"Fuck—!"
The scream didn't belong to him. It tore out raw and alien, like someone else was dying inside his lungs.
Bone jutted out—white swallowed by red, like chalk drowned in mud.
It wasn't air he was pulling in—it was knives.
And still, he kept breathing. Because the body's a cruel thing, like that.
Blood was everywhere—spattered on the sidewalk, smeared across the car, painted on his skin. His white T‑shirt was soaked red— only a few dusty spots clung to innocence. The rest was graffiti by violence.
Blood poured like someone cracked open a hydrant inside him. It painted the pavement, slicked his shirt, soaked into his socks.
Five liters, they said. That's how much a body holds. But this wasn't a measurement. This was a monsoon.
He was leaking everything that made him... him. Memories, regrets, half-finished dreams. All of it, running red.
---
The suffering had always been there—poverty, hunger, the constant math of survival.
A low, broken rumble crawled from his throat. Dry as sandpaper, raw from silence. His head rested against the wall. His eyes, dry and aching, clawed at the sky.
It felt like an ending to his unworthy life. His vision was fading, then came back. The void blinked back at him from inside his chest.
Why did life have to be this way? These questions left Noah no room for answers. He grew up in scarcity. Hardship was the constant. Noah remembered some of his classmates bragging about their Walkmans, sneakers, and Game Boy. Meanwhile, Noah counted coins for milk. Dreamed of full pantries. Chewed guilt instead of gum.
Dinner, if it came at all.
---
He remembered the kids laughing over their Lunchables— while he was just glad to eat.
One night, over the hum of the heater, Noah had asked — "Why don't we eat like them?"
His dad didn't flinch. Just kept staring out the window, cigarette bleeding smoke into the cold.
Silence—the only inheritance his father ever gave him.
You watched, didn't you, God? All the prayers. All the hunger. And when it counted—you blinked. You fucking blinked.
Noah didn't know why God watched the drama and let it unfold. God had other plans—or maybe none at all.
Noah shrugged. At least he understood his dad's pain—the financial burden, the responsibility. Noah was on the same belt as his dad… carrying the weight of bills too early.
But Dad… he was with God now—probably looking down, ashamed by his failures, missing him anyway.
Responsibility? Noah had no one left to carry. Even the burden felt unreal—like lifting shadows.
Not even Mia.
"Love you, Dad," Noah whispered. The words cracked. The tears didn't ask—they just fell.
Grief doesn't explode. It rots.
---
It sat behind his ribs like mold behind wallpaper—quiet, spreading, stinking up everything from the inside.
He thought crying would help, but all it did was leave salt on his face and air in his chest where someone used to be.
His heart was racing. The pain wasn't sharp. It was ancient. Cursed. As if grief had been carved into his bones before he was born.
They say pain teaches you to live. But how do you learn when you're already broken?
Losing a parent—it's not loud. It's weird, because you go through the rest of your life not being able to see or talk to them ever again, but you still feel like you will.
Quiet. Like the grief was too embarrassed to stay—but too loyal to leave.
Sometimes it still hits him—never coming back—and he's ripped open by loss all over again.
That slow-burning grief that didn't scream—just sat inside his chest like an anchor and breathed heavier than he did.
It wasn't the pain in his leg that made him want to give up. It was this. That sick kind of silence where nobody answers.
Not your dad. Not God. Not even your own damn mind.
Just noise that circles itself until your memories taste like lies.
---
And the Glock. Still there. Sitting like it belonged. Like it was part of the script.
It wasn't a weapon. It was closure, dressed in metal and mercy.
Someone had set it down like a gift, wrapped in dread—neat, centered, waiting.
The velvet underneath it? That wasn't a comfort. That was the ceremony.
He didn't think so. Just reached. The metal was warm. Not cold, like they always say. Not hot, either.
Just... familiar. Like a goodbye he already gave.
The voice didn't sound holy. Or cruel.
Just calm. Like it'd been waiting its turn.
"No one dragged you here," it said. "We just didn't bolt the lock." Noah didn't answer. He remembered all the times he begged for silence.
Now he had it. And it was fucking deafening.
Noah brushed the trigger. Something clicked. Not the gun. Something inside him. A soft tick. His heartbeat synced to it. Time blurred. The pain dulled. Not gone—just moved to a corner, like a guest overstaying its welcome.
He blinked. Once. The blood was still there.
He blinked again.
Now the blood was ketchup. And his leg was swinging from a chair too small for him.
And then he was sitting. A chair beneath him. Feet dangling. Too small. Arms thin. He was nine again.
The kitchen. That kitchen. Too clean. Silent like someone hit mute on reality.
Silent in the wrong way. Not peace—just the absence of reality. His father sat across from him. Younger. Calmer. Tired.
There was food. Scrambled eggs. Toast. A mug of coffee steaming backward like a glitch. The plate between them untouched, like a prop.
The man didn't look angry. Didn't look bitter. Just there. Present in the way Noah had always wished for.
"You finally made it home, huh?" his dad said.
---
"Dad?" Noah croaked, voice like gravel.
The man nodded. His blink skipped a frame. Too slow. Too digital.
Noah shifted. The chair made no sound. It hovered. Or maybe the silence just swallowed the creak. The table didn't creak. And that coffee kept reversing, steam crawled backward, sucked into the cup like time was gagging on itself—reverse death in a mug.
"You're not real," Noah whispered, even though part of him wanted it to be.
"Neither is the pain," his dad replied, smiling softly. Too soft. Mechanical under the warmth. "But you still feel it."
Noah looked down. The Glock was in his hand again.
Of course it was.
Then the TV lit up.
That old, boxy set in the corner. Static cleared.
A cartoon played—too bright, like childhood laced with acid. All smiles, no soul. There was a little boy, laughing, running, arms wide.
Behind him, a plague mask chased. And a cartoon dad, with a paper bag on his head, glitched in and out like corrupted data. Then came the jingle. Like madness in melody.
"Don't be sad, it's just a loop!
Click your brain and press reboot—die happy, and repeat!"
The characters danced like they meant it.
Noah smiled, the kind you make when you realize the universe was never serious about your life in the first place.
The boy—Noah, but flattened and animated—laughed as the plague thing swallowed him whole. The crowd cheered. Clapped.
The cartoon boy pulled the trigger. The TV shut off—lights and the kitchen dying with it.
And just like that, the world snapped back.
Broken, and alone.
The street. Cold biting. Glass shards pressing against him. The Glock in his hand. His leg broken. Ribs cracked. He was still here.
Tick. Tick. That ticking, like a countdown in binary code, pulsed in his skull. Louder now. Counting down. Something was coming, but Noah wasn't waiting for it.
No tears. No anger. Just the same silence.
He raised the gun, pressing it to his skull. Not with rage. Not with fear. Just… goodbye. The kind that isn't loud. A whisper with teeth.
A quiet end to loud pain. Chasing silence. Hoping—God, please—that something better waits.
Ending the hurt, chasing the quiet. God… I hope You're there.
And then one voice, deep in his head, right before it all went dark.
"You were loved. You—were—loved. You just weren't—weren't—told... in time."
But silence doesn't mean absence.
Somewhere, something moved.