La Petite Mort

A buzz echoes in an empty hall with the smell of formaldehyde and sulfate filtrating in and out of the rooms like an unsettling, invisible haze. Every room of the building was dark except one, of which two individuals sat with computers lit on each trying to finish paperwork before going home for the night. Truthfully, this conversation would be better had outside of the walls of the workplace, but secrecy and illicit affairs rarely allowed that. It was a small coffin for the little death of them both. 

“I wish I never met you,” the girl's eyes were bitter and her voice was sweet. If her tone would have been recorded you would never see the broken shards. She had taken to bleeding inwardly at the thought of him being gone. The support he gave her, the amount he had coddled and instigated their dynamic that lit up like a reaction between fire and gasoline-it was all worthless in the end.

“I know. I can’t blame you for being upset,” he falls silent looking at her. His eyes are warm and somehow dull. Despite his silence and lack of words, she is pulled by the look he is giving her. Her heart is heavy at the sight of his defeated look. She can remember the looks he had given her months ago, there was longing but excitement. Now all that was left was some kind of displaced enjoyment. A remnant of a brief glimpse of sunshine among an overcast life.

“Those are just pretty words,” she hisses and looks away. Her eyes sting with tears. She wanted him to stay but his very presence and resulting actions had left her feeling empty and without self-respect. Her emotional kilter had been off since the beginning of their interactions. Her usual reserved and strength-filled countenance was less stable now. If the girl who existed before she met him was still in her, she wished to find her as much as she wished to keep him.

“They’re not, I promise,” he takes away all her reason and sense. A turbulent current pulled her towards and away from him. Her judgment and conviction fought hand-tp-hand in a bloody fight.

“A promise from you doesn’t mean much,” she rested her head on her hand as she took a breath in slowly and exhaled, trying to gain composure. She could feel the anger of cognitive dissonance battle within her. The man who had betrayed her and the one who chased her down in order to check on her well-being were two different people yet existed in the same place and time. Every look at him made her stomach twist into an uncomfortable knot, a painful tang of error wrung in her bones.

“That’s fine if you think that, but I do mean it,” she wished he did. She wished she knew whether this was genuine or disingenuous. Insecurity could choke them both right now out of fear and disdain. He kept looking at her, those dark and dismal eyes as pretty in the darkness as they were in the burning sun of the day.

“...You know how much I’m hurting, right?”

“Yeah, I do, and it hurts that I caused it.”

“You made an active decision to leave! You sat on the sidelines and watched my life after telling me everything was fine before you went ghost!”

“I know-”

“You know? Dan, you created a small personal hell for me! You got to run off to New York and sleep with whoever you wanted, I stayed here and had to sit in my own filth! The filth you created! I went to work every day and saw small corners where you would come to mind. I felt your absence every time I looked at her, every time I saw your name on something, do you know how that felt?” She paused, she huffed in anger as she tried to hold back tears. Her chest felt both weak and heavy, as though her heart may fall out of her chest. If it splattered onto the floor, blood stains and all it would not make much of a difference, she had spent months feeling as though that was the case. Months where he would talk to all of their friends and ignore her, months just waiting for something to change while she moved on with her life. She takes a deep breath and gathers herself. “Never mind if you know how that felt, you coerced me to lean on you, then you leave. You talk to all my friends without me knowing and purposely ignore me.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“It was premeditated, I know you were planning to disappear ahead of time.”

“I’m sorry you found that out,” at this point, he looks guilty. If he went to a confessional booth to be condemned for his sins he could not look more ashamed of himself. The unsettled woman could feel a pull between comforting him and castigating him. Months ago she would have knelt down and reached out to hug him, she could not ignore the affection she had for him nor the grace he should be given. Still, she needed days when someone would show her secure affection, she should be given grace as well, she wished he had kept his promises. The empty little wishes that she so guardedly had gone to observe only to be disappointed.

“I had to fight every base urge to not do that to you,” the girl cried, thinking of how she wanted to run away from it all. Thinking of how she felt like she wanted to hurt him before he could hurt her. At the time she thought it would be the most protective thing she could do. Then conviction set in, that was not what caring for another person was, she was not wishing or doing him well by self-preserving her own ego. Despite all the bad he was capable of, despite all the anxiety instilled in her flesh, the soul could still see that he was capable of good and deserved mercy. That compassion meant that she would put herself in a place of vulnerability and pain instead of him.

“This is my fault,” he sighed the room went quiet. In the small office, it seemed to be the two of them, unless a ghost or a stranger lurked in the corner. An unwanted Adam and Eve in the chasm of dimly lit whispers, alone in their world. A now terrible and chaotic world. The two could ask themselves though if it was ever orderly, maybe they both just felt drawn to disaster and darkness. After all, some are predisposed to love what will destroy them, no matter how upright and pious an individual may be, the human heart always has room for despair.

“Yeah, it is, it really is,” something inside her died as she said this. Whether it was the bright colors that echoed around both of them, a slice of her innocence being shed and permanently held by him, or just her energy and therefore part of her, it was long gone. Vanished as a thief in the night with its undeserved fortune, the owner never sees it again. She would never be able to shake that she may be partially at fault for her desire. She wanted to believe he could be tempted to good when she forgot so easily that she could be as easily drawn to bedlam. She stood up, picking up her small messenger bag.

“I’m going home, goodnight.”