The Clock Kills
She was waiting on the bridge. ‘Why didn’t he show up?’ ‘Why was he doing this?’ She questioned herself. She looked up at the full moon as it glistened on the flowing crystals of water that ran beneath her. ‘This was going to be a beautiful night, just perfect.’ She thought to herself. Depression was strong in her and it ran through her family. He knew how she was, and still he was doing this to her. ‘He really doesn’t love me, does he? He can’t.’ She continued to let the piercing thoughts run through her head as if there was no way possible to turn them off. She waited a few minutes longer. He still did not show. “Life isn’t worth living without him; I have no one else but him, and now he’s not here. He just left me, in the cold, with nothing. It is not worth it.” She spoke softly, allowing her words to drift away with the wind. She then took a deep breath and climbed on the railing with only the thought of how the one love of her life left her for dead. She took her last breath and she jumped. It was as if the broken spirits carried her down slowly and soothingly into death, for she never made a sound on the way down, not even as her face smashed against the sharpened rocks below.
...
Soon after, he came running to the bridge, out of breath. Work had ran late, and by rushing down the roads to get to their meeting point, he had almost got into an accident. ‘Where was she?’ He questioned himself. He knew he was late, but he thought that she’d at least wait for him. He then looked into the river. Filling as if something had been ripped out of his chest, he fell to his knees and began to weep. The sight of his love’s dead body flowing deep into the river broke his heart. He stood up slowly, still in shock. There was nothing else on his mind now but her. To his knowledge it was his fault. Tears formed in his eyes like puddles, and he then whispered into the wind, “I love you.” He took a small royal blue box out from his coat pocket and opened it up. What rested inside was a beautiful engagement ring; tonight was going to be the night that he proposed. “Be mine forever, for nothing can separate our love.” He read aloud as he rubbed the words that he had engraved on the band that was supposed to be forever worn around her finger. Thoughts of guilt and lost love filled his head; and so he then stood on the railing of the bridge and jumped.
By: Kayla Yancey
Wretchedness
Wretchedness roams the small alleyway in the sole confidence of its shadows, plentiful with the late and waning hour. It keeps its head looking down upon the shining dark bricks wet with the tears of heaven.
A salty release of tiredness etches along the corner of its eye, eventually joining the others at its feet.
Daring to be bathed in light, Wretchedness glances up at the clock tower, the only thing willing to speak to it. It hears from its companion that the hour is almost past. With this, Wretchedness felt the cold, unrelenting chains of forbiddance tighten around its weakening form, and it surrendered to the laws of nature, sinking to the ground.
“The hour is almost past...” it repeated to itself. More of the salty bitterness left its figure: Beauty was gone. Beauty would never again touch its sullen face, kiss its yearning lips, deliver it from evil.
Wretchedness lifted its heavy head to curse the upper hand, when at the same moment, Happiness and Content passed in the distance, their hands joined by a chemical stronghold.
If only it could feel a fraction of that all-consuming bond, that symphony composed in the most unconscious state of the mind…
Wretchedness knew that this was nearly the last sight to pass its dark and soaking gems; no more of this could it endure.
It could see weary feet moving, and yet no Pity or Sympathy passed; nothing passed at all. For the final time it looked once again to its companion, the hour had passed. It was done: forever irreversible, irretrievable, and irrevocable; forever gone.
The deep yet swift waters grew heavy upon its chest of a thousand bricks, finally cutting off all passages to the atmosphere. With one intake of the piercing weapon, Wretchedness was silenced, and thus rid of its chains for good, joining Beauty in a new world of perpetual liberty.
By: Caitlin Leasure