Torrential. The wind bellowed with a calm ferocity which was enough to make him shiver yet hardly enough to ease the humid tropical heat of this strangely cold summer evening at the closing weeks of May; the long delayed downpour finally started with a cacophony of tears which crashed softly into the earth creating puddles which intermixed with cement, gravel, and mud which looked like lakes from the eyes of a towering giant or an omnipotent god.
Despite the onset of a coming typhoon, the day felt agonizingly slow; it was as if it was ordinary, despite the head-splitting hangover which hung over him like a specter made his thoughts slow and painful. His sides felt numb from the tremendous amounts of hard liquor his body had absorbed from the previous evening of festivities as the memory of the scolding his auntie over the phone gave still shook him slightly for he never thought such news would reach her quickly.
The palms of his hands became sweaty with each passing second as he hid them within the depths of his pants and clutching firmly on his phone and wallet; his heart pumped and thumped with each passing second, arrhythmic as anxiety held his very soul captive as his body ran on adrenaline, caffeine, and hints of nicotine. His eyes darted around for each image he saw of the waking world, a pain would dig deeper in his chest. It was as if a cancer manifested at his core and were slowly spreading like tendrils of a vine or a writhing worm; the pain would slither from his center mass towards his limbs and his head.
A small sigh would escape his lips as a new song would play from his earphones; a tune which would make him even more queasy and sick. Though by now his hands and knees would shake, he was at least determined to see this through. A haphazard attempt to regain composure which would eventually fail miserably has made him vulnerable to the bombardment of rhetorical questions which formed at the back of his crumbling mind.
Desolate. The occasional silence would be broken by different sources of ambient noise which would pass by or overlap with one another within this particular bus top. Despite the brief respite this stop would provide to other weary travelers and to other departing passengers, not a single soul would be here at this particular day, in this particular time, with these particular circumstances. He felt uneasy, as his fleeting courage was running low and was dangerously close to breaking his will; though not a stranger to being alone, the crippling loneliness made him feel like a statue staring out onto the empty road as the world around him would continue onwards with the passage of time.
But no matter how hard he tried, his mind would never wander too far off; it would keep coming back to that one particular event which happened last night. Hidden between her kind and gentle words hid an ugly truth which nobody was ready to face.
'What are we really?'
The flashing LED lights would create this shimmering wall of reds and greens from the distance as the rain kept pouring down on this bleak and tragic background.
'I'm sorry.'
Cars would pass by, the sirens of ambulances, and the occasional passer-by which would talk loudly.
'I promise in the next life,'
Beads of sweat would form and pour down his forehead as his heart pounded more and more.
'I'll gladly give you a chance.'
His stomach churned then sank, his head felt as if it was flipped upside down, a small yet weak smile would etch onto his pale face as a chuckle—of disbelief or distraught—would escape his mouth; He felt mad, teetering on the verge of insanity as the vestiges of self-destructive tendencies howled to be let loose within him for he was slowly starting to lose it all.
He wanted to look back behind him, maybe this was just a nightmare that he had managed to conjure up; maybe he was still back there as the music and the lights simply shook his head so much that he was hallucinating. He wanted to catch a glimpse of that fallacious fantasy that's nothing more than a bittersweet memory; However, fate had played a cruel joke; looking back, there stood no one—not even her lingering shadow within his vast and endless imagination could conjure at this stage of his grief and mourning.
In the distance, headlights peered through and shone unto the road ahead, the rumbling of the engine and the sole sound of metallic machinery would break the monotony of rain.
It tightened around his neck like a noose, this intrinsic feeling, the inability to let go, the disability to forget. Here and now he would make a choice, to run back and set things right or to—
'I love you too.'
Forward. All he could do was move forward. To bring his heel up and down, to let his body move, to let his mind direct, to let his soul be free.
The bus door opened and men, women, and children poured out one-by-one and before long a bored and nonchalant driver stared at him. The sound of the windshield wipers going left and right, then back and forth paired the humming of the engine and the now developing rain.
Forward. Sleepless nights led to dead and baggy eyes, fatigue and exhaustion chained him to feel tired indefinitely, cortisol prevalent in his bloodstream. He marched against the horrible cruelty of this inescapable reality.
He placed his free hand in his jacket and boarded the final bus headed back to a place he never thought of going back; To a place he left a long time ago, to a world where he barely remembers, to a place called home.
'Goodbye.'
Never again.
The words escaped his lips like a whisper. Scattered by the breeze that picked them up to be carried to the distant lands of god knows where and lost among the drops of rain to be sent back up to the sky.
With a seat by the windowsill he leans against the frame.
Ash simply stared as the bus stop became smaller and smaller until it was out of sight. Despite all the suffering and hardships, he felt calm and at ease. Though pained, battered, and bruised.
His eyes were fixed on this foggy lens towards the outside world, buildings—of varying height—would tower and dominate the urban landscape. Hawker stalls and Sari-Sari stores all littered the roadside as children would chase others in the rain while others walked with umbrellas and some with nothing but a towel over their heads. It was the sight of a simple life of the simple folk here in this complex world of grayness. Deceit would run rampant and yet he would escape the worst by the slightest margin. The bus would twist and turn from main roads, to avenues, to boulevards, and eventually turning up at the expressway. It would soon depart the heart of this concrete jungle and take the roads less traveled by; less and less would rickshaws and motorcycles greet his windowside and more buses and cars would take up the space.
The drastic decrease of people would make him doubt as the concrete jungle gave way to the flat plains and rolling rice fields. Stop lights intermingling with long spanning expressways and the muffled sounds of the once noise-polluted cities would finally give out to the gloomy skies of the provinces. His eyes were glued no longer to the scenes playing outside of the bus onto his phone, as few and few people would be seen through the window, few and few things would also end up keeping him company.
But with each passing second,
There will be no final messages.
A permanent goodbye.
He wanted to bash his head against the glass window but then again what good would it do? There was no logical sense in waiting for someone who'd already left; she even said it herself:
"You can't force someone to love you silly."
Emotions on the brink of escaping, he decided to just let bygones be bygones; no use in crying over spilled water, and no use in lingering in a past that went by so suddenly.
This must be the feeling of insanity.
Coming back to someone who doesn't exist.
You already died, this you I don't remember.
Then again you've already burned everything before I could become sober.
Despite all the lies, you were my greatest regret,
I'll take all of our everything and I'll slowly forget,
Those years of insanity and madness,
Ended with a week of misery and sadness.