Losing Purpose [Cait]

The Justice Building’s shutting doors is a sound I fear will haunt me infinitely.

It’s a sound I’ve heard too many times to find comfort in my own bed at night-time, when the front door of our home is locked for the evening and its echo down the hallways doesn’t project safety, but rather, fear. Fear of losing everything we’ve worked to build – against all the stacked odds – for that’s all closing doors bring.

We’d come and we’d left with nothing more than empty hugs and dead-ended words, hesitancy and willingness in our strides within both instances of walking through those guarded gates. And there was nobody waiting on the other side as I emerged into a sunlight too bright for Reaping day, for the sheep sent to slaughter, for all the goodbyes we’d unsuccessfully avoided. We’re one more grave in the cemetery we live out of, and it hurts.

How many had met that same despairing ache before me?

Too many, too many.

Slinking to the floor grazes my knees as they’re dragged across burning pavement, but there’s more pain in the distortions creasing my face, and even choking on words ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry’ doesn’t seem to hurt as much as moments played on repeat, leaving their own gravel burn.

‘I volunteer!’

Oh why, Levi, why are you going – you’re allowed to be selfish, have every right to be. Now, we’re just doomed.

I hadn’t stayed to wait for Sampson, and it’s selfish to say there’s no room in my heart for him, but with the lost spirits who take permanency in my blood-flooded chambers, everything falls out of place. Jigsaw pieces I used to force into their incorrect spots once formed a passable imitation of some insignificant portrait of life, still life; now, the picture they leave behind seems as fractured as the cracks in my bones each time I slam them against the ground, and how had I not seen before that we all fall apart, and there’s nothing we can do against it?

Only my tears fall to the floor, beads of alcohol and sweat engrained in the lines streaking my cheeks, and it’s too much to wish that only tears will continue to fall in the coming days, because Sampson had grown out of bedtime stories long before I’d found him, and daydreamers are never rewarded. (You’ve always had a knack for attracting the broken souls of the world, haven’t you?)

Shifting in my chest. Benat, Iago. They’re already making room for a third Izar, and so long as I don’t have to engrave the name Sampson across the stitches that have been ripped apart and hurriedly healed time and time again, perhaps we still had something to be grateful for.

Perhaps there was still something we could do.

There’s liquor in my bloodstream – I taste it on my tongue – ethanol fuelling fire to move, and so I do.

This town is deserted. Reaping comes, Reaping goes, and the few that straddle in the town square long enough to hear the wails coming from the Justice Building don’t care for the tortures ringing in their ears, for that was them once, too. Pleading, crying, saying nothing at all. They stopped feeling once the doors shut that final time, and I’ve seen them close behind me three times too many. One starts to wonder if there’s ever to be a final time when you’re defined by your cursed name.

There’s granules of dirt sticking to my palms and calves as I find my feet once again, and across the Square I can see where our home would sit, and where my real home would sit, and where the cemetery is, and where a man is shoving a boy to the ground – a bull looking for red, and he finds it in another.

Either he’s stupid, or he knows.

I start walking towards him, passing the boy on the ground. It’s hard to keep moving when I want to stop, ask if he is okay and take him home because that’s what mothers do, what good mothers do. But I’ve never been a good anything and so it’s nothing more than a sideways glance I give to him as I make my way across the Square, weighed down by forlorn sadness and dead dreams of what we could have had, if life was different.

Step, step, stop. Whack, he falls and I feel myself slipping, too.

‘Stop it! You’re not helping anyone here!’

But I don’t flinch, not for a while, and it’s a half-hearted cry of protest that leaves my lips. I watch him stagger forward instead, names ringing in my ears – Rhodes, there were so many of them when Patricia visited, no one for Calloway, but plenty for Rhodes – and I don’t move because this is what it looks like to grieve.

Grief takes many different forms, and I’ve seen enough of it to feel it rattling ribcages as fists connect with skin.

So I don’t flinch as he hammers the young boy.

Not for a while.

But then my feet are moving and I can feel the heat from their huddle and it could be Sampson, oh God, it could be Sampson one day and I’m on the ground once more, settling next to the boy and glaring up at a reckless soul.

‘Please.’

My small hand reaches out to his wrist, tentatively, to stop the ensuing flurry – buying time, stealing the tears filling in his eyes, I’ll wear them for the both of us.