Perfection

His silhouette graced the window. The jet-black hair glimmered ever so gently in the flickering candlelight and his green eyes burned fierce. Hand to chin he sat in deep contemplation. His defined jaw structure jutted from his face just as his cheekbones did and he tightly pursed his thin lips in rigid form. Sorrow swept his heart in such a continuum like water evaporating and falling back down. His eyes rained tears.

“Eva,” he said nearly inaudibly. The name crashed and stormed upon his ears as he broke the silence. What a miserable, deadly silence that had contained him for days finally broken by a name more broken then his heart. Again he wept. “Eva.”

His eyes swept over the countryside as he sat in her rocking chair on the second floor. He fingered the carvings, the embellishments that dipped and swelled upon the wood. Footsteps on the stairs disrupted his deep isolation.

“She echoes in your eyes,” said Vera cautiously. He sighed as her light hand touched his shoulder ever so gently.

“Please, no Vera. You are too much the same. There is too much of her in you. I see Eva when I see you. It only makes me hope while there is no hope to be had.”

Her hand glided safely to her side. “This room will be your deathbed dear Amory. You’ll bury yourself in memories and drown yourself in tears. Escape while you can. Don’t make me lose the closest thing I have to a brother, not after my sister. This mourning will be your death.”

His eyes darted and stung with such a force. “Her death was my death. There is no life behind these eyes my sister. Eva was my life. It died with her.”

Vera breathed heavily. “Your eyes are dark, your body’s weak. There is no beauty in this catastrophe you’re illustrating for yourself. These days of sorrow will never sing sweet melodies for you even once you’ve harmonized your life with her death. Move on dear brother, so you won’t become the living dead.”

“You may shoot me down, you may hang me up, and you may command the Lord to smite me.”

“What is this nonsense?” asked Vera firmly.

“You cannot wake the dead my dear, and if I had to live for something, I would live for Eva. But there is no Eva. The Eva I knew is suffocated beneath the weight of the earth. So if you suffer in seeing me suffer then end me darling, end me. Because no one need suffer anymore then the suffering I have been doing.”

“Would it be best you think?”

“Oh Vera, death would be perfection.”

“May you never know perfection dear Amory!” She descended the stairs to leave him in peace but she left him in turmoil. War between body and heart and soul never ceased to inflict him.

“Such pestilence!” he cried in vain. “And you my God already smite me in the cruelest way. Shall I not be numb? Shall I not be immune to this pain? Provide you no anesthetic that will dampen my senses? Provide you no pity?” And to that he drank. He drank the deep red wine so his lips might be sweet for his lover on his return. He shattered the bottle and gripped his savior. Glass hit flesh and life became death. Perfection stole him away.