The collapse of a building.
I sat with my face pressed up against the rain-streaked window. Outside, droplets the size of fists hammered the ground and pelted my window, like the tears of a god. My mind is a building, thirty stories tall. Every day, one story collapses, and with it, my sanity. If there had been a good-willing god, then he would not have allowed my sweet Rebecca to have been snatched away from me so forcefully. It has been twenty-nine days since that fateful night.
It was to be the first day of our honeymoon. Amélie De Verre, the lady who had captured me with her bright eyes, beautiful smile and kind heart. It was love at first sight. Thankfully, the feeling was mutual. After I graduated from university at the age of twenty-two, she and I went to her parents and told them that we were going to get married. Her father was hesitant at first, but I made him a promise, and he agreed. A promise I failed to keep, one I broke so soon after making. We had our honeymoon in Penang. After having dinner at a restaurant, we decided to have a stroll along the beach not too far away from the restaurant. Rebecca and I had plans, big plans for the future. We were chatting and laughing, right in the middle of the road.
Perhaps we were too caught up in the moment, but neither of us heard the car roaring towards us at breakneck speed. Not until it was too late. I moved to get Amélie out of the way, but instead, she pushed me back. The driver was drunk, head lolling to the side, so completely inebriated that he did not even put on the brakes. The car slammed into my wife at full speed. The impact sent her flying, where her body landed several metres away in a broken heap. I broke into a dead sprint, sliding into a stop before her. I tried to revive her, to no avail. Whatever it was that gave her life had fled her body.The drunk driver staggered out of his car a few feet away. He had turned back after hearing that dreadful thump. I barely noticed. Tears streamed from my eyes, my nose was running and somewhere, someone was screaming. It was as if I myself had also exited my body, and was viewing from a third person perspective. In that moment of detachment, I saw everything in perfect clarity. The confused expression on the driver's face, Amélie, looking ever so serene...and...myself.
Rage, commingled with pain slashing through my normally cheerful face.I was picked up and thrown back into my body by an unseen force, and all my emotions, memories, slammed into me.We had not gone to my parents to tell them of our marriage. There was no need, as I had seen them knocked flying just like Amélie as a child of seven years. All the memories and emotions I had so carefully locked away burst forth from somewhere deep and dark within me. Fury contorted my features, and a primal roar rose up from the same place, a place where light had never shone, where my hatred was cultivated. It all bubbled up, and I stood from where I knelt, before Amélie's body. I threw myself at the cause of my grief, driving the man into the hard concrete tarmac and hammering my fists into his face. My first punch split his lip, my second breaking his nose, yet my fists still rained down upon him.I was about to deal the killing blow when reason once again surged through me, like a hot knife through butter. I looked at my hands, covered with blood that was not my own. Guilt and agony mixed in my heart, causing me to double over.I sank into the ground, on my knees, my face in my hands."Oh God..." I repeated over and over, my voice laced with thorns and broken glass, cutting through my sobs. The screaming of sirens and the screeching of cars pulling up beside me was the last thing I heard before falling into the cold embrace of unconsciousness.The next few days blurred past like they did before. The same unending questions, whether I knew the person killed in the car accident, except, this time with a new, unwelcome addition: whether I knew the man I beat to death. I did not.As I had shown mental instability during interviews with the police, I was scheduled for weekly appointments with a psychiarist. When that did not help, I was deemed unfit to attend trials in court. Instead, I was sent here --- a mental asylum.I have not spent a single moment, waking or sleeping, not thinking of my love. Her beautiful face, innocent smile and gentle touch haunted me not only in the physical world, but in my mind as well, taking on the form of a dream as I slept. It was fitting, as the only places she could exist in were my heart and mind. Yet another bittersweet memory.The time is ten minutes from midnight. I delved into another memory. My last, as my sanity started slipped from my grasp.
It is noon. Amélie's body, clad in the dress she wore for our wedding, was being lowered into the casket. I sensed a presence beside me. I turned, and met his look of utter disappointment head-on. It was none other than George, my wife's father."You made me a promise." He stated."Yes, I did...I promised to make her happy..and keep her safe" Sharp, vicious knives tore into my chest, ripping out my heart and laying it bare, for the world to see me for what I really was. A liar. A man who could not keep the promises he made to his wife's father. I fell to my knees."Amé..." I whispered numbly. Beside me, someone turned and walked away. I stared at George's retreating shadow, listened to the fading thump of his footsteps and the whispering of the wind, the mocking voice of my guilt, which would haunt me in the days to come. I crawled, on my hands and knees, to Rebecca's grave, and knelt there for the longest time.
Outside, droplets of water the size of fists hammered the ground and pelted my window. My mind was a building, thirty stories tall. Every day, one story collapses, and with it, my sanity. It has been twenty-nine days. There was an unfillable void in my chest. I looked like death and I didn't care, I couldn't feel any part of my body. A keening cry of grief escaped my lips as the clock's hand struck twelve. Midnight. Thirty days have passed.The final storey crumbled into dust.
