The way home

The lamplight sent shadows flickering and dancing with the wild, reckless abandonment of a lost soul as it drew the passing moths into their inevitable demise at the passing bats as they grew spoilt from the ease of hunting that the turn of the world had enabled. The bite of a winter chill nipped at the heels of those unfortunate enough to find themselves wandering the streets even after clouds heavy with the promise of rain crept in to blot out the stars. Really, it was hardly shaping up to be the sort of evening that anyone without prior plans would readily find to be particularly pleasant, but so often was the case once the nights grew longer and coats became heavier. 

Yet, for all the unpleasantness of the evening, Montgomery – or Monty to his friends, not that he had terribly many of those – found himself walking the familiar streets, scarf drawn high up around his cheeks in such a way that set his glasses fogging up in a way he would have found immensely annoying had his mind not been half a world away. Even the way his heels, slightly more exaggerated than was necessarily seen as proper for the gentry, clicking against the cobblestones did not bring quite the same joy it usually did, instead falling into a trick of body memory. Thank goodness for this body memory, too, as it guided his way through the streets automatically, his thoughts far too frazzled to be of any real help at all. 

There was nobody about, and even if there were he was rather certain that none of the hypothetical passerbys would have paid him any mind at all and so, letting the heavy weariness that was tugging at him win. The man let out a shaky breath as he dropped down into an even shakier crouch. The more unsanitary nature of doing so was far from his mind as he leant hard against the cold stone of the garden wall of the property he had been passing. Throwing his head back with just enough force that it won a brief spark of pain as it collided with the wall, he turned his gaze to the sky. Or as best he could, the branches of a tree – it was a sakura tree, his mind helpfully chose to inform him from the tremulous fog it was caught in, and so the springtime would bring the bright pink blossoms that seemed so out of place among the drab greys that surrounded it – had grown out to obscure the sky as best it could. 

If his mood was not already feeling rather erratic already, the tree decided to so kindly contribute by letting a droplet of water fall from its branches and land directly onto his glasses. 

His scarf was not the best equipped for ridding the water from the lens, but it did its duty well enough. Not wanting to have to bother with the mild inconvenience of a repeat performance, he let his eyes land upon his hands as he clasped them against his solar plexus. The gloves he wore were good enough at keeping the chill from slowing his fingers, but little more than that. 

With a hand that shook more than the weather could be entirely blamed for, he shed the gloves, letting them drop down to the ground in a way that would have inevitably left the fabric dirtied terribly.

His hands were, as he knew that they would be on an entirely rational level, nothing more exiting than his own hands. However he found himself rather inclined to offer a strong word or two to whoever it was that had decided that it was one’s own hand as a point of reference for recognizing anything at all, for the hands before him felt no more familiar to him than those of a stranger. 

Surely his hands had not always been so pale, so lacking in the flush of life that hid its way beneath the skin of each and every person he could meet. Surely his fingers were not always so dainty and fragile looking, so easy to snap with so very little effort if the whim happened to take him. Surely did not always shake so terribly no matter the weather, so unsteady it was a marvel he could manage so much as a pencil. 

What had happened to them? They couldn’t be his hands! That was simply preposterous, these were the hands of a stranger, and yet they bent when he told them to, as if in some cruel mockery he did not wish to try and understand. 

No, they weren’t his hands at all. They couldn’t be. The hands before him were the hands of a corpse!

Oddly enough, this more morbid of thoughts actually brought a misplaced sense of relief with it. If he was nothing more than dead then he could breathe far more comfortably than he was expected to when playing at being alive. It was too much fuss, all that being alive business, so he was rather glad indeed that he did not have to bother himself with it. How on earth it was that he had forgotten that he was already dead? That death had long since taken- 

“I am still alive.” Montgomery spoke aloud just as his thoughts were beginning to reach their crescendo. They had been beginning to slip, and slip fast into realms that they really were better off avoiding.  

He raised one shaking hand to his face, letting his cool – cool, not cold, not like those found within a fresh grave – fingers trace his face with a distinct gentleness. Following paths that others, others who were definitely and undeniably among the living, had forged felt far more natural than trying to find his own. His fingertips stopped short just beneath his tired eye, not quite having the faith in himself to know where to stop. 

“I feel alive.” Once more he spoke a mantra that he did not fully believe was true. There was something to be said about the efficiencies of one’s lies not being able to be believed until one was able to convince themselves of anything that was not true. 

He let his free hand rise to his throat, searching for a pulse that he did not fully expect to be able to find at all. Beneath the thick scarf he wore, his fingers were uncomfortably cool against his own neck, which was frankly not very helpful when it came to managing the odd sense of disconnect he was feeling, but the cold did manage to offer a brief shock to his system. In the pursuit of the drum beat that tapped out its frantic rhythm beneath his skin, he captured his throat in his hand, the sensation not entirely the most pleasant in the world, but it was dictated under his own terms and so he let his hand drop away just before the question of what would happen if he were to tighten the grip just so grew too loud. 

A sigh slipped through his teeth, gritted together so hard it set off a dull ache in his jaw as he vanished his hand away into the inner pocket of his overcoat. Brushing the little silver case that resided within, it was all that he could do to not join his sigh with a second of its kind, though this held at least a scrap of relief to it. 

The click of the little cigarette case was a little louder in the still night air than it had any right to be, though it could have just easily been a result of his odd state of being. More present than he had been, but only in a way that left him hyper-aware of nothing and blissfully unaware of anything at all that mattered. The song of a nightbird was drowned out by a single clacking case, and breathing took effort rather than falling into a reflexive habit. 

The lit match shook in his hand, so much so that he felt it necessary to steady it with his other, guiding the flame to ignite the cigarette he had set to rest between his lips. It was a dreadful habit and he knew it, in fact it was one he had been trying to quit, but such as it seemed was always the case with bad habits, it was easy enough to make the noble claim that he would quit than it was to actually go through with it. But he a little glad he still had the case on him, as he was sure there would not by anything quite as well equipped to still his mind enough to get by, or so he pondered as he let the smoke curl from his mouth like some parody of a devil. 

Montgomery was not entirely sure of how long he stayed there, crouched against the wall, taking desperate drags of his cigarette like a drowning man’s first gulp of air, trying to think of nothing at all. It could just as easily have been nothing longer than a handful of moments, a scattering of heartbeats or the time it would take for several eternities to come and go. It would have undeniably lasted longer had the clouds not decided that it was high time they released their burden, sending heavy raindrops falling to the earth. 

At this urging, the man, not quite living but not quite dead, hauled himself up to his feet and resumed his unsteady walk back home before the rain became too torrential.