jug-eum

 'It's tonight.' The Hallow answered in a raspy voice. My head shot up towards him to look him in the eye only to realize he has none. The black void fills me with dread, something I didn't knew I would feel. Scared and might be shaking a bit, I asked- 'How?' I was curious now. Since it was tonight.

He tilted his head a bit towards right, always in that thinking position, and replied a minute later. 'Blood will be everywhere. From your head to clinging to your shirt and seeping to skin. It will be thick and in a massive amount, the amount of fluid you must have never seen in real. But it will be painless.' The last word was what I was waiting for. 'A death which comes painless.' 

He finishes off smoothly in his even tone and disappeared just as he came. I didn't call him if you are wondering. I was just here beside this bridge railing, looking down the vast deep river with the traffic passing behind. Today I lost my job of becoming the thing I desired the most and was working on for five years straight to come. I was tired and lost, no more capable of new things, so I did what I had long since decided to finally do. Take this life away with me to the deep. 

People think suicide is a stupid choice. But for me it's the most intelligent thing a person can do. To beat God in his creations and end it all with us, that's a one-one fight with the fate which is not in our hands, but we finally take control. I would be contended if I listened to someone talking about how suicide is the one golden opportunity and promote it. Because first of all, we didn't choose this life so who is the God to make us suffer? And also on those things we live for? Of course he is no one to decide how I will live.

Taking these few more final beatings of my heart, I march back home. At least let that be the place where I take my final breaths instead of passing out in a public which won't even care. I huffed as I reached upstairs and closed the doors behind me, this time it came to me that it would be forever. 

I took out my ramen cup, count of 4 from the cupboard and sit before the web-series I long waited to watch. I'll be damned if I didn't finish at least this before my death. But the Hollow's voice still rings in my ears somehow. 

There will be a lot of blood. Where?

Anyways, I completed my watch and decided to go to bed at an early hour. I was going to die tonight however. 

But, maybe I might like to play some songs before taking my final breaths. What should I play? It went on my mind as I dragged my fingers along the black and white keys. I sometimes feel like they want to say something to me, and I feel like I want to listen. There is complete silence in my house right now and I'm glad that if I play it, it's all I can hear.

I abruptly put my three fingers on C# and went on the lyrics I once wrote for myself-

'Maybe you were not the one that I was looking for,

Maybe we were trying to be what we cannot afford. 

Before we knew we found ourselves fighting all the time,

I'm so sorry...' 

My voice trailed off as I sang further, my mind a hazy hue of the grieving memories flooding back in. I was suddenly in a wave I couldn't hold anymore. My fingers started curling around themselves as the recorder switched on autonomously and the tune I just played started singing back to me. Every note going on felt like my heart was burying in it's own blood under the weight of the dying strings of memories. Is this what dying feels like? Is this how I am supposed to be gone forever? Again, the memories and the love which had nowhere to go and no way to come back to me, will drown me to my death in this bloody ocean? Was this what the Hollow was talking about? This blood. This so much blood being around my heart, my mind, my memories, flowing through my veins and grappling my fingers to curling themselves to death. My body starts sinking in.

This is what blood is. 

The relations we make, the memories etched with another blood, the blood, sweat and tears I spent on my dreams and passion going in vain, and finally, the blood which couldn't save me off my veins. I couldn't save myself of the memories I built all over these years of living. Maybe there was love. Surely there was so much love, in red, but I never knew it was marking me, scarring me to bleed all the love I could never get. 

It is indeed everywhere. From my burying red head to this plaid shirt I bought listening to TS's red album, a fan of whom I am no more. This skin which was red when I purposely scratched or was red when I won but no one cheered for me. The memories and this grief is so thick, it's blocking my nerves to letting the dopamine stop at the junction and only the lost grief is flowing through the pores out of my skin. 

At last, it's painless. It's not something I am feeling but what I have felt for all this time. All the red sums up to this moment, where I am no more able to handle it. Carry it. Like I've been doing for so long.

Maybe that's why my favorite color is red, the guitar I bought at 16 was red, my first 25 lined poem was on red. Everything was such a symbol but my mind refused to interpret. There was so much love, and surely there was a sinking red death. 

Lingering in the shadows, now grabbing my chest, 

I am no more but the love I couldn't get.

The love, the grief, all so drying red,

The red, the love, which became a cause of my death.