Quiet

There's nothing around me now. Just the quiet and the cold.

I pause for a second here in the trees, wind swirling around me. I realize that in this instant I am truly alive. This place and this time are all that exists for me.

The only sound now that wind has died down is that of the blood hitting the ground beside me. I feel the slick trail of the warm fluid down my arm and the accompanying warmth along my chest.

I stand, surprised now. People really do change over time. That fact alone was worth all the pain leading up to this point. That's the only way I seem to learn anything - gut wrenching pain. Just seeing something is never enough. It's too easy to make the excuse for that other person, to easy to believe that I wouldn't do anything so stupid as that, but of course I did, and more.

I got off easy though. A simple stabbing was enough to wake me up. Too easy to stay there and take another blow than to realize that what happened before was more a dream than reality. So simple to lay down and give up. I couldn't do that though. The easy way was never my way, even when I consciously wished for nothing more than death, I still stagger forward.

I had to run from the motel room. That little bit more imprint of violence on the shady room was more than I could stand. At once, I saw all the little things that made up the substance there. The small beatings and random heated hatreds all stacked up and this minor thing was simply too much.

Small town police are only good at finding the obvious. Sure, they could call in the state people but, honestly who would call in someone to take the credit for something anyone could figure out.

You find the stabbed women and the wounded man in the dingy motel room and you can only come to one conclusion - he stabbed her and she, in some sort of heroic last stand, managed to wound him. Nothing else matters.

I never should have let Sandy into the room. She was unbalanced by the amount of prescription goodness she was getting, but I let her in again anyway.

After saying she was sorry for all she had put me through I sensed more than felt the knife sweep up into my chest. A cold pain followed by an immediate warmth as the blood spurts out.

I was aware in an instant of how it would look to the young officer I had seen patrolling the area. He looked as if he hadn't seen more than a dead animal on the side of the road. I could see, instantly, how his eyes would look when he came into this room. The shock and eventual easy understanding of what had gone on would dawn on him in a moment.

So, I ran. No driving away now, I had to feel the cold on my face. Not knowing where I was or where I was going was par for the course. I simply had to move, to feel something. I had to make some form of offering to Sandy after seeing her plunge the knife into her chest. The light going out in her eyes demanded something from me in a way I didn't understand.

Nothing mattered now. I could feel the cold grabbing at me as the blood flowed away from me. Here in the woods I knew the blood would find a home somewhere, helping something grow unlike when it was within me.

I hear a dog bark somewhere close by and know it's time to move again. I take a deep breath in preparation of the pain, but there is none as I push myself up. That is only a distant worry to me as the fresh face of a young Sandy forces it's way to my mind with it's own sweet pain. That girl I remembered wouldn't have hurt anyone. I preferred her to the replacement Sandy with the knife. She had killed so much more than herself. Every dream I had ever allowed myself to have died with her. The dumb animal lumbered forward now, perfect in it's unknowing.

Life seemed such a waste to me. Marriage was so overblown in everyone's estimation. It ended, and often not well.

Only questions remain now, ones I'm sure that won't get answered.

That is the one comfort left to me.