Chapter 202: I Laughed With What Was Left of Me
In that unbearable dizziness, in that mute vision of horror that no longer even screamed, I fell. Literally. There was no resistance, no jolt of will, no delay.
My body gave out all at once, like a hollow thing that had been held upright for too long out of pride. My knees hit the nacre with a dull, flat, almost obscene sound. A crack in the joint, something giving way, collapsing, with no promise of return.
My thighs trembled, my arms buckled under the weight. Not just the child’s, but everything’s. The world’s. The past’s. What I had fled. What I had just found again in that frozen gaze.
My torso folded in two, as if split from the inside, emptied of axis, of bone, of meaning. And my forehead, finally, struck the steps. Brutally. Without hands to cushion it, without restraint, like an offering made to the stone.
The impact echoed in my skull, shook my jaws, made my teeth vibrate. A sharp, precise pain cut through my temples and drove into my neck like an invisible blade. The taste of metal rose to my tongue, and I didn’t even know if I was bleeding — or if it was the world bleeding me through myself.
I stayed there, crushed, stuck to the damp ground, in that grotesque, faithless posture of prayer. My breath broke, caught in my throat like a strangled gasp.
My muscles were nothing but twisted cords, unable to hold anything. My shoulder blades pulled at each other, my vertebrae screamed their misalignment, and my whole being screamed soundlessly: I can’t anymore. I can’t. Can’t carry, can’t climb, can’t convince myself.
The child was still there, crushed against me, his little dead body clinging to my skin like a definitive truth. A tepid warmth, almost gentle, but unbearable, because it reminded me of what I had just lost, what I still had to carry.
A film of sweat covered my cheeks, mixed with something dirtier, murkier — tears, or something else. And the world around me remained frozen. Spectator of a collapse that had nothing symbolic left in it.
I had fallen. Truly. Completely. And this time, I didn’t even know if I wanted to get back up.
The world turned around me. Slowly. Very slowly. Not like a fall. Not like sudden vertigo. More like a thick, silent spiral that coiled around me without letting go.