Slow-dancing in a burning room

Short Story Sunday:

I watched her walking away from me, her heels tapping a seductive rhythm and her hips trailing an invitation. Her riot of untamed curls danced in the breeze and I longed to bury my nose in them. To breathe in that alabaster fragrance she usually wrapped herself in had long been a temptation.

The worst pain I had ever felt was looking into her eyes and watching her heart break. I’d always known I’d do it. It had been on my to do list, just above Hitting Rock Bottom.

 3 years since I’d last seen her. Everything had changed and yet nothing had.

 I listened to the comforting sound of my slowing pulse the further away she became. Maybe if I were lucky my heart would stop, the finality echoing in my hollow shell. I’d just drop to the pavement right here on Everdeen St, scaring the hell out of passerby. She weaved between the other pedestrians to stop at the corner awaiting the light. Here was my chance. A better man would chase after her. I was dying without her and I knew it but I couldn’t take her down with me. I turned and began my retreat, leaving the future I wanted in the past I hated. 

The air thickened around me and an electric current tickled my spine. That nearly ever-present feeling of danger greeted me. No one else ever felt it but I knew it to be very real. It was the reason I usually kept my senses numb with layers of substances. Rubbing the nape of my neck, I peered around myself for the menace or victim but nothing and no one in particular stood out.  They never did and it didn’t matter anyway, I was never able to help them.

I was standing in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the Palazzio Palace apartments like a boulder in a stream watching the current pass me completely oblivious to the encroaching danger. I knew better than to chalk this up to paranoia but I was just beginning to relax when I heard the screech of tires on asphalt. There were screams and shouts for assistance as people rushed to the scene of the accident. My only thought was maybe I should have chased after her. Then Death could’ve claimed us both.