Perpetual Rain ✓

Regret

'Cause of death: Injuries sustained from car coalition.'

Your entire life was written here, on an embroidered piece of paper held in your fingertips. Where you were born, your parents' names, your height, weight, hair color... everything was there. But, you couldn't remember it, 'that' night. But there it was, written in black and white. 

August 10th.

The day you stopped existing. The day you had left the earth. But if you were dead, why were you still here? You were stuck watching the world turn and continue on without you. When you died, it was lights out - that's what you had always believed.

Now, what? What were you even supposed to call this? You didn't feel dead. You could still feel, you could still cry, you could still hurt... So, why? Why couldn't you remember it?   

Finally, you put that piece of paper down, leaving it crumpled on the carpet, in the corner of the living room you had backed yourself into. Your father had gone back to sleep, you could see his drunken form - now laying across the couch with one arm fallen off the frame and brushing the ground.

He was in nothing but a dirty, wrinkled, white collar shirt and a pair of jeans that should have been washed at least two days ago. He looked so different, different from the strong, independent man with a figure of steel who raised you. He was wasting away right before your eyes. When was the last time he went to work? Work was his entire life, though now it looked as though he may never leave that couch again.

He was a shell of the man you knew, a fragment of the father that raised you and, though you were never really close with him, it was breaking your heart to see him washing away.

You could feel your lip quivering, trying so desperately to stop the sobbing that was nothing more than dried up tears now. The water would no longer fall from your lifeless eyes.

You turned away from him, no longer able to bear the sight before your eyes. You started back down the hall aimlessly. What were you to do now? Where were you to go? Only now could you even being to process what was happening.

You just wanted to go to your room, sleep, pray to whatever God there might be that this was nothing more than the worst nightmare of your life. You reached for the knob of your bedroom door but froze.

You could still hear her. Her uncontrollable sobbing from your parents' pitch black bedroom. You could feel your heart stuttering with each labored gasp she took.

You didn't want to leave her, not like this. How many times had you turned a blind eye to her emotional tears? You let your feet drag against the carpet, taking you back to your parents' bedroom.

You stopped in the doorway. You could see your shadow cast on the floor in her room, though part of you knew she couldn't see it. It was just a fabrication of whatever hallucinogenic hell you had been put in.

"Mom..." you whispered into the chilled night air that crept into the ancient bones of your century-old home.

The sun had long since set on the town that cultivated you and brought forth a sense of darkness that seemed deeper than any night you had ever recalled.

"I'm so sorry, Mom." You added, your voice cracking as you choked on your words. You let your body carry you deeper into the room riddled with suffrage.

"I'm so scared, Mom." You reached the side of her bed. "I... I don't know what's happening to me. I'm so fucking scared."

You crooked your knee, pressing it into the bed's edge as you climbed onto it, disregarded the mountain of paperwork that was laid out in front of her as you crossed your knees in front of yourself. Sitting in front of her, you still silently wished she'd lift her head and embrace you in a bone-crushing warm hug that you never realized you would miss.

But she wouldn't uncurl from the ball she conformed her body into to protect herself from the pain of loss. You felt guilt rattle your bones and course through your veins, leaving no piece of your soul untouched from the sadness her sobs created. 

You sunk a hand into the mattress, feeling it cave under your pressure as you leaned forward. You doubted she would even feel it, that she could even sense you at all. Still, you brought your head to hers, pressing your lips to the top of her downcast head just as she did when you were nothing more than a child. Tears stained your lips as you wanted her to know how much you loved her... had loved her. But it was more for your own comfort than hers. 

She didn't move, not a single flinch as you pulled your head back and rubbed your hand over her arm, trying to console her. The dead consoling the living, ironic. 

After a while, you left her there, sobbing alone in her bedroom despite your better judgment, and crept back into the cold of the hallway. The house seemed so empty now, so devoid of life that it almost seemed unrealistic. You could hear every creak of the floorboards you had once ignored, you could see every chip in the paint on the floral printed walls. 

You stopped as you reached the living room again, looking into the barren wasteland your father slept in. You understood now, the countless empty glasses and bottles of liquor strewn about. The fact that he couldn't even bring himself to shower showed you the effect that this loss had on him, though you would have never imagined it would be this bad. 

He didn't smile, he never cried. He had been a man of strength since the day you were born, but now he was nothing more than a ghost himself. Could you even call this living? You couldn't even really recall the last thing you said to him, when he could still hear you that is. Whatever it was though, there's no way it was heartwarming and you regretted it, so much. 

The tears had stopped as you turned away from your childhood home, eyes puffed and bloodshot. You felt everything, but at the same time you felt numb to it all; it was an odd feeling. You were hurting so incredibly bad, yet you refused to show it any longer with your expressions. You had probably cried more in the past few hours than you had in the entirety of your lifetime, literally. 

Just like your father, you believed tears were for the weak. You believed that shedding them showed a lack of self-control and just how fragile you were. It was an unhealthy mentality, and you knew that. But when you were raised staring into the eyes of such of frozen man, you could only learn to adapt. 

You reached the front door, staring at the chipped wood and rusted hinges. The stained glass window that showcased a beautiful rose pattern in scattered pieces of color. You remembered the day your mom asked for the door, wanting a replacement over the gaudy red hunk of wood that once stood there when you were seven. It was beautiful, a welcoming gesture to all those who entered your home and left it. Just like she had wanted. 

Staring at that stained glass window now, however, brought you no welcome, only stings of sorrow that vibrated your skin and tingled your fingertips. You didn't want to open the door - part of you knew what you were going to find outside of it - but you had to face the 'demon', despite questioning if you would even want to see him again...