It’s raining.
The only things I can feel are the tiny raindrops dousing my skin in a layer of water. Bags hung under my eyes from endless nights that could bring no sleep to my soul. The sun had already gone down, or the clouds were just covering it up with a dark gloom.
Each step was hard, each breath took that much more will and effort from me. My bones were crying out to me with the pain and suffering that I wished to ignore, suffocating me each move I made. I cannot remember the last time I had a good meal, where the bread was warm and fresh, and the meat was cooked; now I was left to an almost empty canteen and a few wheat cakes.
Counting the days since I had slept in my own bed was to count all the days since I’ve been a child. That night, the night that turned my whole life around. I shook off the horrid memory and kept moving forward. My name was written on every wanted list, my face drawn upon every wall. The towns of which I walk the streets of have a private rope with my name cursed upon it, ready to hang.
The money had been blown through with expensive foods, clothing, and hotels, leaving me with nothing by the end of my stay.
Blood has been on my hands since the day I left my home for a life on the dirt road, and my knuckles were exhausted from the fights that I had broken out. Dying inside, I had barely any reason to keep going. No one to go to when I ran out of hope, nowhere to sleep when I wanted to come home, nothing to come back to after my journey ended; just nothing.
Rock after rock, I found my shoes tearing from the climb; mountains were left behind on my foot trail, leading me straight to death. The rain did not seem to stop, clouding up my vision with wet eyelashes, I didn’t know if from rain or tears, but either way, someone was crying.
It seems to always rain now, like wet clouds hovering over me, following wherever I went. I used to think they were because God was crying, but I would have thought he’d run out of tears with everything I’ve done to make Him sad.
I was at the edge of a cliff, carefully making my way over the slope of hardened rock. The mountain was covered in this glassy material, painted black by the sorrow of my soul; it was as smooth as ice, but as dark as a moonless night. I ran my hand across the stone, feeling its delicate surface and its sleek texture.
Where my hand wiped against, the black glass became reflective. I cleared a large spot of the stone, and was horrified at what I saw. I’d seen a mirror before, the shiny surface, reflecting back a young human, which gender was hidden behind a short wig, whose delicate cheek bones were covered by dirt and dust, whose luscious lips were chapped and thin.
Now all I saw was a pale face staring back, cheeks hollowed out with the gloomy weather and lack of food and water, eyes with a ghostly white that glossed my emerald eyes, and my hair was twisted and long, hanging out of the many clips and bands, showing the real woman behind the mask.
I smeared the mud clumps across my face with my sleeve, a failed attempt of redeeming my clean face, and once again I was hidden behind another disguise, yet another mask that covered my feminine face; yet this one was not made of makeup and wigs, but a mask of shame and humiliation, of failure, of sadness; of the alone. This time, the rain did not water my face, but the tears of my own banishment.
They fell like rivers along my pale cheeks, running down my chin, dripping onto the rock which I stood upon.
“You have nothing left, you’re all alone,” my whispers said to me. “why even try to go on? You have nothing to look toward, nothing to hold onto, no one to love.” The statement stung my throat with each word, beating my soul with its led hammer.
I didn’t have anything left, I had no reason to go on, so why should I? The burning truth hurt so bad, it was all true, none a lie. The world wants me dead, all I love are dead, why shouldn’t I be too? Relieving so many people of the misery that I have brought, celebrating that I have once and for all have been resolved, my own problem.
The rock I was standing upon had not moved with my weight, though the thin material should have definitely cracked. I could not stab myself with any rock here, the process would be hard, and every rock was in place perfectly. I had left all of my weapons in the last village.
The only way was to fall.
To push myself off the cliff and fall, just fall.
I had never pictured my own death of diving off a cliff, it was always being hung or burning in a fire. I have always expected being caught one of these days, being hauled down on the bottom of a carriage, thrown in a cell until it was my execution. But I could not wait that long anymore, I had to die today. I looked over to the edge of the rocks, I could hear of the river that ran across the bottom of the fall, which would take my body back to the villages, where there would be a celebration.
I tore myself off of the black glass rock, and took a step towards the edge.
I would save lives that I would have taken; I took one step forward.
Children could be grown up accordingly with their parents still alive to raise them, to be happy and loved; I took two steps forward. I could taste the fresh water that flowed beneath the mountain, and could hear the fish bobbing up and through the waters, toward civilization.
People could fall asleep at night without the worry that I might rob them of everything they own, even a loved one. I was but one step away from the death I would live through. I could feel my heart beating faster, and my breath quickened, tiny beads of sweat dotted my forehead in fear. I could finally have a reason, even if it was to burn in hell my whole eternity; I was standing just above the river.
Rapids flew against the rocks, white foam thrashing back against the waves. The fall was long. Long enough for you not to be able to hold your breath throughout that time.
My hair whipped across my face as I bore my stare into the blazing river, the rich brown color did nothing to block my vision, it just covered my mouth and nose.
All of the days I’ve wasted listening to the greed and evil that lurked around my heart, all of the lives I’ve destroyed, all of the pain I’ve caused, I deserve this.
And with that, I closed my eyes…and took a step forward…
