in the middle of the floor, they meet.
he meets her, that is, coming upon her, silent and bleeding and terribly still, half-huddled on the floor.
in the middle of the floor, he stumbles over her hand in the dark.
she looks up at the intruder, only partially believing that someone’s ended up here, of all places, on the end of days. she’d picked the hall for it’s emptiness, it’s abandoned syrup-heavy air. now he is here, and she can make out through the dark that he’d been expecting isolation, too. he can’t see her. just senses that there’s a human shape in hie way…his eyes still haven’t adjusted to the black.
she tries to use these precious moments to escape, find a new corner to countdown her thoughts, never enough for an occaision like this. she doesn’t even want to think about now. just great spectacular thoughts. thoughts she’d be proud to die thinking.
he feels her moving and stops her. it doesn’t matter that there’s company in his tomb, after all. he’s sighing and fixing his dilating pupils on the disturbed air near his left foot.
‘wait’
caught, she stops. stills breath. practices death, sings through the softest nursery rhymes as camoflage so he won’t see through her silence into thoughts. he’s a mind-reader. he came after her. she recognizes him now. he’s been hearing her headspace for weeks, months, years maybe…how long has he been here?
his hand is on the woman’s arm. without the yielding heat of it he’d mistake it for a louis the 14th chair. or parts of one. he’d seen a junk heap outside an antique store once and wanted the extravagance of tears. wanted to be neiztche’s mythical horse of understanding. the hat stand of sophocles, a nineteen fifties stapler. wanted to be anything but buried. meaningless. stupid. irrational and strange. he’s been living with his madness accurately and well.
she turns to the silhouette and asks him to go with her mind. she knows he’ll hear her better this way. she wanted to bleed into sleep alone and at peace and away from everything. no waiting with the masses, huddled in subway stations. no having fate fall on her. this once. this last time.
the man is starting to see her. he wants to leave her, hideous now as the grey takes on definition, her face and chest and arms scored red and weeping. the girl on the train. the one who wouldn’t stop crying. the one with the eyes. who made him help her. who hated him for trying. fuck. FUCK.
it registers in her hazy thoughts that he heard her. his grip is lessening, and his pulse isn’t telegraphing through her slick forearm now. he’s going to leave her to her hurt and lullabyes in peace.
he can’t leave. the dried blood glues them together.
and they are not alone as the world ends.
.
