Insomniac It is the rain that reunites me with the laughing man. His sombre woman is hunched beside him, her stance emphasizing the changes that cause them both to look simultaneously young and old, guilty and innocent. It is their eyes. While their features retain aspects of childhood, their once luminous eyes have aged. The guilt itself is subjective. It is a trait that can be seen by none other than myself. The man is laughing no more. Instead he shakes, evidently not having abandoned his drinking. I cannot be sure why I assumed he would. His beautiful counterpart follows him through the forest as a pet would, leaving a trail of cigarettes in her wake. “We must finish this.” His tone is definitive. “Please!” She struggles to keep up. …show more content…
I stare up coldly, unwilling to acknowledge relief. Clarity and closure, at last. I am the insomniac, after all. I have not slept in what seems like months, and I am so very tired. “Don’t you see?” His voice is slurred but confident. “He won’t haunt us anymore.” How ironic. There is only one soul among this gathering haunted by the turmoil of the past. “Listen to me.” He pulls her closer to him, his intense eyes holding her hostage. “Do you want to be free?” She nods, wiping tears and mascara from her skeletal face. Using her cigarette, she lights a fire in the grass, which spreads quickly despite the stubborn downpour. I would have been twenty-five now, had I not been killed by the drunk, laughing man behind the wheel of the flashy convertible. The crying woman gathers my bones, holding them out to him with her nicotine-stained fingers. These are the same hands that dragged my mangled body to the forest months ago. These hands felt my throat and pronounced me dead. He throws my ribs into the fire, followed by my legs, in pieces. “I’m sorry,” the man whispers to my skull, his breath laced with the stench of cheap wine. The irony in this nuance is not lost to me, and I laugh as he sets the old bone, the only remainder of me, ablaze. Rest, at long