too late

A Story by Zea

based on a real experience though purely fictional (if that makes any sense)

... Afterwards, lying exposed, violated and bare on the cold concrete floor, I wonder if I had only listened would my life end differently?

I can hear the scurrying of rats. I can feel their razor sharp teeth sink into my bloodied flesh. Too listless to protest I surrender to the sick sensation of blood running, warm, down my thigh. I can hear a fly buzz somewhere near my ear. I hear the pulsating sound of my ever quieting heart. My fingertips have become numb, though not of cold but of pain.

I can feel the life slipping from my body. Not the gentle leaving of the body so many has described before me, but rather the searing pain one associates with the brandishing of animals. Like an animal I lay in my own defecation.

My own filth

The stench saturates every fiber of my being. I’m drenched in it, it is engrained into every hair on my head and every scrap of skin still left on my stark naked body.

I can’t escape. I can’t muster the will to escape as I see no reason to live. He took the colour from my life; he took the form to the shapes I have grown accustomed to. I see only a grey blur before me now. Irregular shapes dance on the periphery of my vision. I make them out to be the sad faces of those I have let down and will soon leave behind.

Something warm and sticky rolls down my cheek. A tear or blood? I cannot say. It doesn’t really matter. Nothing matters to me anymore. Only the promise of worst to come matters now. Only the promise of flames, of thorns to eat and of scalding water to drink matters. The truth is as much as this is a daunting future I cannot say I wish to be excused from it. I accept it. Not because I have no choice but because I know I deserve it; no less.

Every choice I have made has led me here; every word I have uttered and every step I have taken.

The rats have reached my bones now. Their teeth scraping away at it, the sound would have disgusted anyone who heard it but it did not disturb me. To their clawing nails and their gnawing teeth I have grown indifferent. The single fly is now accompanied by many and my entire body is without feeling

A realization has come upon me. Not once did I think that I would leave the world like this, though as fate would have it, it is done. It is only afterwards that I have come to accept, and if not accept then at least admit, that the fault lies solely with me. There is no other to blame, not even him.

Afterwards I feel regret... even remorse for what I had done; but it is too late. By now I am teetering on the edge of consciousness, not even truly alive, I feel what I should have felt a long time ago: Sorry.