To a Fault

He woke up on the hall floor, drenched in sweat. He must have passed out. Not sleeping for days, it was inevitable. The hall was empty as usual, yet unusually quiet. The clocks were still and silent, not measuring the time. He wandered the halls. Here in the east wing, there was a damp smell, like an old book dropped into a water-filled sink. Robert was disoriented.

He had so many nightmares. Horrific dreams of blood, panic, and death. Ever since she died. It was his fault. It would always be his fault. He deserved those nightmares. He earned them.

Lightning flashed outside, the thunder easily breached the thick walls. He looked at the window at the end of the hall where the lightning flashed and the rain poured down. The rain always felt like the tears he could no longer shed.

He walked up to the dark, empty window. The rain was falling hard against the glass, yet this didn’t prevent him from opening the window out into the rain. Water poured onto him, drenching his clothes in moments. Leaning out the window, he looked around. Far above in the clouds flashed with the storm’s lightning, the thunder shaking the glass, and the smell of ozone poignant. Being five stories up, the view below was terrifying; with the grey stone walls of the mansion surrounded by other tall, ornate homes, it created a walled-in courtyard of cobblestones. Something to his left caught his attention. A lady in a white dress sitting on the ledge. For a moment, he lost his breath. He was so incredibly tired. She turned to stare at him. It was a blank expression, lifeless. When he had nothing to say, she stood on the ledge and put her hand on the cold wall. Both his hands gripped the same ledge, touched the same stone—a shock ran up his arms and into his body. The frail woman pushed off the wall, beginning a fall. With a blink, he opened his eyes to see her safely leaning out the window where he had been, her hands gripped the ledge. He was falling. He would have tried to save himself, yet neither of them seemed to want that result. He wanted to fall, to fall and forget.

He found himself standing in the middle of the courtyard. He looked up to the window—there was no one there. Confused, he turned to a door to a servant’s entrance of the mansion. Someone grabbed his arm.

“Don’t stay,” she said.

The door and the warm light inside the cold mansion were familiar. His sorrow was comfortable. He had waded in it for so long. He stared forever into the mansion through the door.

“Don’t stay,” she repeated. Her grip on his arm tightened.

The pain made him flinch, and he stared at her.

“I’m going to wake up in the mansion in a moment.”

“Not...if you don’t want to.”

He wanted to. Didn’t he? He deserved to. He was tired of the mansion. Maybe it was time to leave. He should have listened to her before; maybe it was finally time to listen now.

He was tired, and it was easy to listen. The frail figure took his hands in hers, a green light in the palms of her hands. The lightning above flashed brilliant shades of green. The woman before him was no longer the deep hollow darkness of his soul, rather she was the woman he had married—and let down—so long ago.

“You could only see what you wanted, what you felt due. As usual, your suffering was self-inflicted. It’s time to leave this purgatory behind. You should never have stayed.”