Tuesday's Flash: Ending

Ending

Some time in the night, the fire went out. I tried to pull you to me but you moved away and curled alone on the chapel floor like a child desperate for warmth.

Outside there was a moon of sorts, but unremarkable. I expected something more, that the end would somehow be more momentous, but this is just sad.

I needed to hold you. I needed to pretend one last time that our humanity mattered, that love could still matter. Yes, I needed a plain, simple hug. Is that so terrible?

I am trying to remember the ways we sometimes connect, the ways we connected. No, it was never a great love, but I thought we mattered to one another. I could not imagine that as the days closed in, as the nights got darker and darker you would pull from me and prefer to die alone.

When this paltry moon falls it will be so dark, a heavy dark, a dark that presses down on us, and reminds us of what we did. We could be holding each other. We could talk about old times, times when there were futures. We could remember scabby school-boys and Whitsun clothes, a new coat, and shiny shoes, me in a crisp white shirt, red tie and grey flannel trousers, you in your white dress and that bright, blood-red sash. If we tried we could remember the hymns we sang when we still believed.

To think this was a chapel - before they ripped out the wood to burn it, before the graffiti and the shit and piss in the corners. Big Welsh men were here, red-faced with indignation, who bellowed out the Lord's message, chastised the fallen women, and trumped loudly about Hell and damnation. Could they have forseen this, that Hell was to live and Heaven was in death?

I guess you are dying. I guess it will be tonight. I would rather hold you but you have chosen your way, so I will leave it at that.

In the morning, after, I shall leave. I'm going down to the sea.

350 words