Categories > Original > Horror

No More Breath

by Xavernus 0 reviews

He couldn't escape her face.

Category: Horror - Rating: PG-13 - Genres: Drama, Horror - Warnings: [V] - Published: 2007-07-05 - Updated: 2007-07-06 - 698 words - Complete

0Unrated
He was not the first to identify her corpse, and he would certainly not be the last. But, he was the one to give her full name, to stare into lifeless hazel eyes, once so full of spark, the sparkle and joy now gone from her face. He knelt down at the slab of metal that supported her body and cried, years streaming down his face, little rivers of what he felt of as what her blood would feel like. Cold, and dried on his skin. The blood that did not run through her veins anymore ran through his, and he cried tears of blood at her frozen body.

"Are you positive this is her?"

"I'm positive,"

He did not remember getting home. He knew what must be done, what he had to do before the others arrived, what he must accomplish before things were set into motion. But he couldn't, found he could not move from the spot on the couch, the place where he would sit with her beside him. her head on his shoulder perhaps, or her feet in his lap. He found he had no more breath in him, like she had no more air in her lungs. With a wretched cry, he buried his face into his hands and struggled for air.

'Is this how she felt when she-' he cut off the thought quickly, not sure if he would be able to handle even thinking of the marks on her neck, the marks showing how she had tried at the last moment to stop it all.

What he did instead was to get up. He had to get up. He had to get up and do something, had to move, had to keep moving, he had to. If he didn't... he didn't want to think of it. He had to start the rituals, and he gathered the black cloth on the table and went to the mirror.

His cry of anguish could be heard throughout the apartment, but there was no one there to hear it. And yet, there she was, as perfect in her flaws as she had ever been, and he reached out with shaky fingers to touch the glass, before covering t quickly with the cloth, blocking out her image from his view, and from anyone else's.

The seven days went by too quickly for his liking. He didn't seem to know what to do with his self, and no one could seem to help him, their words of comfort falling onto deaf ears. She was gone, she was gone, that was all that he could think as little old ladies with blue veins and white hair helped make sure he was fed, and wrinkled old men patted him sympathetically on the back, What could they do, what could they say. What could help him through this hard time?

Nothing.

On the seventh day, he said a quick prayer for life, for recovery through this traumatic time, and removed the black cloth from the mirrors through the apartment. And still, there she was, and he cried again, unable to stop the flow of tears as he reached out and touched her face. He caressed the cool glass, stroked her cold, unforgiving cheek, whispering apology after apology.

After days of this, he did not know who he loved more. It was either this shadowy image in the glass, or the one that he had loved before, in flesh and blood. He continued to look into the mirror, for so long, that it seemed it was all he did at times, until one day it became too much for him.

He felt as if her soul must be on the other side, and as he punched the glass, the sound of shattering mirror, loud and painful, filled the room. Cracked and jagged pieces fell to the floor in large and small bits, as well as blood. It all fell to the floor, mixed in and mingled together, and his hand, cut and bleeding, did nothing to assuage his pain, as he knelt to the floor and tried together the pieces, her face still in the shards.

And he tried to breathe.
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