New Writing...any opinions on the first half?
A Darkened Fall
It was mid fall; the chilled wind carried the dead, rotting leaves though the silent air. The park was all but empty and only the sound of birds far off in the distance filled my subconscious. I was sitting there, alone as I usually did at this hour of the day. I could feel the cold race up my spine as a breeze swept a pile of leaves in my direction. My mind was blank as I stared into the looming trees that surround me on this park bench. A year had passed but I could still hear the screams at night. The insomnia drove me to find help in lesser means; though I found comfort at the bottom of a tall glass I could still feel the helplessness that surrounded me on that night, and today was a celebration, but not a celebration of happiness or of a person’s birth date, but of a person’s departure from this singled out reality, of a death, in simpler terms. My body sat weak, wondering if it really was my fault, or if the detectives, that had butchered my consciousness as they beat the questions into me, were right when they had filed it as a mere accident. In my head I could only guess myself. A familiar tear ran down my face. I could feel it map the outline of my reddened nose. I lifted my hand to wipe it but stopping myself I let it fall from the rim of my lip to my lap. This tear had visited in many nights where I sobbed till my eyes shut tight. This tear had only projected my guilt and hatred towards myself into the plain of reality. I looked at it as is soaked into my black pant. I could feel that this tear would return but held back, as though not to make a scene in public. I felt a small burst of wind hit my cheek as I turned my head and looked up. A man, standing there facing in my direction, was he there before? The question ran though my head but had diminished in personal value as I remembered where I was, and as nothing was wrong I returned to my mind only to find my guilt lingering and waiting for my return.
An hour or so had passed and my wits were at their end. To further more protect my sanity and dignity in the public eye I left. Standing up I could feel the wind rock my body back and forth, letting me sway without fear of falling to my embarrassment, but as I turned my head in the direction of my small apartment and there he was. Standing in a black trench that was long at the seams, and upon his head laid a wide rimed hat, which covered everything but his blank mouth. I was irritated but in some way amazed at this man’s resilience to the weather on this bleak, windy fall day. I began to approach the man. Was he a shy fan who had read my early works before I had given up the pen, after that frightful day, or was he a man who intent on mugging me but cowered out and froze as I looked at him, my questions for the moment were unanswerable because the man had turned and began to walk away at the sight of my movement.
“Wait!” My voice rang though the air and startled a flock of black crows that covered the path. To my amazement when the crows had settled, he was gone. Not a single trace of his existence lay in front of me. I thought to myself and wondered what had happened but only blamed it on the years I spent digesting the poison of feeble minded men. I turned, staggered by a pain in my left leg; I walk down the lonesome path toward my house.
Though in some cases a story may stop with that; a strange incident left unexplained after seeing what seemed to me a ghost and the narrator, who obviously doesn’t believe in the world beyond, leaving you with an uncompleted story, but I must finish my account of how my guilt consumed me, so to avoid a rather lengthy tail on how I made my way home I must skip to my small apartment on the north side of the city. It is small, having a kitchen that connected the living room with my own personal living space. I found myself sitting at the round table I had placed in the center of my kitchen in front of an old wooden stove that had existed in this apartment since the day it was erected, and accompanying me was a bottle of cheap wine that clouded my mind but also gave me a break from the never ending guilt.
There I sat, as so many nights before, blushed in the face and feeble minded as the drunks that lined the street were. I could feel reality slipping away and my overwhelming guilt forcing its way out of my dying heart, I felt the tear return and with this single tear, which landed on the wooden table I could feel others rise up. I cried out to the heavens that damned me with this life and sobbed to the hell that would claim my soul, though my episode was cut short from the appearance of a figure at the end of the room. I quickly staggered to my feet, letting the chair hit the rotting hardwood floor. I stood in silence as my blurred vision focused in on the figure, and prepared to fight I called out to this figure.
