On Ghosts, Screams and The Perfect Accompaniment to His Pain

The man opened his eyes and found the darkness of his life to be more penetrating than the emptiness of sleep. He listened to the storm as it raged outside his windows, angry thunder threatening to rip apart his existence. He sat up and wiped drying tears from his smooth cheeks with the back of his hands, hands that trembled with the memory of his dream. Echoes of his laughter and his screams rang in his mind.

Sitting in the dark, the man began to feel a weight close in upon him. The room became smaller. The air became alive with the unseen. The man’s breath, which had calmed since his unconscious dance with the storm, quickened in his chest.

A menacing bolt of lightening cut through his blindness. In the quick second of illumination, the man saw that he was not alone. Eyes and limbs and mouths loomed around him. He opened his own mouth to scream when he a soft hand caressed his face, clearing away the last of his tears. His cries died in his throat.

He knew the touch of that hand the same way he knew the sound of the beating heart inside his own chest. It was the touch of one he had loved. It was the touch of one who had loved him.

Fresh tears sprang into the man’s eyes as his body opened itself to feelings he had buried long ago. He fell into the embrace of the unseen as another hand stroked his hair. Voices whispered in his ears, forcing him to recall memories he thought were dead.

Soon he was completely enveloped within the embrace of the ghosts of his past. He was torn between the desire to struggle against the hold the memories had on him and the urge to slip deeper and deeper into the soft cocoon of the familiar. His body yearned to return to a time of love and acceptance. His mind raced to protect him from a pain that was all too fresh.

His heart was caught in the middle.

As his internal struggle twisted his will into knots, the whispers of the past changed. No longer were they promising him love and fulfillment and warmth. They began to laugh at the man, their sharp staccato cackles bringing him back to his stark reality. There was no love. There was no safety. There was only mockery and disappointment and hurt.

The man pushed away the phantom limbs of his ghostly lovers and threw his head back in despair. He pulled the stale and unfriendly air of the room into his lungs and expelled his pain in a wail that rivaled the thunder that roared outside.

He screamed and screamed until he felt the coldness of his past being blown from his present. He screamed and screamed until his throat bled with the blood that beat through his broken heart. He screamed and screamed until he became deaf to the sounds of his heartache.

Outside the storm grew in intensity, the perfect accompaniment to his pain.