And the rest, is Johann

Chapter 7. Carpe diem, memento mori (I)

Grief was a strange process, Johann concluded, as it could freeze in time to suddenly obliterate any feeling of happiness or normalcy. Its own kind of monster, lurking in the shadows until the victim was weak enough.

He had never truly experienced mourn, and a part of him felt curious over the topic. Which was the exact combination of pain, sorrow and anger one felt over their murdered family, shattered life, annihilated dreams. The existence of outside forces, either monsters or chance, that could exercise such power over one's existence.

He understood the idea could be feared, destruction so close, so powerful and all previous effort so meaningless. Yet the chances so minuscule, so no preventive consideration took place until it became too late.

No one really understood the value of what was possessed until it was forever lost.

He agreed, himself as a fine example of carelessness, yet his process could not be stated as grief... merely a step forward in the process of his creation.

Johann had never mourned, so he was left alone once again in his attempt to get familiarized with that experience. It was difficult to estimate such feeling when he had no family to start with, all his previous attempts registering as a failure, a mere scenario with the shape of a house with actors in the roles of parents. Therefore, all that experience with families was purely intellectual, nevertheless emotional. He understood by now how normal families worked, constituting an important chapter in his knowledge about functional human behavior. He would have never been able to navigate society without such understanding. He was grateful for the information, yet it had never been complete, as love, his, was always out of that theatre. Whether he had ever been loved was also unknown.

Johann had no love, no family and therefore no grief, so all left to do were a series of never-ending cogitations with no solid conclusions. It was a usual process, though, as any emotion with a comparable degree of complexity left a similar taste in him, being understood in such a shallow way.

Yet he learned to be persistent, obsessively so. And thus, he usually invested his time lying awake in bed to such trains of thoughts, confident he might extract additional information over emotions through purely logical analysis, eventually. It was his only alternative.

But that night his rumination proved incredibly difficult, the environment so distracting, the events of the last days so unsettling.

It had happened fast, his downfall, her decision, the trip, and now the destination.

16 Neckarstraße, Heidelberg. Nina Fortner's true home.

Now he was spending the night in that same room that had been once designated as his own, during those six months he had been considered a part of that family. The bed felt so comfortable, just like it had been over fifteen years before. He had liked it, drawing some sense of safety from its soft blankets, the lavender smell of the fabric, no longer present. He remembered those shades of blue, the equivalent to Anna's pink, the furniture, the decoration. Untouched as its inhabitant had disappeared. His memory in a certain way respected. Unlike most nights, he had decided to lie down and consider a normal amount of sleep, if given a chance.

Yet no one was sleeping that night, despite the few hours left before dawn.

In the absolute silence left he could perfectly hear her, in the bedroom right next to his, the pink one, crying. Her sobbing was silenced by the pillows, sometimes, her steps roaming around the room as sorrow was consuming her. Grief required triggers, just like trauma, and right now Nina was enjoying them both in the shape of a lovely house on the outskirts of Heidelberg.

What she had attempted was an insane strategy, a suicidal one, her two worlds colliding to see whether she could survive the explosion. What would that Nina think of Anna, who now lived happily around the Fortner's murderer?

Enough.

Her never-ending crying was getting on his nerves, surprisingly so, such an overreaction for a mourning process that should have concluded by now. But it did and now his only desire was to destroy it all, the house, the memory of the Fortners, her, him, burn that house to the ashes, them inside. He didn't stop that train of thoughts, letting the fantasy linger for a while before moving on towards a more productive attitude. If Nina needed to cry, he would let her, offering himself some peace away from her in the process.

His sister should be proud of how wholesome he was becoming.

As silent as possible, he put the blankets aside, getting out of the soft bed to open the door and get out of the room. Once in the dark corridor, his steps dragged him in front of hers, his hand slowly reaching the handle.

He stayed silent, quiet as a ghost, so his own breathing registered loud. The curiosity was there, wondering what would happen if he knocked, confronted her. The discussion would probably be fierce, she was sad but most surely wrath was the main emotion she was confronting. Anna played the damsel in distress, but that role was a monster hiding in fancy clothing, waiting for blood. If he entered that room the most probable outcome would be him finding death.

It was so tempting, yet that was not his goal tonight, so after a couple of minutes, his hand left the metal and his slow steps continued through the corridor, downstairs, to the main entrance and finally to the streets, where he would roam aimlessly until it was time to face her.

He also had some unsettling feelings to deal with, and unlike her, he had little idea of their meaning or origin.

It was hard to deal with some grief he did not feel. Yet he remembered, crying the same way she did, that same night that was his last within those walls.