A Moment of Peace

I laid there on the hard cold ground, the pouring rain soaking my face and my body. The raindrops streaming in rivulets down my face, mixed with the tears falling from my eyes. I blinked long and slow. As I swallowed hard I could feel my breathing begin to grow more shallow.

My lungs hurt. My eyelids were growing increasingly heavy. I pressed my hand into my side where the blood pumping from my body was soaking my shirt, the pouring rain leaving a diluted pink stain in a vain attempt to wash it away. The pain caused by the pressure instantly made me more alert. I groaned.

I concentrated on forcing myself to sit up. The harder I tried, the more I realized that nothing was happening. In the distance I could hear sirens echoing off the city buildings. My heartbeat sped up for a second, hoping they were coming closer. Hoping they would reach the bridge in time. As the sound faded into the distance, so did my hopes, my heart slowing once again.

I again blinked the rain out of my eyes, struggling to take a shaky deep breath. I could feel my own blood pooling beneath my fingers. I had dreamed this. Time and time again, this moment had crept into the subconscious of my sleep. Now, here it was. This was it, the end. It’s not what I expected it to be. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that I’m laying here on the sidewalk dying a slow and painful death is not surprising in the least. Nobody is more aware than me that I deserved this.

The surprising part is that I didn’t feel afraid. I didn’t feel sad. I didn’t feel anything. I couldn’t even feel the pain beneath my hand anymore. I pressed harder to be sure. But, I felt nothing at all. I knew that I wasn’t going to come back from this one. This was the end of my story. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was simply inevitable that the life I’d lived would lead me to this.

I took another shaky breath and let it out slowly. The tears no longer mixed with the rain. My blood was washed away down the concrete as my hand slid from my side and fell to the ground. There, in that moment I whispered my final words to the darkness, no one there to hear them, “In the rain I find peace.” My eyes closed and the world went dark.

Those were my final moments on Earth. Little did I know they wouldn’t be my final moments ….alive, however. That’s another story for another time though. Remember my final words. Whisper them into the rain whenever you can. Remember me, and one day the rest of my story will become clear. It will all make sense soon, my darlings, very soon.