and look at him, as the gates splinter and crash open. A wreath of smoke billows past the window.
“I…” he says, but words fail him.
He stands, moves towards the window.
“Come away,” you call, “don’t stand there.”
But he ignores your words, stands in front of the glass and raises his arms.
There is a single crack. The glass shatters and tinkles to the floor. For a moment he sways, turns to you, a look of surprise in his eyes. As the baying floods through the window, his lifeblood stains the white cloth of his shirt and he starts to fall.
You turn away, step onto the stairs beneath the floor, dragging the last door closed over your head.
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