Lost ✴Contest Winner✴

IV

It poured, the day Philip was wed.

It thundered catastrophically, the sky illuminated by furious spasms of lightning. A most unfortunate day for a wedding, people hastily murmured to each other, an unfortunate situation to begin with, what with the parents too. He could pretend he didn't hear their whispers, keep his head up high as he he wove his arm through Lauren's, but in his other hand he childishly clutched the lock of golden hair in his pocket.

The ceremony had flown by quickly, carried out mechanically and efficiently without any of the sentimentalities he thought a wedding should have. It didn't stand out to him, and the sharp memories of the day were muted by the chaos of the next week. Three days after he was wed, his father died in the sanatorium, and his mother a day after. He felt empty, and soft words from his wife or flagons of burning alcohol could not fill him.

Days passed rapidly, morphed into whirling months, into a dark year that had no meaning in his life. There was no work for him anywhere, no one wanted to hire the drunkard stonemason, and so the money became scarce.

Sweet Lauren had been beautiful and cheerful as ever for the first five months, but something was wrong now, she was distant, her eyes constantly held a tortured look.

"Philip," she whispered weakly one night as she lay among the blankets, "where have you put it?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," he lied cautiously.

"No," she slurred, "you do. The Laudanum. I need it. Where have you put it?" she yelled  desperately.

"We've run out," he said coldly, "I'm not buying any more."

"No," she half screamed, "no no no no no! It hurts, I want it, can't you understand, it makes me better! I stop seeing things," she ended in a whisper.

"Like what?" he asked dubiously, a horrible fear clutching at his heart. She would never go as far as torturing Lauren...would she?

His wife muttered like a madwoman to no one in particular, and he turned away in shame. He grabbed his ragged cap as he headed out the door.

~~0~~

Blood.

There was blood everywhere, red, on his hands, his face, the street...dear Lord, what had just happened? He had gone directly to the bar, bought a drink, then another, until he was drunk enough to leave his sanity among the other men when he was kicked out.

Flashes of memory, Kyle Moran jeering at him, the very man he needed to talk to, maybe in a different world he would have walked home with another bottle of Laudanum on his hands rather than a wanted poster with his face on it. He had been angry, and the alcohol whispered sweet catastrophe into his mind. Fatal blows, stone and fists and a year of pent up rage, and then it was over, his life had surely ended...

He stared at the dead man in front of him, and ran.

~~0~~

Two months later, he emigrated to Quebec across a pitching sea.

That wasn't important.

He found work, something to keep his mind occupied,

That also wasn't important.

Lauren had passed away in March. She hadn't even been there for a month, and Philip had wept and wept, because he had loved her, and he had broken his promise to her but didn't care, and couldn't care.

She would be coming. He knew it for sure.

It was only a matter of waiting.

~~0~~

Smoke.

The pear grove was going up in flickering gold flames, fire licking the branches eagerly.

There was simply no room in the graveyards of Skibbereen, so any available land was being warped into a stone-scattred city of the dead.

Death, not just only of the poor souls perishing of starvation, but of what had occurred on the site so many years ago in the golden light of a setting sun. Discussions about quinces, soap bubbles and love under changing skies.  It was all gone in the consuming heat, and instead of the light mist that had fallen from the sky during the tearful goodbye of years past, it rained ash.

Like dark rain, it spiralled from the trees, mirroring the destruction of the heartfelt vows that had been made-and then willingly broken. The flames roared, climbing and dancing in the wind.

The place was only a memory. The people were only shadows on a page of a journal no one would ever read, echoes in time and space. He was Philip, a simple boy with a simple name, and history was bound to forget him.

~~0~~