Black Sunday
If he stood in the middle of that deserted path, with the wind blowing all around him, rustling the autumn leaves and singing a soft melody in his ears, he could sometimes still feel his arms around him.
If he went outside to stand in the cold winter rain, the one that wasn't quite cold enough to be snow just yet, and lift his head to the sky to feel the cold drops sting into his warm face, he could sometimes still hear his voice whispering in his ear.
But even then, he would return to his bed at night and sleep would never overtake him. He would toss and turn restlessly during the night and would never catch a glimpse of peaceful sleep. At times, after crying himself into exhaustion, he could sleep, but only nightmares would succeed to take over his dreams, showing him replays of the horrible day... the day it all happened.
The day Dominic died.
"I love you," Dom said to him before he walked out of the door.
"I love you too," Elijah called from a room in the back of the house. "Now hurry on before you are late. It's not every day your parents hit 50 years of marriage. I'll be there in a couple of hours, okay?"
"Okay. Bye Lij. See you there. Don't take too long." And he shut the door.
Elijah heard it shut. It was such a normal sound; a sound that someone with nothing to look out for would even notice.
Elijah didn't know he'd be replaying that sound in his head for the rest of his life.
Every Sunday was the worst. It was dark and filled with vivid memories and painful illusions of the past.
Sunday was cold. Even during the summertime, years after it all happened; Sunday would always be colder than the rest of the week for him. He always had a blanket draped over his shoulders as he trampled through the house in his socked feet.
Sunday was hard. All through the year, he would always feel thinner on a Sunday. Things would always amplify in significance and get easily thrown out of proportion. If he did something as small as break a glass, he would cry on the kitchen floor for hours, wrapping himself in the blanket and wishing.
Sunday was dead. He never talked on Sunday. Not even to God. At first he blamed God; said that God's game ruined him and he has no meaning left in his life. But Sunday always was dead to him. The world was still and nothing happened. Nothing could ever happen that would be worse than the Sunday he'd had years before. There was nothing that could wipe away the day.
Sunday was black. No color on Sunday; no not for him. He couldn't see anything but a straight forward view of everything; tunnel vision of some sort. Whatever it was, it kept him in the dark. Every Sunday was always dark, no matter the time of day. He would look out the window and only see the black of death. Nothing was ever pretty on Sunday. Nothing could be.
Sunday was hell.
"Where's Dom?" Elijah asked Dominic's mother as he arrived at their house.
"What do you mean, Elijah?" She looked at him fondly.
"He left about two hours ago, where is he?"
"What do you mean, left two hours ago? Left to go where?" She was confused now.
"Left to go here! He's not here?" Elijah was getting frantic.
"No, Elijah, he's not. Calm down, honey, I'm sure everything's okay."
It wasn't.
Monday brought him back to reality. He would go back to the world as usual, like he hadn't just sat outside on the back porch staring at the same tree for an hour; a tree that happened to be carved.
On Mondays he acted as if he had never felt pain in his life; he could set himself in stone so well that the people who knew him best actually believed it. Some weren't so easily convinced, but he soon persuaded those few to leave him alone about it. They did, thinking it was for his own good.
By Wednesday he was perfectly fine. He would go out with friends and have fun, real fun. He would laugh so hard that he cried. He would live his days with happiness and joy that he had even before it had happened.
On Friday he was ready to rest and settle down from all the commotion and wind down for the weekend.
Saturday called for drastic transformation. He would only talk to a few people, and those people had to be on his mental list of people who were worthy of a Saturday's talk.
He didn't talk to anyone on Sunday.
"He's bleeding internally and we aren't sure we have a way to stop it. His lungs are beginning to collapse. He's loosing consciousness..." The words flooded into one long horrible image in Elijah's mind.
'Everything's okay' turned into 'Dominic was hit head on by a reckless driver and was now in the emergency room fighting for breath that used to come so easy, a second nature action.'
He left the hospital before it was announced. They said he wasn't awake anyway and if he was he may be delirious and not know what he's saying. Elijah couldn't see that; he couldn't hear Dominic ask who he was and what was happening to himself. So he left.
He ended up on a path surrounded by trees on both sides. He stood there, letting the wind rustle around him and the leaves sing the song that only Angels could be giving. He looked to the sky and felt it. He felt the release before he was told about it. He had checked his watch: 1:36 p.m.
"Elijah, he passed at 1:36. I'm so..."
Elijah already knew. But that didn't stop him from blocking out the world on Sunday.
At 1:36 p.m. on ever Sunday he felt it. He felt a presence in his mind that wasn't there at any other time.
And every Sunday at 1:36 he would see things flash across his mind. It was like a painting. He would see small things, things that would be burned into his mind so vividly that when he drew them, they were as perfect as if he had taken a picture.
After the first few Sundays, he began to draw these images and collect them. It had been a few years now, so a few more than a hundred pictures had been drawn. Each one baring something that would be linked to the next and after a while he began to put them on the wall and connect them; like a puzzle.
Only on Sunday when he looked at the drawings would he see something; on other days it was as abstract as Picasso, but when he looked on Sundays, he could see it clear.
It was his message from something higher than he would ever understand and it was the only thing that kept him from continuing his life through each horrible, black Sunday.