After The Rain (3/3) By Joe Hakim

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3),

He was onto his second bottle by now. The second voice was having a particularly loud night. It started to goad him into doing terrible things. It nagged him until he text her long rambling messages about how he'd changed, how he loved her and that was all that mattered. He waited for her to reply but she never did. He imagined her in bed with someone, laughing at his petty misery. He kept texting her, and still she ignored them. He stubbed cigarettes out on his arm, walked up and down his living room while the voice continued to torment him. The rain continued its assault on the window and he truly felt that it was all too much to deal with. There was only one thing he could do.

It wasn't the biggest knife but it was the sharpest. He liked to look at the reflection of the candle's flame on the blade. He knew that this wasn't something he could get wrong. He had switched to drinking cheap vodka from the bottle and his mind careened from situation to situation. He even considered going to her flat and killing her and her new boyfriend.

He sat with the knife in his hand for so long, his knuckles turned white. But deep down he knew he couldn't do it. He didn't have the guts. At some point the night had passed into the day. The realisation that the rain had stopped struck him, and he dropped the knife and went over to the window. People were dumping filthy, soaked sofas into the street. Kids with wellies played with remote controlled boats.

He found a battery powered radio and turned it on. The announcer was talking about how we were over the worst. The announcer carried on talking about all the thousands of people who'd lost their homes, their belongings, their jobs; some even lost their lives. He realised that not one single drop of rain had entered his house. He looked again at his neighbours dumping their possessions into a pile.

Everyone had come through something impossible and yet there they were, getting on with it. The world was carrying on. He realised that the pain in his chest, the longing, the love, would not go away. It would be there forever, but in time it would become part of him and he would learn to live with it. And now, surrounded by all these people who had lost nearly everything, he knew what he really had to do.

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