Teardrops of Roses [Completed]

Chapter 34 Heart Pieces in the Wind

C h a p t e r      T h i r t y - F o u r   

My hands were shaking as I washed them in warm water in basin of the master suite. As the adrenaline slowly weaned itself out of my system, the pain came to my forehead, top right hand corner.

I dabbed his blood off my skull with a clean face towel. I could already feel a small bump forming.
It was marked red. A big bad lump that getting it didn't sting nearly as much as I'd thought it would have.
I must admit, I took a pretty big blow. The shock of what I was witnessing as well as being in a daze had helped numb the pain for a bit.

Only now was it beginning to throb, and quite bad too.

It probably hadn't my best move to place myself between him and the wall he was breaking down with his bare fists, but it was the only way to stop him from injuring himself further.

It didn't matter that his hands were cut and bleeding, or that the bedside wall he'd been punching had already blown to pieces, revealing a hole through the plaster. There was no stopping him, even if he'd punched his way through to the other side of town until his hands were left gnarled and bones were protruding, the hole would only want to swallow him deeper, and he would keep giving into it.

He was far too strong, and strung on a concoction of emotions for me to try and yank his hands away, he was operating at depths deeper than the marina that would break any man. And I finally see it now, that was what he was.

A broken man.

I turn the tap off and grab a face towel again from the side. I could still hear his wails from the other side of the door as I cleaned myself. At least the thumping against the wall had ceased. That in itself had been such a mission stop, and the lump of my head was some sort of funny trophy, so the relative silence was a sign of relief.

His heavy breathing reverb through as he continued to sob the way no one should ever. As if he lost himself along with any of the will he had left and I could feel his pain through the wooden door that separated us.

-

I knew the moment, as his body convulsed when recounting his stories, that he hadn't the energy to hold onto the front he put up anymore.

The "Mr Green" he'd built up over the years was crumbling down, and no matter how many times he tried to patch it up by smiling or cracking a new joke, the holes kept coming. Because how was a kid meant to have known how to build his life for himself, when he'd lost everyone around him that ever cared for him at a young age.

And those 'guardians' that were then placed to help him grow into adulthood at his school, caused him the biggest damage of all. They gave him dust and sticks instead of bricks and cement. He was doomed from the beginning.

-

I'd forgotten what my reply had been.
Was it a small comment acknowledging what he said, or had I in fact said nothing at all?

I only remember telling him I wouldn't go.
The words had parted my lips, betraying the trembling fingers in my lap and the scream in my brain telling me otherwise, telling me to leave, immediately.

"WHY, why?!" He wept, looking desperately at me. In midst of the turbulence, he still had sense to try and convince me to go. Ha.

"What's wrong with you? Did you not hear me, and what I did to her?! I'M NOT HUMAN!" He screams, sending a bitter chill down my spine.

Gleamed over with glassy tears, his eyes appeared dark and sparkling to me, like a starless galaxy sky, swirling over and over, hypnotizing, revealing everything he'd ever felt or thought. A black hole, sucking me in.