Penance

Penance

         My eyes will not close. They have a will of their own and refuse to do my bidding anymore. My heart will not cease its relentless assault upon my chest; nor will my lungs seize up and free me from the pain of breath. No matter what I do to end this Hell, still my eyes lie open to the sky. Each morning I awake, with blood burning through my veins, and face the misery of a life too long lived.

         I suppose it is ironic that I suffer this way. I suppose it is poetic justice. I once had control over the life or death of perfect strangers - and I revelled in that power - yet, now, I do not even govern my own. Fate has seen fit to take it from me and deliver it into the hands of a bitter, spiteful man. He will not let me sleep; will not let me rest. He haunts my every step, all for the sake of a child whose blood is on my hands.
         It is unfair to say that I do not feel pity for the girl. True, she was young with a future ahead of her, but she was not the first to be cheated so - and she will not be the last. I have watched it happen so many times that I have become immune to it all. Such is the way of life and, had it not been me who watched her dying breath, some other soul would have stood witness and been powerless to help. It was inevitable. It was written on her time sheet, as it is written for us all. I merely did my job. Fate took care of the rest.
         In truth I did her a service. It is no great injustice to die, to be at peace. Of all things, this I know better than any man. I believe it with every beat of my struggling heart. What good would it have done to keep that girl alive? To make her feel the pain of living too long? Her time was up. Even a minute longer would have been too much for her. I let her slip away, I know I did. But in doing so I set her free. I did her a service!
         Why, then, must I suffer this way, finding respite in neither the knife nor the gun? Why must I be subjected to the torturous punch of a dying heart? My body knows it has outstayed its welcome. It knows its time is up - and yet it will not stop; it cannot stop. Wearily, my heart goes on - a pitifully muted tick in place of a healthy beat. It begs for a reprieve, but there is no one there to answer. Only he hears me, in this dark world, and he revels in my misery: my aching bones and wasting muscles; my rotting skin and the stench that clings to it. I am nothing but a walking corpse, a puppet tangled in his nimble fingers.

         Why must I live this way?

         I twist the rope around my hands. The fibres creak against my skin - my skin, so old and weak as paper, yet taut as youth. It does not fit with all I know, and yet I know its true. I am an old man in a young man’s body. I can feel my many years in the creak of my bones as I climb upon the chair. My fingers tear under the coarse touch of the rope, but I do not stray from my task, not even as the blood snakes down my arm - oddly cold. I continue to secure the noose to the pipes above. It will hold my weight. I know it will. I have tried it many times.
         Curiously, it is never the same. Sometimes I black out entirely and never feel a pain. Other times I linger, enduring every sensation to the last: the initial thrust as my throat snaps shut; the pop and spurt of every vein; the nausea; the headaches; and the fear. On odd occasions my painful death does not seem enough to satisfy Fate’s malevolent fantasies, and I must also be subjected to the humiliation of my body’s complete surrender. I am aware of warmth pooling at my crotch, dribbling down each leg. I can smell the defecation and become strangely preoccupied with the thought that someone will find me in this degrading mess. How embarrassing that will be. It is odd how your mind works at such times.

         If I am lucky it will all be over soon enough, and I will slip easily into the aching chill of death.

         Peace fills me at last. Sometimes it is minutes, other times hours, but it is never eternal. It is like falling asleep after several sleepless nights. I welcome it; I desire it; and I weep when I am pulled from it. I seem to barely close my eyes before they spring back again, screaming in the light. It is never long enough. He always finds me. He always brings me back.

  “ Did you really think I would make it so easy for you?” He gloated over my coffin. “ Did you really believe I would let you escape with such a light sentence? Death? No. You don’t deserve such mercy.”
He spoke to me through mounds of earth, through strong oak walls and thick silk lining. He spoke to me through the veil of death, and yet I heard each word clearly, and recognised the voice. It was the same voice I had heard in the parking lot minutes before I reached my car. He had asked me to turn around. He had looked into my face, and smiled.
  “ You’re the one.”
Then came the deafening roar. It filled the silent car park and made my ears ring, but I could not identify the sound, or connect it to the pain in my chest. It is not like it is in the movies. There was no flash or flare, no ricochet or sparks - and no heroes to intervene. I did not fly backwards with the force of it. The bullet did not move me, one inch, I merely absorbed it.
         It felt like a fist, thrust full force toward my lungs, stealing the very breath from out my throat. Then it began to burn, deep inside of me, and suddenly I felt drained and weak and unable to sustain my own weight. The bullet took control of my body, spreading its poison, robbing me of life. I collapsed to the ground, on the wrong side of death for the first time - though not the last. I had watched so many people die, bleeding, screaming, and I pitied them all - truly, I did - but I had never felt their fear. I had never understood. Perhaps that was my crime.
         I remember the moments before, but I have no memory of dying, that first time. I have no memory of the funeral or the mourners who came - were there many, I wonder? I have no memory of an afterlife or knowledge of where I might have gone in my short absence from my body. After the bang the next thing I remember is his voice. He called me from my grave and I obeyed without thought. I sat upon the piles of earth heaped by my headstone, my eyes squinting in the glare of the full moon, confused, exhausted, and terrified. There his voice spoke to me again.
  “ I will make you live with your guilt. I will make you suffer for her death. Ten years of your existence for every one that my child was robbed of. If you run I will find you. If you die I will bring you back. Your body will rot with every passing day. Your heart, your lungs, your bowels will shrivel up and every breath will pain you. You’ll beg me to kill you, but I will not pity you as you pity your victims. I will watch you suffer until your penance is paid.”
And then he grinned a Hellish grin, marred by teeth of purest white, peaked with razor points. The nightmare was complete and the fear took root within me, burrowing to the very core of my existence, coiling around my heart. This man, the father, so torn with grief and despair, had fallen into the very depths of insanity. He had sought out the answers to life eternal, with which to watch my suffering.
         And truly I suffered. Every time I saw him, I suffered. Every time I bore witness to him feasting on innocent blood, helpless to intervene, I suffered. I could not return to my life or my loves, except to watch him gorge on their hearts to keep his alive. One by one I watched them die, either at his hands or through the ravages of time. They left me here alone, all of them: my parents, my brother, my wife, my friends and even my children grew up, grew old and died and all I could do was watch from the shadows, in miserable silence.

         My eyes refuse to close. Instead they stare up into his hideous grin. I do not weep on this awakening. My tears have left me long ago, the ducts shrivelled up and dry. I mourned their passing, but envied their release from this rotting carcass. I wonder what else I shall lose before this Hell is ended?
         Despite my life returning I will lie on my bunk, as still as the dead, and gaze at the damp, brown ceiling. He will not leave my side for a long while yet, for the sun is up. He might sleep and then I will move, but until then I will lie as dead.
         The father falls heavily into a chair by the bed, an aged groan expelled from his lips at the force. Even he seems weary of the game we are playing but, true to his word, he will not let it end. He sees it as his duty - so he has told me countless times - to sacrifice his own soul so that others will be avenged. The others - my “victims,” as he puts it - had come to him in a dream, three nights after his daughters death, and begged him to bring justice to the man responsible for their deaths. That man was me, the one who stood above them as their body‘s lost the fight, the last face most of them ever saw - the one who held their hands as they died.
         I had held her hand that night, held the daughters hand. I had pitied her more than most, for my own son was six, one year younger than this child. She lay back and looked at me as I held her, and I told her not be afraid. I patted her brow and stayed with her, but I was not the last face she saw. Her father stood over her one last time, as her life left her, there in the hospital. He cried over her body and wailed in anguish. He hurled his fists and his venomous words at me, but it had been out of my hands. I could not undo what the speeding car had done. The girl was too small, too fragile to withstand the blow.
         As I left that night I thought I knew pain and sorrow. I thought I knew grief. This father, however, saw fit to educate me in the true meaning of the words. He taught me terror and isolation, misery and heartache. He taught me humility - that which I lacked most of all.
         I now know that Hell exists, because I live it. I know, too, that Heaven exists, for I feel the presence of God each time I die, waiting just out of reach. Will He not reach for me? Am I bound too tightly in the Devil’s hand for even Him to free me? Is it by His will or mine that I dwell in here? I question all too frequently the sense of it. Am I capable of releasing myself by throwing away my guilt? Or, without my guilt, am I merely heartless and fit for nothing but Hell’s grasp anyway?
         Whatever the truth my captor will not be overcome. Every day he grows stronger, while I grow weaker and weaker. There is no one left whom I care for, so I no longer leave my home to watch them. I simply stay where I am put, waiting. Perhaps that is all I can do. He has always told me so.
  “ Ten years of your existence for every one that my child was robbed of. I brought you back once and I will do it a thousand times over, if I must, until you have paid your penance. You will live or die by my will, Doctor Willis. By My will alone.”

And so I wait, but still my eyes refuse to close.