No more tears
“I hate myself more
than I hate mirrors. This morning I looked into one. Three hours later I was
writhing on the school ground. Tears in my eyes (as predicted), because of a
kick below the belt. Every attempt to avoid it fails. Once I’ve seen the
numbers, all I can do is wait.
The only upside is
that I saw Mack’s eyes before he kicked me. So I know he’s got it coming too
courtesy his drunk father. Or maybe someone else. Who cares? He’ll cry.
The next time, I’ll
tell him though he’ll hit me again when he finds out I was right.
Can’t avoid shiny
things forever anyway.”
His hands quivered as
he shut the tattered journal — he knew he’d best skip the next entry. Seven
decades later, the weight of it all had hardened like an invisible shell around
him. It did the job of maintaining a safe distance for him, because it bit into
him whenever he tried to get too close to people, to memories and to himself. Thus
he stayed in bed caressing the cover of his teenage journal, amazed that he
still had it. It had been in a box of belongings dropped off at the nursing
home by his college-bound grandson yesterday. A surprise, but not unwelcome.
Someone began to play
the piano downstairs, and he wandered back into pleasant memories stirred up by
the journal. Two pages back there was an older entry, above which was pinned a
Polaroid photograph of three boys. One of them was standing awkwardly and the
others were laughing hard. He smiled at it, lingering before continuing onto
the not-so-pleasant words written under it.
“This has to be the
gayest power possible. (And caused me a world of pain in checking if it wasn’t
anything else)
There’s no way to
switch them off. Whenever I look anyone in the eye, the numbers appear next to
the head. Ticking away the seconds till they cry next. The moment a tear drops,
they start ticking down to the next one. Dan’s father who just returned from
the war overseas is different though. He just shows 88...88:88:88:88 now as if the timer broke. The day counter stretches
to the left as far as I can see. His smile never reaches his eyes.
Anyhow, this photo
shows my attempt at explaining this nonsense to the fellas, and their reaction
on hearing that both of them were about to cry. They did cry of course, but the
tears came from laughing their asses off.
I have the best
friends.”
He loved photographs and
covered the walls with them wherever he lived. He could look at them for as
long as he wanted, and the static eyes wouldn’t yell back the moments he had
left till his friends would be down on the ground laughing at his stupid
“power”, till his mother would cry silently every year on his father’s death
anniversary, till the next time he was kicked in the groin or told to stay away.
Till forever, because
the numbers next to her head stopped ticking when his wife bid him a rushed
goodbye for the last time. The realization came too late though, and he had
lived long enough to know nobody would believe him. Since then every peek at a
mirror had been accompanied by a deep wish to see the numbers next to his head
stop ticking similarly, but he trudged on under his curse’s determinism.
He wiped a lone tear
with a sigh of resigned regret and looked around. The frames on the wall showed
a life lived on tip-toes that tried to dance in its better moments, and was
crushed by its own weight in the others. It had settled for the faces that
acquiesced to smiling so that a lonely man could glare at them at length.
The entries got more
sporadic as he continued flipping through, more carefully since he had a
stubborn lump in his throat after the previous entry. Each bitter reverie they
caused was an old traitorous friend’s greeting. The last entry read,
“I can’t stop it. If
I don’t look in someone’s eyes they think I’m not interested and they leave. Or
they see an easy target and they push me to the ground.
If I do look and show up with tissues and a
bottle of water, people think I am nice. But given time, I’m the person they
see when they cry, and they stay away. Always. Even ma.
Which makes sense, I
shouldn’t exist.
I try not to look in mirrors,
but how do I stop?”
Now that his cheeks
were dry, a familiar thought urged him to look at a mirror but painfully gained
experience prevailed for the moment. This vicious cycle of deciding to look and
regretting it, or avoiding and regretting it more till the next time someone
was hurt, was as much a part of him as
the by-lanes of memory he would travel down to avoid looking into eyes, mirrors
and himself. Yet, he kept sneaking glances. The questions in them swirled
around, some settling down, others floating to the forefront of his mind, needling
him till he tried to answer even if it always ended in tears.
A chill wind blew in,
turning the pages over to a dog-eared page near the end. That’s odd,
he thought as he turned over to find written in a scribble recognizably
different from his —
“Grandpa, I have it
too. Don’t worry.”
He flicked the
journal aside and stood up. An urgent phone call was needed to be made. After
relieving himself, of course. He was still an ailing old man.
For the first time in
a long while he did not glance at the mirror on his way out of the washroom. He
could not make the call though, and if he had looked at the mirror he would
have seen that the numbers had stopped ticking.
______________________________________________________________________________
Prompt — An octagenarian man on his deathbed, is given a diary he maintained through his adolescence. Describe the emotions that surge up in his mind.
IF you're writing a review or even just commenting, I'd really appreciate it if you could also add how relevant you thought the story was to the prompt. ( It did reach the 1 k word limit)This is the 3rd draft, initially the story was named "The Absurdity of hope". Do comment on the title too, if possible.
Link to the first/second version of this story — No more tears v 2.0
Points: 69427
Reviews: 456
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