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Thereafter

By Mironde

Prologue: Fade

They found him that evening, dead in his cell.

It was a routine check as always. They expected him to be in bed, reading his days away, just as he was every night. Instead, he was lying on the floor in a growing puddle of his own blood. The medics worked hopelessly to revive him as his very life pooled beneath his corpse, soaking his fur and jumpsuit a deep scarlet, but their efforts were in vain. It was obvious he was gone - he was motionless, his breathing still, his pulse dead - yet they tried in futility to save him. Already, his body was cold with a deathly pallor, all the warmth flowing out from a cut in his wrist. His restless, exhausted eyes, traced by dark circles of insomnia, could mercifully sleep at long last.

The shiv he used lay to his side, bloody and jagged, taunting them all. He spent his final days staring sadly at his makeshift knife, wondering about the end - about what it meant, holding the power to change his fate. It was a liberating, even enticing thought at times. And yet, for the longest time, something stronger than fear held him back from acting on those impulses. He couldn't explain the terror that inspired him to live, nor was it a feeling that deserved words. It was an emptiness inside, filled by doubt and dread. Even in the end, when he finally overcame it, curled up in the sweet embrace of death, he was desperately clutching the wrist he had sliced open, as if regretting his decision all too late. Tears still flowed from his closed eyes, mourning his loss long after his dying breaths.

It wasn't the peaceful death he imagined.

A senior officer stood in the doorway. His tired eyes were full of grief, cast down at the body at his feet, searching himself for an answer to explain his own sorrow. They knew little about each other, save for the quiet understanding they had and the few times they talked. He knew him as a brilliant mind racked by misfortune and disgrace, and full of many regrets. Like everyone else, he knew this man's crimes were so deplorable that sympathy was wasted on him. But now, hand over his eyes and shaking his head in guilt, it was like he was partly to blame in all this. They all were responsible, for hating him. He saw his weeping eyes and wondered what pain had haunted his tortured soul. He wondered what stories he had to tell, what wisdom he had gleaned from his costly mistakes.

With a deep sigh, he placed his hat to his chest in a moment of solemn silence, holding back his own tears. The emergency team stood by with him, saying a prayer in their universal faith of decency and respect - all too late.

"...Make the call."

***

When the story broke, his arrest caught national attention. Within days, everyone knew his name. The media vilified him as immoral and unstable in every paper of every city, with his face plastered on the headlines for all to see. His depravity garnered more than a passing glance of apathy, however. Tragedy opened eyes and gripped hearts with suspense. Disbelief and shock turned to judgment and blame as the public demanded answers. They demanded many things, not the least of which was action.

But strangely, he wasn't the emotionless, uncaring beast they had expected. His wasn't the face of a criminal. Though lifeless, those eyes were inconsolably sad, perpetually stuck in deep, contemplative thought with a depth of emotion that was uncomfortable to acknowledge. He saw the cameras and the silent, restrained hatred of the people he had hurt, looking only depressed as he awaited the inevitable. He couldn't even defend himself against a slurry of evidence in a legal battle so slanted against him that his disheartened hopes tumbled downhill. But then, he never tried to; he stood before them admitting every transgression he was accused of. Confessions flowed like a wellspring of truth from a man who had never committed a single crime in his life, let alone such an inhuman atrocity. He complied not because he wanted to, but because...it was the least he could do.

The only semblance of mercy he expected for his pleas was a quick death, and even that was asking too much. The death penalty would have been too merciful, they all cried. Yet no one remembered how worn he looked, or how heartbroken he was, to understand why he surrendered himself in court, or why he begged for the dignity of a bullet in his skull; all they saw was the condemned, and they rallied around the story of loss and retribution, reveling in justice well served. Life behind bars, away from the civilized world, was what he deserved.

Soon enough, he believed it himself.

He listened as they read his sentence, unmoved and detached from reality, head hung in shame without power in his words to object. Whatever fate had in store, he was resigned to it. So it was that his life as he knew it had ended in bitter tears. The first night in his cell, he cried himself to sleep. For months, the ritual repeated every night, like he was stuck in a painful loop, forever in limbo and unable - unwilling - to move on. But the world moved without him, some would say for the better. Tears in his eyes, when he couldn't bear the pain any longer, he dealt the killing blow. His last act of mercy - for himself, and for everyone - underscored the somber tale that he wove.

They all wondered how he would live with himself, with the things he had done. And that little shred of irony was the answer: he wouldn't, simply; the burdens of guilt weighed heavily on his heart every day until his hopes were crushed. Every night, he cried for the heights he had fallen. He cried for the depths he had plunged. He cried for the graves he had dug. More than anything, he cried for himself...and for her.

The newspaper reported his death without remorse or sympathy. With his deeds still fresh in their minds, everyone smiled inside...until the last line caught their eyes. They never smiled at his expense ever again; no one did. Elation turned to dread. It was too late to ask the important questions ignored by the mindless pursuit of vengeance. He was gone now, and the truth with him.

All they would remember...is how he was crying when he died.

And thereafter, his sordid chapter, steeped in misery black as ink, came to a close - his crimes, his sins, and his very existence remembered in infamy. He deserved to die for everything he did.

...

...

...Didn't he?

...

That was the first time he questioned it. It gave his heart pause to justify his actions. Even as the life drained from his body, he had to repeat the truth to himself - a small comfort, perhaps, that helped him finish the job, to think no one would miss a wayward soul like him. He tried to remember their stares, cold and silent, full of disappointment and disgust. He tried to remember the shame of facing his family and friends. He tried to remember his guilt.

But death brings a sense of perspective, after all, and his final tears were genuine. He was scared of what lie beyond. Too scared. He never considered himself a God-fearing man, but when thoughts of death haunted his restless nights, he knew in the depths of his being he would someday pay the price of his transgressions. He lived and died in the moment, never certain if the world around him cared that he had ever been or had ever left. There was nothing he could do or say to erase his sins from history; to cleanse himself of evil meant to give something up, like a part of him that he cherished...and no matter its worth, he couldn't. He couldn't betray his morals, as reprehensible as they were. If pride was the downfall of man, then he would fall proudly.

...

Too many thoughts. Too many regrets...

***

Darkness...

It was unnatural; uneasy. He had always been terrified of the dark, like a frightened child, even into his adult years, whenever he imagined what lurked within. Nothing good ever came from obscurity or silence. It was always the precursor to a nightmare, the rigid suspense that something lay beyond where he couldn't see, where he couldn't understand, where he couldn't expect. Now, with a hollow, empty reality a part of his daily existence, it was never more true that he was living those nightmares.

Death had nothing on the other side. It took him the longest time to accept that.

How many days had he been here? Too long. Time was strange, as was his perception of it. Nothing changed. Nothing was everything he had to look forward to. From the span of one horizon to another, there was limitless possibility...to a hopeful mind; to one dulled by despair, to a cynical mind, there was an endless, starless sky, uncaring or unsympathetic to the souls beneath it.

There was nothing.

And yet...it was soothing, in a way, this darkness. Unsettling as it was, it was the only constant certainty that he felt would still be there whenever he woke. He was untrusting of any world that changed. When he first opened his eyes to the nothingness, he used to gaze around, desperately searching for a light to guide him, ignorant that his fate had been decided. He belonged here, he knew now. This place was his home, however this could pass for an afterlife. Its horizons were forever empty, stretching further than his eye could see. The sky was gone, its starry, faithful beacons snuffed out. The touch of water beneath his tired, broken body was foreign to him, like floating in a vast ocean. The entire world around him was black and lifeless, the sea beneath him and the stars above him dead - darkness and gloom in every direction, to tell him there was no light, no hope in his cold, new Hell he had shaped like a cage of his own making.

So he lay awake in dead silence once more, motionless and adrift on the water's surface, as he combed the memories of another nightmare with the usual, resigned apathy of a man accustomed to disappointment. The dreams always felt so real and vivid. They were his opportunity to reflect on the mistakes he struggled to remember, but...he couldn't comprehend an eternity of reliving this all too familiar pain; his heart wasn't ready to accept that. It was as difficult as fathoming the depths below: impossible, perhaps worse than watching the same sky night in and night out. Understandably, the thought seized him, for there was nothing else to keep his mind occupied and content anymore, no little comforts or pleasures of life but his own inner voice of reason, telling him to keep fighting in spite of every disappointment that broke his spirit.

It was a shame he had stopped listening to that side of himself long ago.

"What's the point anymore...?" he asked himself, his musing echoing loud in the void. It was the same question he asked every day - one even he couldn't answer, so utterly crippled by guilt. His voice was soft; tired. When he spoke, it rang with sorrow, like a somber note of defeat in his ears. Hearing it again, he realized he no longer sounded like himself, but someone entirely different, worn down from hardship. After all, he was stuck here, stuck in a perpetual cycle of self-loathing, without the means to escape.

Still...he knew he hated feeling this way more than he hated himself, realizing how much death had changed his perception of life. For the first time, entranced by the silence, he wondered what was holding him back. No chains bound him, yet he never moved, as if yielding himself to fear - thoughtlessly wandering, hesitant in his desires to leave, and so full of regret that he was incapable of reconciling himself. That was what kept him here, and perhaps that was his punishment: to forever remain in darkness, entrenched in the mire of his own horrible memories and remembering the pain he had caused others...

But as he stared to the sky, lost in thought...

He noticed something.

Something glimmered in the corner of his vision, beneath the veil of darkness. It was small, inconsequentially so...but it was something different. It was something new in this pointless existence, and he felt his heart, sparked by interest, skip a beat.

Light.

It was a tiny, orange light, like an ember, floating in the night - so close, so far, and out of his reach.

His eyes were wide with disbelief, his breath stopped, and, for the longest time, he stared incredulously. He watched it drift aimlessly about in view, with no rhyme or reason to explain its erratic movements, yet there was still something natural - comforting - about its slow, lingering path. Whenever it rose higher, it fell limply down to the water...but as it neared the surface, it always lifted itself, as if finding the courage to stay alive.

He lay there gazing at it for what seemed like hours, captivated. It was the first sign of light since his arrival, after however many days, weeks, or even months he spent in the abyss. But soon, delight turned to indifference, and indifference to sadness. By now, he was too cynical to believe its false hope. Time alone to think about his life had worn him down. Instead of trusting it, he reasoned many things to explain it away: it was just an illusion, perhaps the beginning of his slow descent into insanity; in his boredom, he had simply imagined it to break the monotony of nothingness; or maybe, some ignorant little part of him still believed there was more out there, beyond the horizon.

Unamused and depressed, he turned his head away from the light. With each passing moment, he expected it to fade, flicker, and die. After all, how could anything survive surrounded by such oppressive despair? He himself had long given up any dreams of freedom from this eternal prison.

But as he slowly turned his head back, expecting it to be gone...there it was, closer than ever before, mere feet away from him. Now, it had his undivided attention. Now, the more he observed it, the more real it seemed, dancing above the water's edge like a firefly. It persevered in the darkness in sheer defiance of it. No matter how faintly it shimmered, no matter how much its dim glow struggled to catch his attention and inspire his hope, it was there.

Against all odds, it refused to be forgotten.

And, against all odds, he refused to ignore it any longer.

As he plunged into the icy water, shifting himself off his back, he took his first tentative steps into the great unknown. To feel that cold sting against his skin was almost liberating, after lying motionless for the longest time. It left him shocked and breathless, writhing in discomfort; he savored the sensation and the echoing splash that pierced the stale air. It was a change of pace for once, a much needed foray into the uncertain, and time had not dulled his ability to swim. But something about the water was...bizarre. It was thick. It strained around his motions as he fought to stay above the waves. In a moment of panic, hardly expecting this strange resistance, he flailed about and outstretched his arms, expecting at any moment to sink deep below the surface.

Instead, to his absolute astonishment, the water braced against his touch.

He nervously watched his hand, frozen, unblinking, as if the slightest twitch would ruin this miracle, yet its support never gave way. The whole sea had seemingly turned solid as ground around him, effortlessly holding the weight of his arm while he kicked his legs to keep afloat. He couldn't believe what he was feeling. Intrigued now by the sudden change, he pressed harder into the surface, testing its strength and stability. But as the edges of his fingers came down, and as he felt the water gently stirring under his palm...the strangest ripples flowed from his touch. They were like bright, luminous rings cutting through the darkness, brilliantly shimmering upon the water's surface with a surreal light - a pulsing, warm, beautiful blue glow that resonated with a life all its own. Awestruck, his followed them as they carried on endlessly into the distance, until they were nothing more than a fading mirage on the fringes of this world.

Slowly, still paralyzed with amazement, he eased his other paw toward the surface and firmly, though hesitantly, grabbed hold. Once more, the ripples formed under his hand, radiating out and encircling him, illuminating his body in a neon blue. He dragged himself up from the frigid waters, all the while admiring every pulse that came of his actions.

Each new wave broke against one another in a stunning array of lights. For a moment, watching them shatter apart, he couldn't help but flash a faint, content smile, eyes wide with childlike wonder and so entranced by their impossible beauty. There was something sad about their intransigence, though - how quickly they waned into obscurity, like a powerless voice echoing in the silence. Eyes narrowed, dim with forlorn hope, he witnessed their lights break against the horizon and disappear forever. Such a vivid, thoughtless existence - always moving forward, with no regard for the darkness ahead. Was it inspiring? Or was it foolish? He knew it came at a price to live in the now. Unlike him, they greeted death as inevitable. But there was nothing true about their impermanent existence, no one else to see the beauty and believe, as he did, that it was real; no one to see the vision, the truth, and carry on their memory.

Like him, they lived...and died...in the moment...never certain if the world around them cared that they had ever been...or had ever left...

To his horror, as he turned back to the ember for comfort from his depressing thoughts, he found it had no inspiration to give. It too was dying, twisting and drifting with its last breath toward the water. Its dance had ceased, and it fell upon the wet ground lifelessly, the once-proud flame snuffed out until it was nothing more than an ashen remnant - still glowing, still burning, still clinging to life. The crackling orange fire within refused to submit, but even it too would die, given time; even now, it began to lose its color...

He rushed over, legs stale and stiff, fur rigid and freezing, trying in vain to rekindle it. There were no ripples anymore, no longer any light to guide him. His only joys were vanishing before his very eyes; he could do nothing to save them. These were the cruel, painful, familiar realties he knew all too well.

Dropping to his knees, he scooped the tiny ember into his hands, enclosing it tightly to his chest. His breaths were heavy and panicked over such a silly, trivial little insignificance that meant the entire world to him. As if it were a living creature, he peeked inside to watch it fade, the orange light shrinking, the warmth draining. There was no hope for its survival, but he never stopped believing it could be saved, with no one there to tell him otherwise. Knowing only despair before its death, it never had its moment to truly live with the happiness it deserved.

In a way, this small flicker of a roaring flame...reminded him of himself.

In his final bid to spark the fire, he blew hard into his palms but accomplished nothing. It glimmered with promise for a trifling second, and in the very same moment, it relinquished itself to the bitter cold. He tried again and met with depressing failure. Every voice in his head screamed at him, blaming him, cursing him. It was his fault it was dying; if only, if only he had done something sooner. Breathless, he tried again...and again...and again, and again, and again, and again and again and again and again and again and...

...Futility.

...

Between breaths, he started to cry.

He cried until he was a shivering, sobbing, spluttering wreck. He cried until his breath was hoarse and his eyes were red. He cried for himself. There he stayed for some time, collapsed on the ground, mourning with his clasped hands pressed to his head and searching himself for answers to explain his sorrow. And as he threw his head up to the pitch black sky, tears streaming from his eyes and trickling into the pitch black ocean, he muttered out a wispy, broken apology to anyone that would listen:

"What have I_done_...?"

Watching the ember fizzle, he was filled with every regret he had ever known, like he was watching his own life - in all its flawed, impermanent beauty - slip from his control. It was a powerful, and somehow powerless feeling, like an implacable sense of loss gnawed away at him - for the life he had lived, and for the death he had died. He had abandoned himself, reliving each wayward step without direction as he wallowed forever in the pain of grief. His many failures had driven him to despair immeasurable, time and time again. They had ripped his soul to shreds, leaving him an empty, hollow husk of a mortal, filled only with doubt and hatred for himself. All this time, he had been so blind.

Now, he understood it...and it was like opening his eyes to the truth.

He blinked away the fresh tears from his eyes and dried the rest on his arm with a sniffle, finding clarity in the wake of sadness. When the harsh grip of reality loosened itself from his lungs, all that remained of him was a blank slate - purged of his guilt, but not absolved of it. In death, he was responsible for the weight of every sin, and the penance of bearing them. Lust, temptation, and pride had been his downfall. They had led him astray from virtue; they had claimed him, tainted him, and ultimately destroyed him. For that alone, this punishment was just.

At last, he was ready to accept that.

As he bent down to the water's edge, cradling the black ash in his palms like his precious baby, he knew it was time to lay his vagrant friend to rest, choosing the only manner fitting for its wandering soul. That was the best dignity he could provide, to set the ember adrift in the dead sea. It was too painful to carry its memories with him like they were earthly burdens, too painful to recognize the strength of humanity it used to show him. It was true, though: all life must someday end. Finding the beauty in one's journey, how they wrote the pages of their life's grand narrative, before coming to terms with the inevitable - that was the mortal drama. That was what acceptance meant for all those who suffered its maladies.

Reasoning it like that, bizarre and ceremonious as the ritual was...it soothed his aching heart to greet passing in his own way. A melancholy smile curving his lips, and a single tear rolling down his cheek, he sat admiring its silhouette on the water, curled up with his arms wrapped around his knees. Even in this wasteland, this graveyard of abandoned dreams, he realized there was beautiful solace in his death all along; it just took him time to see it. Though this bleak happiness simply wouldn't last, he cared little to dwell on his shame. He wanted only to appreciate the few things that still mattered to him.

Indeed, this moment of calm was too good to last.