Nothing Solo

March 10, 2023

Raindrops battered the world, dousing its face in a listless extension of the gloom that muted the sky. Clouds rolled and growled with distant thunder, while the hidden sun simply failed to care. It was content to remain unseen, comfortable beyond eyes vying for its light.
There was a drumming in the air, played upon the metal quidditch stands by countless pinpricks of water. The tune was constant, encompassing all in its resounding reach; but it fell dead against Marshal’s ears.
Lifeless and without rhythm. Him? No, the rain. A song without a melody. Only languid bass. Beating… beating…
His heart was still beating. At least, he supposed it must be. He was still alive, for lack of a better word. One word that said he hadn’t met his grave, yet still implied ‘life’ - another word whose meaning had abandoned him of late.
He wasn’t dead; that much was translated by the feel of drops pounding his skull, then trailing down his features - like tears with no sting of salt - before joining the cascade at his feet. They exploded on contact with the metal below, though he didn’t see them perish. Hazel eyes stared between his shoes, never flinching, hardly blinking as rivulets drained from their lashes. Clouds thicker than those blotting the heavens coalesced over empty irises, robbing the boy of sight.
Relentless nothing plagued him. Not pain, nor turmoil.
Nothing.

His parents had been worried, ever since he’d stopped responding to their letters following summer camp of the previous year. But somehow he couldn’t muster the will to ease their concerns. To explain would be to speak of that time, and that would mean allowing himself to feel something, to let this daze of apathy pass.
It hurt not to be numb. Without that thin layer of emptiness to cover the memories, reality would return with its maddening touch, and he simply couldn’t let it happen. So he let the rain wash over him, drowning his thoughts in its monotonous beat… beat…

Still beating.

He’d been a fool. How many times? The count was endless. Each word he’d shared with a best friend, or glance he’d stolen stolen at a girl with ginger hair; they’d all been mistakes, leading steadily toward the overarching flaws in judgement that compounded each one into the price he’d ultimately payed. He was still paying that price, alone beneath a downpour, his solitude echoing in the thrum of empty seats around him.

Why hadn’t he seen that it was all a facade? A clever ploy to lift him in the sky before tossing him back down, to crash like a bird with broken wings. Leo had seen his trusting nature and grasped it firmly by the throat, leading him to believe that their friendship had been something real, only to strangle that innocent belief out of him in one swift, merciless squeeze.
Too late had Marshal come to understand that he’d traded wisdom for naivety, all for a fantasy of what once had seemed to be reality. And when that wisdom had flooded in with its full, cruel force, he’d lashed back, with consequences beyond any manner of control.
Subsequently chased into a corner by the result of his actions, he had done the one thing that should never have been considered in such a vulnerable state. He had opened up to Evelynn, the one other person that had always been there; the one who made him feel safe, as though everything wrong in the world would be okay, if only she were there.
But that time, she didn’t make it okay. She didn’t spread the angelic wings he’d always seen frame her delicate visage. Didn’t protect him from the raining arrows that the sky saw fit to throw at him.
That time, she turned her back, and walked away.

So the arrows fell. Thunder bellowed its war cry once more, lightning tearing a jagged path in the distant horizon as he let the projectiles come. They bombarded him, piercing his unfeeling heart and making him shiver from the cold - or perhaps from the stabbing pain that he refused to feel.

He was alone, having withdrawn from anyone who might have cared, and even the game of quidditch that had once warmed him so.
The stands were empty, the pitch abandoned. And the only one there to see it was him.