Perhaps I could see today, he thought, perhaps I could open my eyes.
'Where are we?' he whispered, opening his eyes. But in the room where he lived, there was utter silence. His friends had left him and he was all alone, abandoned to the monsters and the desires in his head. 'Where are we?' he said again and his voice would've sounded sad, if there was anyone around to hear him. Good thing there wasn't, perhaps.
There was no fighting to be had, in the old man's voice. Just hate. He'd told them he'd do things by the book this time, but his friends had had no patience for it. They were children in his eyes and the wait made them restless.
'We could run,' one had suggested.
'No, we will stay.'
'We could burn everything,' came another.
'No, we will stay.'
'We could have it all...'
But he wouldn't be moved, they begged him and he only shook his head. He sat still and silent and one by one, they left him, all his desires all those who wished to run when all he could do was stay. And there'd been breaking in his voice, begging them to understand he couldn't run no more now. That his running had cost him everything and he'd understood the lessons of yore too late. So, so very late.
When there was nothing to be saved but ashes, stale in his mouth, tasting of forgotten nightmares. But his friends never saw that, they never understood what nightmares tasted like, because they hadn't been there with him, when his legs had been cut off. When the thing had caught him mid-flight and broke him bone by bone. The thing had made him watch as one by one, it killed everything he loved, everyone he'd ever gotten close to.
Yes, that's what happened, he remembers now. They didn't leave him, and yet they did. The thing made them leave somehow, though now he doesn't remember how, the old fool. It jabbed them in the ribs and pricked their fingers when they reached out to touch him and the man saw nothing, swallowed up in his darkness, dreams of running in his mind.
The thing was to blame, it had alienated everything from him, ripped it all from him, leaving him like this, broken and alone, no one to see for him, no one to call for help. Where are we, when nobody's here with us?
He asked the question, but the thing in his mind, as always, said nothing. It knew better than to feed the writer, than to rouse him. The old fool would see sense eventually, it just had to wait. He'd come to see reason, see he didn't need all those people 'round him, all those crows above his dying breast.
The thing, as he called it, had never hurt him, it had pushed him, nourished him, helped him grow, but there was little to be found in the way of gratitude inside the old man's heart.
The thing didn't mind, thus was its nature. Thus was its job.
'By the book,' the old writer whispered and thought of a story he could write, but just like that, it slipped out of his mind. A fleeting story, an unspoken life. What would he say, if he could remember all the words? What life would he live if he could pick up from the start?
Today, he understands the words, and knows once again that the book is not a kind one. That it most likely does not have a happy ending, but he's lived his whole life by it and there's nothing to do now, except read on. Perhaps write one more chapter. It's his book now. His and the thing's.
