Short Story: “In the Shadow of the Valley of Death”
It was a bitterly cold winter night. I was looking through the window. The outside looked so close yet so far. I ran my hand over the misted up crystal and caused minute drops of water to trickle down the window pane. They left behind snaky paths as though they were teardrops rolling down an infant’s rosy cheek.
Before my eyes, a monochromatic jungle stood still. The lungs of those charcoal grey buildings breathed in and out, moaning out a concrete sigh. The impersonal artificial inhuman look of the city sent shivers down my spine. I found the noumenon (the thing-in-itself) and “the Real”, terrorizing, for they were both like sand filtering through my fingers.
I was an only child, in a monoparental family which my father, the patriarch, brutally ruled. The only thing between our love was a bloody nose, a busted lip and a blackened eye. He would always vent his spleen on me, releasing his pent-up bottled-up anger. It was, at times, virtually impossible to stomach his atrocious ruthless behaviour. Living under his anarchical reign had already become a burden that I was not willing to shoulder for much time.
The existence of the city made me retch and I was a person who easily chocked on his own disgust. When I looked away from the window which seemed to me to be the threshold of Hell, my eyes met my own reflection in a mirror that was standing on the wall. I could see my especular image, my “autre”, and I wanted it to disappear. This triggered in me, as if it were a knee-jerk reaction to my self, the need to drive, energetically, my fist towards the mirror and smash it into pieces.
From all the pieces of glass that were scattered along the ground, I took the sharpest one and headed towards the bathroom. I went into the bathtub. I fingered the surprisingly sharp object and played with my fingers with it as though it were a coin that would defy Atropos with its fifty-fifty chance judgement. It did not matter whether it was heads or tails, I would bleed dry to death anyway.
G. L. Luna
