The rain beat down on the city like an army of cold blades, hammering the asphalt in a funeral symphony. Zac walked on, a hunched figure under a drenched hood, swallowed by the darkness of a soulless suburb. With each step, he sank a little deeper into the mud of his thoughts, dragging behind him a shadow heavier than his own body. Water seeped into his worn-out sneakers, infiltrating his very flesh, but it was nothing compared to the fire burning in his gut.
'Flunked. Again.'
The words circled in his head like hungry vultures, tearing at everything in their path. He had fled the high school like one flees a fire, his gaze evasive, his breath short, avoiding the slightest spark of attention. Three times. Three times he had crashed against the same wall, three times life had spat his own failure back in his face. The first time, he had thought he could make it. The second, he had pretended to believe. This year… he hadn't even tried. Skipping class had become his escape, his way of sabotaging the game before it even began.
'At least when I fall, I'm the one who chose the cliff.'
The thought left a taste of ash in his mouth.
The memory of his parents' faces flashed, vivid and cruel, piercing his heart like a cold blade. No anger in their eyes, ever. Just that silent disappointment, that gaze that crumbled, that fractured under the weight of betrayed hopes. His father, his hands ravaged by work, worn out from building for others what he could never offer his son. His mother, her eyes misty with a resigned tenderness, whispering every evening, "How was your day?" like an unanswered prayer.
Go home? Face that silence full of kindness, that gentleness that crucified him more surely than a scream?
It was worse than a slap.
He clenched his fists in the pockets of his sweatshirt, his nails digging into his palms. Rage rose, dull and sticky, engulfing the shame, drowning whatever light was left in him.
He wanted to scream, to break something, but he no longer had the strength. Even the rain seemed to mock him, spitting his powerlessness in his face.
He turned, almost automatically, onto Poplar Street. The crosswalk, faded by the years, stretched before him like a scar on the asphalt. He didn't hesitate, didn't slow down, moving through the scenery like a ghost. Around him, the world was just a gray blur, swallowed by the fog of his distress.
There was only this emptiness inside him, this black abyss that sucked in everything: fear, shame, anger.
A splash of color appeared at the edge of his vision. A figure. A young woman, a transparent umbrella over her head, phone glued to her ear, in a hurry. Their paths crossed, inevitable, like two trains speeding on the same track. Zac saw her too late. Or maybe he refused to see her.
A dark instinct, lurking in the depths of his soul, took control. He accelerated, shoulder forward, seeking the impact like one seeks pain to prove they still exist.
**THUD.**
The sound of the collision resonated, sharp, brutal, like a sledgehammer blow in the night. The umbrella flew away, broken, like a bird struck down in mid-flight. The young woman collapsed onto the soaked ground, her phone sliding into a puddle, the screen shattered into a spiderweb.
— "Hey! What's wrong with you?!"
Her voice, strangled by surprise and pain, was lost in the roar of the rain.
Zac stopped. Slowly, he turned around. His hood slipped back, revealing a pale, ravaged face, his eyes red with anger and fatigue. Water traced furrows on his cheeks, but they were not tears.
— "What's wrong with *you*?!" he growled, his voice hoarse, raw, charged with a barely contained violence. "You don't watch where you're going?! You think you own the world?!"
The young woman, still on the ground, looked at him, petrified. Fear was plain in her eyes, an animal, visceral fear.
— "It was you who..."
— "SHUT UP!"
Zac's cry erupted, splitting the rain like a clap of thunder. All his frustration, all his self-hatred, all his distress poured out onto this stranger, overwhelming her like a black wave. He loomed over her, trembling, ready to explode or to collapse.
Liberty froze, her hand raised as if to protect herself from a blow that wouldn't come. It wasn't anger she saw, it was an abyss, a gaping fault into which she almost fell.
Zac stood there, panting, fists clenched, his gaze lost. Then, suddenly, the rage dissipated, giving way to an icy void, a bottomless weariness. He looked away, walked off without a word, leaving the trembling young woman behind him, like one leaves behind a crime they don't want to name.
He was nothing more than an empty shell, a disjointed puppet, drained of all substance.
Three steps. He was in the middle of the road now. The rain hammered his face, but he felt nothing anymore.
A mechanical scream tore through the night. Headlights flared, two beastly eyes rushing at full speed. Zac turned his head, too late.
**SCREEEEEEEEEECH!**
The shriek of tires ripped through the darkness, a final warning from a world that forgives nothing.
**THUD.**
The impact was brutal, inhuman, launching him into the air like a puppet whose strings had been cut. His body flew, spun, and fell heavily onto the hood, then onto the asphalt, with a soft, obscene sound.
For Liberty, the scene unfolded in slow motion, like a nightmare one cannot escape. The impact. The body crashing down. The head turned at a monstrous angle. The eyes wide open, empty, staring into nothingness.
The rain was already washing away the blood that trickled from his ear, diluting life into the gutter.
Liberty brought her hand to her mouth, speechless with horror. Her gaze could not detach from that broken face, that deformed head, those eyes that seemed to accuse her, to haunt her. A spasm shook her, terror pinning her to the ground more surely than the fall.
Around her, the world became a blur, the voices distant, the figures indistinct. The sound of the rain swelled, became deafening, then… faded out.
Silence.
A tomb-like silence, thick, total. No more rain. No more screams. No more breath. Zac no longer felt his body, no longer felt anything. He was floating in a bottomless black, a cottony void, engulfed by his own distress.
'Was this death? Or just the end of the fall?'