Trying To Endure

Epilogue

April Levesque

I hate you more than Camila.

Coward.

Hypocritical bitch.

A subdued sob escaped. I slam my mouth shut to oppress more, swiftly surveying my surroundings. No one is here. Cars bustle the road here and then. Pigeons toot on the lamplights.

I need ... I need space to gather my thoughts. I need my brother. How far is the cemetery?

I skelp the concrete sidewalk, harshly wiping the mushed murkiness leaking into my mouth, meddling with the mucus. I tremble, massaging my sleeved arms, the wintriness whisking straightened strands, claws desentizing my naked legs. The night sky fogs the city — a marble of a refulgent abyss, stars mounted the skyscrapers. I straightforwardly discerned the mightiest beacon, beckoning me for an embrace in its highest realm. Crossing my arms, I hastened to it.

I'm tired. So, so, so tired. I hate this world. I hate life so much. Thiago, Roy, Hunar, Holden, Rhett, Camila, Destiny, Aashvi ... When will it ever stop? Why is it needed? The cruelty. I simply don't understand. It is so inconceivable, it feels like a stimulation, an administered mirage.

What is truly wrong with me? Why is it so hard to be happy, to even try — and when I am, when I do, there is an endless brick that breaks my bones. Aching breasts, the crippling sensation crawls to my throat. What, am I a magnet for everlasting misery? Do I scream to get used?

I bump into strangers, muttering apologies. Phantoms of trauma and brutality, of movements and insurgences, of anger that lasted for centuries coruscate each corner, each direction, caging me in, possessing an odious, skin-crawling and skin-bleeding glare so intense, I let them eradicate me, let them drown me in the noxious atmosphere. My brain is a prison.

Coward. Hypocritical bitch.

The betrayal I felt destroying Treyvon ... I bit my lip, quivering as tears fall, fall and fall as if I am the last essence of a waterfall, needed to saturate and reinvigorate, humid and unruly, parky and prickly.

I am so sorry, Bodie. You wanted me to help. I ignored it. I ignored it, and you were still so sweet. You still decided to be a friend. You deserve better, you said. A man, not a boy. Better friends.

Why were you so sweet? I wish you weren't.

My Cross burned and burns my collarbone like a brand. The moonlight appeared for the first time that night. You broke down into tears and shook, shook and shook in pain, as if your body reminisced the tingles Camila, Destiny, Aashvi left after they used you like a toy. Glowed around you was an aura, an aura of a message: everything will turn out right. You had hope. A hope greater and stronger than mine, stronger than the world's.

I sank to the floor, not caring about the grime. A sobbing mess, an ugly mess. Slamming my head back on a bricked wall, tears drop. A frenzied shiver, the grief, the sorrow, the culpability timbers and timbers, a stinging, desolate touch of a talon. Knees folded to my painful chest, I harshly wrench a fistful of hair and my scalp throbs.

Insufflating unfathomable, profound, challenging breaths, I rock back and forth, the heels clicking, trying to endure, trying to heal, trying to rise. Heart beating stridently, remorselessly, my mind roars of manipulation, immorality, negativity — the true danger.

I don't know how long I stayed here, crying and sobbing. I could tell I've wasted a lot of time panicking. Clouds cloak the empyrean, the howls unkindly striking a million knives again, again and again. Closing my eyes into an oblivion of ruthless, ancient and isolating cackles, the oblivion that was once the room. Except, no demons — the worst punishment of all punishments.