Can't let go

Found this old story.

Part one
Part  Two
An afterword of whim

He ran like a leopard; but why?

The nights demons were shadowing his shadow. The night stenched of darkness.

Not the satiny, soothing darkness that one could fall asleep in, but the suffocating darkness which engorged ones saftey and brought up visions of creatures unknown.

The leopard danced to his breath.

It was coming on to his sanity. This coma business.

It was dark and he wanted to escape it.

He wanted to see light and heart-warming smiles. At the moment, even the thought of them pierced his soul with the pin of self-probation to hope.

He sighted the hospital and went through the gate.

After two nods; one to the lady in a peach synthetic sari, sitting behind the reception counter, whose whole body seemed to be affected by the malignancy that this hospital had gigantic wards to treat; the other, to the smiling, homely, doctor who looked suprised that the hero was drowning in sweat and his eyes, too, seemed to have absorbed the sheen, and twinkled, like starlight, in spite of the pleasant weather that the city was smiling under the influence of, and did, only twice an year, for a total duration of about two months.

She hadnt noticed, however, the hollow expression on his face. That he hadn't bothered with a wan smile.

He entered the room. The room of machines, of tubes. He wondered if he could exist without them. His faint hope, no matter how fast his heart was freezing, he credited to these machines. The had become his companions in all his loneliness.

He would often sit all day, and stare into the screen of spikes and betrayal. He would look at the soft face.. With big round eyes, puppy eyes, he called them..and those fleshy, tweety lips. How he awaited its animation.. Incessant chatter, like the years before.

He wanted her to know he needed her. Further, he wanted her to need him too, so she would come to life for him.

Then..he would never leave her side..walk invisible wherever she went. Never let anybody touch her, let alone mug her, or throw her unconscious. That day she had come to see him. To tell him, that she hated his insecurity..and pretension to hide the same..and that she didn't, love him anymore. That she was tired of him. It was supposed to be that simple. He wasn't supposed to expect another chance. Last time, was the last.

Excruciating chest-pain threw him on the bed as soon as he reache home. He had always been aware of his addiction. Of his overwhelming fondness for her, that betrayed even self-love, or self-preservation.

It was coming on to his body once again. The heart-ache, and uneasiness. The thought of separation was like being beaten down on the road..with his balls spewing blood. Or being run over by a train. The same crushing agony..every moment, the thought lingered.

That moment, he had learnt to cry.

After years of being told that one wasn't supposed to, if one had to be brave, he realised that it released the compressed agony into the drops, for that was what surface tension was.. Heart-ache dying to burst out of the tiny bulbuous drop.

Everytime it would ache; after a few days of trying to pacify the storm, which didn't really help; he forced himself to shed those ignominious drops. Once he started, accepting his retreat from hope, it got easier, to cry. His composure, his unwillingness to let grief get the better of him, hadn't allowed him this silent embrace with pain.

He hadn't let his ego obstruct the clear path, between her, and him. He loved, and thus, he had relied on her, to admit his weakness for her. So he went back everytime she pushed him away, hoping she loved him, and would keep him.

Seven days after that; at the time she was being tossed to a road, like a broken doll; he was in the shower, talking aloud to himself, telling himself that even though he had borne all her ignorance, and still, didn't bear the thought of disloyalty, or intentions of hurting her, for the moments she made him suffer, she had commited the ultimate betrayal.. By telling him to leave, even after the last time, when he had passionately told her, that he would leave, if she was disappointed again, in him. If only she took him seriously. If only she loved him equally, if not more. If only she came back, to him.

If only.

Well, she didn't. She had always had others. A replacement for everything. She didn't acknowledge it, but it was a pattern she had created. She was independant, of him, and anything, or body.

At the times she confessed to her fondness for him, it was overwhelming and he could barely believe it. Whatever little he could soak in, from it, would soothe his craving for her and he would gleam with the knowledge of being wanted by his light.

Lately, she seemed to have tired of him. And with all her admonitions, he didn't seem to be opening up for good.

Now, the tables had almost turned. Almost, but not quite.

He sat in a trance, watching her, unmoving.

The wrong forevers were wanting to be broken.

He wanted to drop those bombs of agony, without much sound, and he was trying.

He was suspended in a strange machine..tearing apart his voice, his soul, and body. He almost wished the spiked line on the screen would become a straight one. So he too, could surrender, and live where she lived, for even though her coma was peaceful, his was painful. He envied her.

His ears still heard her voice. And none other. Eyes still saw the beautiful face, and another, the silent one. Both were lovely, but one was almost dead, but not quite.

He walked out of the room of machines. They came. Trickled down his cheeks. He felt light, and hollow.

As it turns out, the author looks at the narrator with a little contempt for crowning the protaganist as a hero in his/her deceptive self-congratulatory cum self-pitying way.

As the protaganist must shine in all his suffering.. err and stand up again.. and carve his path towards a happy ending..

Should it, or should it not be?

What if the suffering ceases to be?

If the protaganist accepts the state of things, of the consuming self-love that envelopes his once companion forming an impenetrable layer between the two..and then walks out on the fate that is not his to be?

Even if, with an inevitable hole in his heart.