Author's note: I'll admit it, I don't know where the hell I got the idea for this story. I don't even know if it's a story. I think it's pretty fucking cool, myself, but you're entitled to your own opinion. If implied slash, sexually charged metaphors, suicidal tendancies and/or personified elements give you a big rubbery one, get the hell out of here and find a way to shake off your dogma issues. That said – happy spring, and happy reading. Leave a review if you don't want the wrath of god to rain down on your puny mortal head. ^^;

A Simple Love Story

A Sort-of Easter Story by Violet Beck, El Presidente

I first met my dear dame chance in the spring, a time in my life when everything seemed to be falling apart. In the industrious autumn, I'd been a young man on his way up in the world, with an apartment, a job at a local paper, and a nice leather couch. By March, I was unemployed, couch-less, and attempting to write…a novel.

I'd kept the apartment. God only knows why. I could have kept the couch and the TV and everything else if I'd just downsized, but I loved that apartment. I loved those ceiling-to-floor windows, five stories up, with a perfect view of the teeming industry about me and below me—it was all I'd ever dreamed of. Even if I had to sit on the hardwood floors scribbling fervently on a legal pad during the day, and stand in front of my luxurious windows slurping ramen noodles every night, it was…home?

The night was one of those when the air would have smelled of fruit-tree blossoms, had we fruit trees in our city and a sudden absence of smog. I stood out my window, quietly watching the streams of people walking home on the sidewalks below. I had been one of them, a season or two ago. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't left my apartment in over a week. It then occurred to me that I didn't particularly mind.

Nowhere to go, nothing to do…. My mind wandered as a little lost ant wanders, aimless and purposeless, tiny eyes roving, heart sinking, searching for something they can't quite remember…

And then…

She lifted my chin, she directed my eyes, and I saw him.

My gaze fell just across the street, to an apartment one floor below me. The sight was really nothing special. A man about my age was sitting with his back against the glass of his own ceiling-to-floor windows, casting a morose sideways glance down across the busy street below. I stared at him, stunned there was another person in this world with no chair to sit on and no place to walk briskly home from on this lovely spring night.

So many of the buildings in our area were the same, simply painted a tad differently for variation. I counted four floors up, and five apartments across. He was apartment D5. I was E5. I wondered when he'd moved in. He'd probably been there longer than I had; his back seemed accustomed to resting against the smooth glass.

His motionless pose fascinated me. I didn't know someone could be sad and beautiful at the same time. I sank down to the floor and grasped my legal pad, the one that held the tattered makings of a plot that resembled a wet pancake. I flipped to a mostly-empty page and tried to sketch him in ballpoint pen. It was hopeless; I'd never been much of a hand at art, and even if I had I could have never done him justice.

Perhaps he was an artist. Perhaps he was a poet. Perhaps he was a singer. Perhaps, I fancied, he was a writer like me, with another limp novel of cheap yellow pages somewhere on the floor in the dark.

He seemed to sigh, and one of his hands reached up to touch his forehead. It slipped down to rub his temple idly, and then came to rest on his smooth cheek. A sudden hot blush overtook me, and I felt inexplicably dirty. I shouldn't have just been sitting there, gratuitously watching his most private moments alone. I made to turn away, but it was hopeless. I was enthralled.

He was a hundred yards away at least, but I could see the look in his eyes. He was beyond hope, beyond loss, beyond all redemption. I wanted to call to him, cry for him, something or anything at all.

Without my consent, my fingers spread out against the glass, reaching for him.

He had something in his hands, and he held it in shadow like an illicit plaything. He ran his fingers over it, slowly and purposefully, as though he were waiting for something to build up inside of him. Like he was waiting for some sort of signal before he could move.

The legal pad dropped from my fingers as I sat alone in my own dark apartment. I knew that shape. I knew the shape in his hands and I knew the way this story ended. Suddenly, my pulse was in my ears. Both hands were pressed against the glass, and I was on my knees, eyes wide with horror.

"No," came the whisper, born of my own lips. I could suddenly feel hot tears in streams down my face, and my whole body shook as I bit my tongue and lips in consternation.

Calmly, sadly, my lover had reached the brink. He brought the gun up to his face, up to his lips, and kissed the tip. The cold metal pressed inside of him, consummating the accepted pact.

And as chance bade him goodbye, she gave one last blessing and tilted his head upwards.

That next second was forever. We shared one look across one street; my eyes wild, his placid. He blinked once, slowly, and then gave himself up to me with honest eyes. I held him tenderly and cried for him, his Magdalene as he pulled the trigger.

My whole body shook at the impact, and I shuddered as he slumped and fell beside me, inside me. I could feel his last breath. The shot rang in my ears.

In apartment D6 across the street, someone's light turned on, and I knew that in a moment the paramedics would be called.

It had ended.

I stood, slowly, and turned on the lights in dark apartment E5. I found my coat, my hat, and my suitcase full of clothes. I opened the door, all my worldly belongings in my hands—and paused, seeing the yellow legal pad on the floor. It had had dropped from my numb hands an eon ago.

Setting down my suitcase, I went to it and opened it up and tore out every page with a word written on it. There was no hesitation: every last piece of my bloated pancake-prose was purged and burnt by my hands, and scattered like the ashes of a phoenix on the floor.

The drawing was the last to go. I tore it—and pressed the two pieces into my pocket, unable to let go. I sobbed once, and left the now-blank yellow pad on the empty floor.

I walked to the door, and then, I was gone like a breath of city wind.

The dear lady smiled after me as I went back, back into the fray, back into the rush of people going places in the street. Off I went, her little wandering ant, strolling wherever my feet would take me.

Some wander because they are lost.

I looked back up the dark street, and saw the red flashing lights just across from the building holding dark apartment E5. I blinked once, and turned back. There were so many things I had to do. The people around me barely noticed me, for all of them had purposes of their own. I had miles to go and a thousand words to write—words that I had only just started to comprehend.

Some wander because they are found.

In an ending, it had only just begun.

Tell me you hate it, tell me you love it, and tell me your favorite breakfast cereal just for good measure. Review, you lazy bastard. Because I'm a lonely quack of a writer with no IRL friends.