Hook for a book

The silence kept me up last night, and now it won't stop raining. You'd think the world would've changed after last week. But it hasn't. Not yet. For the time being it's just my personal world being shaken to the ground, Just my safe havens going up in smoke. Her screams echoing in the coils of my brain.

If they came for me now I'd probably let them take me. I have nothing left to fight for, no more reasons to live and all the reasons to die.

I keep running her death through my mind. If I had just reacted quicker, If it hadn't been a wednesday. If I hadn't cried out. There were too many variables and so many times to strike. The reasons have dwindled to one.

It's all my fault. I let my emotions get the better of me. But this is where I hit my dilemma, my paradox. If I hadn't been so in love, hadn't let my fear of losing her sting my eyes, I could have saved her. But what would make me save her then? Either scenario leaves me standing on this hilltop, all alone and completely empty.

“Arthur!”

My name peals off around the hills in a lilting irish accent.

“Arthur! Where are you?”

My self absorption lessons to gauge if this person is even looking for me, and if she is worth leaving my inner sanctum; Where I can almost hear her laugh, see her smile, before the memory of Wednesday sears through my cortex. I start categorising those who would know my name, and devise a surprisingly short list. There are only the dead and one other who wishes me dead. Caution is well advised.

Another scream echoes around the hills, and it takes me a moment to realise it actually happened. I hear a deep chuckling, and time slowed down. This is not a random animal attack brought on by carelessness, but a deliberate act of malice as one sapient being harasses another. If she is looking for me, then she put herself in danger because of me. A little respect for a fellow consciousness should be shown.

Although, it could be an elaborate trap. Have someone call my supposedly secret name in an area they suspect I've wandered, then play off my compassion as she screams. And to really add the carrot to the snare, they'll have found someone who has already emotionally scarred me, and allow him to terrorize the “victim”. It would help if he had something signature, so I could recognise him easily... like a chuckle.

I reach my decision within five second of the scream. If I were in a better frame of mind I would've found something odd about recognising a chuckle over the rain. And while I may have been cautious of a trap, I had not forseen that they had already known where I was. I certainly hadn't seen the blackjack coming.