Echoes of Pain

by Marco Kuis

I'm lying in bed. I listen to the sounds of the night, but they fade away behind the echoes of the past and the future. I see faces flying past, faces I've gathered inside my head all my life. They look frightened, surprised, or painful. Some of them are covered with blood.

They never stop coming.

I don't know why I foresee these faces, and why I can remember them so well. All I know is that weeks after I see a face for the first time, it appears in the papers, usually attended with either 'murdered' or 'suicide' above the picture.

I can never remember anything I have done. I can't remember whether or not I've gone to work yesterday. I can't remember me turning on the computer on, until I see it's turned on. If I don't watch the calendar, I forget every birthday that passes, even my own. But I still remember that a girl called Denise Burta was murdered in a small ally eight years ago. She died with a mix of surprise and fear on her beautiful face, while a few drops of blood spurted on her blonde hair, and by the look of her hair and her shimmering blue earrings, she fell backwards to the cold floor. Her husband, who was physically and mentally maimed by three men at the same mugging that had cost Denise her life, hung himself in the living room five days afterwards. His brown hair was wet of sweat, and his eyes were turned away, leaving only the white part to be seen. His mouth was open in a silent scream. A scream for his wife. A scream that still lasts in my memory.

I get a chill because of the memory. I stand up, and walk up to the window. The cold air on my skin makes the chills even more intense, but it also distracts me from the pictures inside my head a little. The floor I walk over is a little warmer, a large old carpet on top of the wooden carpet. On my left is a large desk. Anyone who would look inside, would see hundreds, no thousands of old paper pictures, sorted to date. Each and every picture shows a dead body, sometimes on the floor, somewhere in a dark street where hardly anybody passes. Sometimes inside a house or right under a tree, with a large rope around their necks. But mostly, they're invisible by the white sheet they're covered with, while they're dragged away on a stretcher by men who have seen such things too often to get chilled by it anymore. Behind me is my bed, which has carried me through more nightmares than anyone could live through. I hardly can.

Above me, an old ceiling, with wooden rafters from left to right. When I don't have nightmares, I am studying those rafters carefully, while hundreds of faces fly through my mind. Do you remember that if you would stare long enough at the pattern in the wood, you could little faces in it? I've marked mine. About five inches to the left of my lying-in-bed-centre, that's where I found Kirt Gradon (two years ago, knife in the back). His eyes seem to watch the unknown wanderer next to him, who had his brains blown out by a .45.

I finally reach my window. Just before I touch the windowsill, I see a new face. A girl, not older than sixteen, dressed in black and white. The make-up on her face covers an expression that doesn't show any fear or surprise. She doesn't like dying, but she's one of the few who accept it. One of the few who understand that their time has come. I try to wipe the tears out of my eyes, but I can hardly move. I sink onto my knees, covering my face with my hands. I cry out loud, not able to hide the guilt and sadness that overwhelm me.

For it seems to me that I kill these people by seeing them. I've never met all these people, and until I die, I won't. But though my mind tells me I don't kill these people, my heart tells me differently. And eventually, it's the heart that makes you cry or laugh. Your heart makes you break down on the floor, crying for the people you've killed. In the end, your heart is all that matters.

I manage to get back upon my feet, eventually. Gazing out of the window, I still try to blink away the prisms of tears that obstruct my sight. I look down on the street, empty, deserted. A paper flows down the street, twirling around on the wind that seems to whisper sounds of death and murder. It's my conscience that keeps accusing me, but I try to ignore it. No one can ignore his conscience, but everyone tries. And so do I.

Maybe I will live my life until old age, bearing these things with me. Maybe I will eventually die in my sleep, still hearing the echoes of the past and future. But maybe, I will see my own face soon.

And frankly, that's the only thing I long for.