Failure

From Wrichacir

Current revision as of 22:19, 31 January 2008

Down in the cold darkness, prowling eternally by the edge of the river Styx, the man once named Joseph has ample time to reflect on his failures, alone with the ghosts that once were men, the haunted lapping of the eternally lamenting river, and the shadows of all he loved once, playing like ghostfire behind his eyes. Shadows was all that remained, the hollow echoes that mocked him, that mocked his wedding vows, mocked his promises, made a mockery of everything he had once believed in and hoped and dreamed.

(once he thought love would last forever).

But that was before he and his entire family, his wife, his son, had been taken and ripped from home, taken and transformed and lost.

(and he would have died, a thousand times and more, if he had been able to protect his family, if he had been able to save them from this, to spare them this fate).

But both Elizabeth and Matthew were gone now, gone beyond all reach or recall or desire: Minthe was Elizabeth once, but he cannot find any trace of the laughing, brave woman with golden hair and bright eyes that he had loved, that he had married in days so long ago that sometimes, it is hard to remember, in the colorless, bitter, cold woman who has replaced her, and despite the fact that it would be kinder to both of them to just let go, to just acknowledge the fact that Elizabeth is dead and all that is left is Minthe, hollow, empty Minthe, he still tries to find something of Elizabeth in her.

And in memory of his son, who is more gone then even Elizabeth, for while there remains the hollow shell of his wife, Matthew is gone, ashes to ashes and dust to dust, he tries to befriend every single one of the teenagers, those scared girls and few boys, who his Keeper takes as brides, in hopes that maybe, just maybe, he can protect one, just one, trying to make up for his failure to protect his son, whose dead eyes and still face haunt him to this day, who will haunt him for the rest of his life.

(sometimes, just sometimes, he hates Matthew for doing what he did. Not for killing himself, he understands what drove his son to wrap his chains around his neck and hang himself. But suicide is a mortal sin, and he cannot bear the thought of his son lost in Hell forever, when the alternative was enduring something beyond horror. if God has any mercy-and there is none in heaven to be found, with all the broken innocents he has had to watch break and shatter through all these years-then surely Matthew would have gone to heaven. and sometimes, he wishes he could have taken the sin upon himself, he would rather have been damned for killing his son then Matthew be damned for killing himself).

But all the thoughts go around in a circle again, a spiral, drifting away and gone. He is still here, while his family is gone, by this cold river, and there is no Lethe to be found.

Failure hangs heavy.