Ruthless

‘I should have made you leave a long time ago.’ Murmurs Ruth.

I see her looking down, then at the window, as if meeting my sight could change anything.

‘You should leave.’ She whispers. 

At last, her eyes look into mine. I dive into this ocean in which I would be ready to drown. Her shoulders quiver, hands envelop her mouth, then fall back down. The ocean becomes a lake, as countless droplets leak out. They crawl down her cheeks and chin, only to jump and crash to the floor of our living room, that I will not leave without a fight.

Still, she stares at me. Her gaze is now her strength. She refuses to look away. I wonder if she’s crying so much to replace this ocean by a fire, with which she could burn me.

I watch her cry. Cry. Cry. My arms reach out for her, only to pass right through. This can’t be real.

I wake up the next day. 

Tik tok, tik tok, tik tok

Sleeping alone when you don’t want to is like walking with a squeaky shoe.

Either you numb yourself to it, you try not to think about it… Or you obsess. Nothing else matters anymore. At every step, at every sleepless night, at every sound, you are reminded that your life is not what it should, could have been. You want to lock yourself inside, to never walk again. But who are you locked in with? Ghosts. So you fall asleep watching videos until the words of those podcasters or YouTubers can almost be mistaken for the whispers of loved ones. The best for that are Twitch lives, the ones where streamers answer questions. The only part of the conversation missing is my voice. Your voice.

I have both. A squeaky shoe and a lone bed. I want to throw out those ragged sneakers. Throw them in the chimney and watch them turn to ash. They could squeak for help as much as they like, no one would come to the rescue. But I can’t. They’re the first thing Ruth gave me. A pair of Nikes, as if gifts could make all of our problems go away. She gave me gifts in the end, the way I imagine Incas would give offerings to a vengeful god. Then I started giving her presents as well, perhaps to prove that I was mortal. It became the norm, the routine between us. One argument, one gift, until we could not look each other in the eyes anymore. The last gift she gave me was a kitchen knife. She didn't cook, neither did I. Then the gifts faded away and were replaced by screams.

When I see people staring at me in the streets, grandmas with a frown in between their wrinkles, children with their mouths and eyes so widely open they could explode, I wonder if any of them know about Ruth. If they heard us break our vocal chords at each other in our thin-walled house. Do they hear the same silence as me now? A small town like this, everyone knows everything. How long before they stare at me, not because I’m a stranger, but because they know exactly who I am? Or is that already the case?

‘Hi, name’s Cole, I’m new in town. I came here in the name of love. Now love’s gone. Ruth left my bed cold. My left shoe squeaks. Good day to you.’

When ghosts end their weeping and birds start chirping at the end of my sleepless nights, I wonder. Only after my computer’s audio stops, when it’s run out of battery, the questions come. Should I leave this village? Let’s not pretend too much that it’s a town. The mayor is a part-time baker. It’s a village, if that. That’s beside the point, though. I wonder if, or rather when I should leave. But then I feel the blankets on my skin, the ones that she’s been wrapped in with me, I remember the fields that she used to look at endlessly. I can’t leave this land. Not quite yet. And yet, the question returns: How could any of it mean anything, now that she’s gone?

Then - I’ve been doing this more and more lately - I go back. My soul leaves my body. I explore. I let my mind go to all the moments that I should have treated differently in my life, to not end up alone in a bed in the middle of nowhere.

Tok tik, tok tik, tok tik

I think about the man who walked past me last week. I returned to his side. He drags his feet on the pavement, his hood dropped down to his nose. I can't see his face, not that I could recognise anyone’s face in this hamlet. Can it really be called a village? The mayor appointed himself.

The hooded man walks, glancing around at the puddles and the mud. Then - too late - he looks up and starts running. I see the bus, so does he. He signals the driver and tries opening the door, but there's nothing to be done. The bus starts driving away. Then, the impossible happens.

The man grabs a knife from his pocket, stabs the bus door repeatedly until the glass shatters. The driver - either in shock or having some trouble with his vehicle - stops the bus. The mad man walks in. I hear passengers scream.

'Please, sir, please!' Implores the driver, uselessly.

I see a flash of red and run away. Squeak squeak squeak. Some passengers leave the bus, by this point I'm almost home. I make myself a hot cup of tea. I turn on the TV. The police officer on the news calls out for any witness testimony on what they are now calling 'Bus homicide'. I turn off the TV.

It was all over in a moment, really. But I still wonder what could have been.

I go back to this moment, sometimes. I scream at the hooded man.

‘Run! Run or you’ll never get on that bus!’ Maybe he hears my echoes. Still, the moment barely ever changes. One time though, I saw him look back at me. His face mostly covered up, but there was something ever so familiar about his chin and frown. Something barely human.

The bus never waits, he never runs fast enough. Life’s too short to waste big chunks of it waiting for the bus. Life's too short for prison. Moments worth living are much rarer than the rest. Maybe he knew the value of a good moment. Maybe he could not forgive the driver who took one away from him.

There’s nothing I can do, there’s nothing I can change. So I go further. Back, back, all the way to when I was voiceless. I could speak, I was simply not allowed to, most of the time.

Mr Thompson is writing something on the board about triangles and I couldn't care less. At the back of the classroom, I see Luke. Him and his cracking voice while he jokes with Sydney. I hear the way he snorts every time he laughs. I see the way he looks at me, prey. The first glance he took in my direction, that’s when I should have done something, back when I was a teenager. Hate at first sight. Still, here I am now, ready to do what needs to be done.

The bell rings, Mr Thompson says a couple of things that no one listens to, as we step into the hallway one by one. Luke’s eyes are on me, I’m sure of it, but I keep walking. My moment is coming, that’s all that matters. I go to my locker and reach for my history notebook, when I feel his hand on my shoulder. My moment, there it is. I turn around and before he can say or do anything, I grab a fistful of his hair and smash his face against my locker. Again. And again. And again. 

‘Let me go! LET ME GO!’ He screams.

His nose is bleeding, his head tilted back by my grasp.

‘Say the magic word.’ I say. He looks at me, flabbergasted that I would dare.

 ‘Please let me go. Please. I’ll do anything! Please, I’m sorry!’ He begs and cries.

I hit him one more time, then let go.

‘See? That wasn’t so hard.’ I nag him.

The crowd that formed around us is speechless. His trembling fingers reach his bleeding nose. It’s probably broken. He looks at me all over again, scanning from head to toe. Not a victim, not a friend, something new. Something to keep at a distance.

The moment is over. I escape the blood and my parent’s yelling and the temporary suspension that would probably have followed. 

I escape all of it and return to my now. On the way, I see the horrors that followed. The years of Luke.

Then colour comes into my life. An explosion of light called Ruth. Her and her smiles and the sound of her voice as she speaks about her sister or her new boss at work. Then every sprinkle of light fades away and here I am, in the now. Ruthless.

Tik… Tok…

An empty bed, an empty life. Squeaky shoes and fading lights. Memories of bliss, in between the chaos. That’s what we aim for, isn’t it? To stay in the happily ever after, to reach the garden and to never, ever bite the fruit that would get us banned from it. That split-second, that calm in the eye of the biggest storm.

I wish I could go back, right between the screams and the unbearable silence that I can never quite escape, no matter what squeaks or which YouTuber speaks.

Not far enough. I go back, before last week, before middle school. Right to when I was born. Britney Spears at her peak and my mother, a smile splitting her face in two. I think about it all the time, about how to change things. I could have learnt an instrument or five, right then and there. I would have learnt to read and write.

By the age of one, I would be what they all spoke about. I would not have had an ordinary life, I would have been extra. A super star, like the world had never seen before.

But what would it have meant, if Ruth was not by my side, to live through it all with me? Sometimes, when I feel brave, I murmur her name out loud to myself, just for the sake of her not being completely gone. For her ghost to feel heard.

People - if I spoke with them - might tell me that I’m depressed. Maybe I should see a therapist. But what would he say? That I’m depressed? Obviously. Then he might make one too many deductions that I would not be comfortable with. I wonder sometimes, when I look at myself in the mirror, what I’ve become. I crease my lips to make a smile. There’s something wrong about the face that looks back at me. It looks broken, like if some creature of another world learnt about us humans and tried to imitate our facial expressions. I wonder if I’ve forgotten how to smile. Then I look at photos of Ruth and I together. My smile hasn’t disappeared, it’s trapped in that beautiful past and it can never leave it. The time of hope.

We would have had babies together. We were talking about it. Well, we had gone from talking about it, to mentioning names, until we found the ones that we agreed on. Then those names were everywhere. If an actor or a dog carried that name, we would giggle. If a parent called it out, we would look at each other and smile, her hand tightening around mine.

Imagine me, as a dad. Running around, after a toddler, letting my little girl put her feet on mine as we’re dancing.

'I'd rather die than have a child with you, Cole! I'd rather die!' She screamed. Screams. I can still hear her cruel words, taunting me.

I can’t even bring myself to think of those names now. Lives lost in the universe of What-could-have-been. I see them sometimes, the children that we’ll never have.

Tik, tik, tik…

I go back to the last time Ruth cried, the way she did so often towards the end. I'm back there, then. A second chance, to do things right, to keep her. To stop the inevitable.

‘Stop crying.’ I say.

Her tears flood me. I look at the kitchen door, then back to her.

‘I said stop it.’ If only she said a word, something human, something that could make me feel like she and I belonged to the same world, then I might be okay, but no.

She uses her tears as weapons and her screams to keep me at a distance, like a gazelle keeping a tiger away. I look at the kitchen door again, knowing what I must not do, what I cannot do this time. I love her, I love Ruth. She is my sunshine, she…

Snot drools down her nose. The sight of her makes me nauseous. She’s putting on this show for me.

‘Stop it!’ I scream. ‘There, are you happy? It’s all my fault now, again!’ 

I remember once, when Ruth cried, like she did so much towards the end, I put my lips against her eyelid. I don’t know if I did it to kiss the pain away or to eat it out of her. Either way, the sensation touched me, it felt like butterflies, trying to fly away from a bird, from a snake, from... Me.

The kitchen door opens, the knife that she had gifted me only a week prior ends up in my right hand and my body takes over. I can’t hear Ruth cry anymore, I can’t see her blood flowing down my hands, I can’t feel her last breaths against my cheek as tears don’t fall out of my eyes. It’s not happening. It’s not happening. But it happened, whispers the ghost in my ear.

I get out of my bed. I have to leave this… This place. I have to go.

Tok.

I put on a black sweatshirt, hood up and leave the house. I walk, with vigour at first, before remembering that nothing of Ruth’s would ever be near me, ever again. I stroll, let my feet slowly kiss the ground at every squeaky step of my journey to the bus stop. A man walks next to me. He doesn’t look at me, I don’t look at him. How could he anyway? My hood is down to my chin. All that I want to see is the floor. Not the fields that remind me of her, not the people who stare at me. The mud and puddles.

I see the man by my side turn to me. I’m almost sure that he is trying to tell me something, but that’s when I see the bus. I run as fast as I can to the bus stop. The bus comes. Its doors open. Close. I try to open them again, I knock, but the driver won’t help. He looks at me and I see him smile. Smile at the idea of leaving me in this haunted place, inhabited by demons who stare at my miserable, inhuman face. This is not a town or a village, or a hamlet. This is hell and the bus driver wants me to burn in here. Forever. In my pocket, I feel the one thing that I decided to leave with. The knife. Nothing matters, not anymore. Time is meaningless, now that there is no one to spend it with.

I stab the door until it shatters. I hear the driver beg, just like Luke, just like Ruth. Then he doesn't beg anymore.

Then, as my knife drips blood and the screams of strangers dissipate in the distance, I wonder what it means to be human.