Words Fail [Damaris & Saturn Day 4, pt2]

A letter is pinned to his chestplate.



He listens to the sound of water running the distance. There’s the faint glow of fire and smoke beyond the leafy green ferns. A few voices still crackle, and someone strums a guitar. He holds the coil of rope in his hands, making sure to turn the thing over and under, tight but not so tight that he won’t be able to get the thing around his neck. He pauses, moving the arrangement over his head, measuring and remeasuring, before tying another knot.



His tears from before have dried by then.


Was it calm, or numbness that passed through the whole of his body? He stared up at the stone archway before him. He’d spotted it after walking back from the creek, and noted the strange outcropping of rocks. A stone pathway overhead that was wide enough for a single boy to cross, he believes that it could hold his weight (or at least, long enough to do the job). At its base, he began to coil the end of the rope, and make a series of knots along the bottom. Each one tightened the rope’s hold, so he could be certain that it would not tear away when the moment came.


When he stood on the hay bale he’d pushed out and away from the party, he was smiling.

There was no fear when he tossed the noose over the archway. It swayed back and forth in front of him, and he closed his eyes to listen to his heart beat. He doubted anyone would notice he was gone – perhaps they’d wonder how one had managed to die today, when the anthem banged out through the arena. But he imagines that stories like his ended that way – with boys and girls staring up at his face, and giving a shrug, moving on to the people that mattered.


He imagines that his father will call him a coward. His mother will scream, and cover her eyes. She’ll curse his name – forbid it from the house, until the day that she died. His brother will turn green and leave the room, too overwhelmed. His sisters will all be silent, and stare at one another. And they’ll feign sadness, until at last they don’t have to talk about him anymore. Well – save for the youngest. But he imagines she is young enough to float, yet. So young that he will be a memory erased before too long.


This was better, he thinks, adjusting the rope around his neck. He pulls the knot tight, and it’s when he feels the cold of the nylon against his skin that death becomes real. And he thinks that this is what he deserves, after all – that there is nothing that will rid him of what he feels, or forgive him for what he’s done, unless it’s done by his own hands. He wants to feel the pain against his flesh, to know that he’s done this to himself, just as he’d done everything else.


Dying alone felt fitting; no one could see him struggle or try to save him. No one would know that in his last moments before stepping right off the bale of hay, he was terrified, shaking and cursing himself, too chickenshit. But he feels the pain in his chest, the collapse of whatever had held him together, and even with tears starting to slip down his cheeks, he steps forward, and pushes the hay bale backward. The cord pulls his neck upward, now taught, and feels the weight of his body pulling the rest of him downward. Armor atop his skin acts as a counterweight, no longer his protection but his nemesis.


He chokes, not on tears but for air, his lungs screaming. His face flushes but he doesn’t struggle, his body swaying slowly along with the rope in his place.


This will be better, he thinks, because now he’s gone and done what everyone else had wanted him to do; he can put the pain behind him. He can stop being a burden. He can stop blaming anyone but himself for what happened to him. Because he can only believe that his life has led him to this.


He remembers the night he was raped, he thought he’d wanted to die. He remembers the emptiness. The way he didn’t know how he’d gotten home, or which one of his sisters had stopped him in the hall. What’s wrong with you? He remembers the voice, echoing static without a face. He is nothing and he is no one, not in the days or weeks that follow. Flesh and bones that ache with existence.

He rasps, neck heavier now, pain spreading through his joints, his chest burning. The rope twists and he sways some in place.

Why couldn’t he have been stronger? Or a better person? He didn’t have to throw himself at the boys that gave him an ounce of attention; he didn’t have to curse and carry on; he didn’t have to send lewd messages; he could’ve told Damaris how wonderful she’d always been. There is no space here for a boy like Saturn – neither hero nor villain, but a boy that yearned to live a life without pain.


And so he hangs, gasping, veins snaking across his forehead as shadows become faint. He slumps forward, hanging, unmoving, save for his body swinging back and forth.

The rock arch cracks and crumbles, Saturn dropping a few feet. Granite and dust scatter around his body. His note crumples against his chest, pinned safely to his armor.