Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 158: A Slap in the Memory

Chapter 158: A Slap in the Memory

The final blow was neither a gesture, nor a wound, nor even a memory.

It was the voice.

That fucking voice.The one that never stopped.The one that always came back.The one that had never really disappeared — only waited, crouched in the folds of my breath, ready to slip in at my weakest, most exposed, most disarmed moment.

— You see?...

A breath. Nothing more.Not a scream. Not an accusation. Not even a complete sentence.

Just a whisper, a tiny exhalation, slipped between two heartbeats, as if it knew precisely the space to insert itself, where even pain hesitates to speak.An almost affectionate softness. Almost tender.

— You can still feel.

And then, suddenly, everything tensed.

I clenched my teeth.A dry, brutal reflex, as if the strength of my jaws could crush that whisper, as if rage could serve as a bulwark against the obvious.

I clenched my jaw until it cracked, until the taste of iron slowly, insidiously rose from my gums to my tongue, like a bite I had inflicted on myself without daring to admit it.

— It was nothing. An illusion. Like you.

My voice replied.

Dry. Broken. Hard.Not a human voice. A voice forged from within, in hatred, in shame, in that rusted metal we call survival when there’s nothing left.

Each word fell like a badly forged verdict, like a discarded blade thrown into the dust with the certainty that it would never cut anything but silence again.

But she did not answer.

Nothing.

No protest.No pent-up anger.Not even that passive sigh one sometimes expects from an opponent one still hopes is alive.

Only absence.

But not an empty absence — a full one.Present.An inverted presence.An implacable patience.

And then... something crept in.

Not a gesture, not a silhouette, not a frank intrusion into reality — but a sensation, at first so faint it blended with the thickness of the air, with that indistinct trembling of the world when it holds its breath.

It wasn’t a physical presence, not a touch of skin on skin, not a breath from elsewhere — but it had the weight of a memory.An ancient imprint.A persistent trace of what had been repeated a thousand times, hated a thousand times, regretted a thousand times, and which, despite everything, refused to die.

A hand.

Not a real one.Not one of flesh, nerves, bones.

No.

A hand of memory.A hand built from a thousand forgotten gestures, a thousand blended gestures, a thousand stolen gestures.A hand without warmth, without skin, but heavy, so heavy, with a past I had never known how to extinguish.

And it rested.Gently.Without sound.Without force.

But with that unbearable precision that betrays the most familiar gestures.

It rested on my shoulder — exactly there — at the precise spot where so many others had already rested, too early, too late, too violently, too tenderly.That point of the body the heart recognizes before it even understands the meaning.

But this time, there was no domination.

No threat.

No arm ready to hold or punish me.

Nothing but that caress suspended in time, as if the world — or what remained of it — were trying once more for gentleness, with painful hesitation, an almost shameful slowness, as if it too knew it was already too late.

It wasn’t a promise.It wasn’t forgiveness.It wasn’t even comfort.

It was... a presence.

An imaginary hand, a tangible memory, an illegitimate tenderness laid upon a body that no longer wanted it.

A dissolved embrace, returned in another form.

Something terribly old, terribly silent, that no longer needed words.

A hand to say: I’m still here.

A hand to remind, without accusation, without pathos, that one never fully rids oneself of love —Even when we refuse it.Even when we destroy it.Even when we deny it.

And that was the worst.

Not the contact.Not the reminiscence.But that total absence of defense, of violence, of will.

That hand was the abdication of the world.

It wasn’t an attack.

It was a confession.

A final naked gesture, offered unconditionally, and which, for that very reason... made me waver.

And then... she spoke.

Or rather, she whispered.

Not in the air, not in the space around me, not in some vibration one could point to or capture in silence — no.

She whispered inside me.

Like a blade slipped beneath the skin, without friction, without immediate pain.

Like a breath from the vertebrae.

Like a voice my bones had always known how to hear, but which my flesh had stubbornly refused.

— You strike... like your father.

And my breath broke clean.

Not from shock.Not from anger.Not even from panic or rejection.

But because those words, spoken just as they were — without reproach, without bitterness, without resentment — possessed that texture of naked truth, that way of imprinting themselves in the inner fibers, where no shield, no strategy, no excuse remains.

They didn’t accuse me.They didn’t absolve me either.They didn’t judge me, didn’t console me, didn’t trap me in any role.

They... stated.

And that was the slowest, most terrible weapon.

They named the unspeakable.

They put a label on a wound I still thought unreadable.

And that simple statement — that breath of gentle lucidity, laid down without weight — opened a crack.

Tiny.Insignificant to the naked eye.But profoundly real.

A fissure.

Not a scream.Not a brutal break.Not an explosion.

Just that small crack, that internal twitch, imperceptible to anyone who didn’t live in my body — but strong enough to tell me that something, deep down, had just given way.

A thread.A knot.A foundational stone.

And that thing... it would never leave.

It had just settled.There.Right beneath the skin.At the exact spot where no word should ever be able to enter.

I froze.

Not as one freezes from surprise or fear, but as if my whole body had just been seized by an invisible hand, stopped dead in its momentum, suspended between two contradictory wills, as if time itself, complicit in this sick world, had decided to mirror its inertia to mine.

Stiff, tense, muscles suddenly incapable of reacting in any way but this total stillness, I felt like I had become a statue — not out of majesty, but from a short-circuit.

And in that mute tension, silence fell.

A thick, saturated, almost living silence.

It had nothing of rest.Nothing of calm.

It did not soothe — it waited.

Suspended between two heartbeats, between two moments that struggled to link, it pulsed beneath the skin like a held threat, like a too-perfect trap, closed without noise but whose snap still echoed in the shadow of my nerves.

It wasn’t the absence of sounds.It was their retreat.Their voluntary evaporation.

As if the world, the real one, had leaned over me, and held its breath.

And my heart... yes, my heart beat, but more than a mere throb — it pounded, it smashed against its own walls, it battered my ribs like a prisoner gone mad pounding the too-narrow walls of his cell, it rose into my throat like a scream being swallowed, it pulsed into my temples where each beat seemed to want to split the world.

And my eardrums... my eardrums vibrated, like drumskins stretched to the extreme, like membranes on the verge of bursting under the sheer weight of what was about to come, what was about to be said, or known, or remembered.

It would only take one word — just one — for everything to shatter.

So I clutched my head, in a convulsive gesture, as if my hands — hooked onto my skull like butcher’s hooks — could still rip out what wanted to be born, what was about to force its way through.

I wanted to repress it.Suffocate it.Twist it.Dissolve it into my own nails, into my clenched temples, into the mass of my forehead dripping with tension.

I tensed with my entire being, every muscle tightened like a rope drawn to the breaking point, every nerve ready to implode, every breath hanging at the edge of strangulation.

My whole body became waiting. Refusal. Defense.

And in my ears, slowly, inexorably, the buzzing rose.

Not a simple noise, no.

A muffled sound, rumbling, like a distant forge hammering inside my skull.

A metallic breath, distorted, almost liquid, like a memory in fusion.

A slap.An invisible slap hitting the very heart of my memory.

A slap in my memory.A slap in what I am.

— You know nothing!... I spat, throat tight, jaws twisted with a rage too old to still bear a name — a child’s rage, a beast’s rage, the rage of a thing too often looked at without ever truly being seen.

— You have no right!!! I screamed again, without logic, without aim, just to tear myself from that softness that suffocated me more surely than hatred.

My voice burst into the void.

Not like a thrown word — no.Like a spasm.A dirty cry, grating, broken at birth, as if even my vocal cords refused to carry that screamed lie, that refusal too human to be heard here.

It twisted on itself, that cry, dislocated in the air, evaporated into a softness too tender to offer it the slightest echo.

And the world... the world did not respond.

No echo.No whisper.No anger.

Nothing.

Only that full absence, tense, burning, as if silence itself had chosen to look at me without speaking, as if the entire world... had understood.

The voice fell silent.

Not out of fear.Not out of weakness.But by decision.

A full decision, motionless, indisputable.

A decision of silence.A decision to let go.

But the ground...

The ground vibrated.

Very slightly.Almost imperceptibly.

Like a breath held too long.Like a heartbeat just beneath the surface of a too-wise body.

A weak vibration, tenuous, but enough.

Enough to be heard not by my ears, but by my bones.By my neck.By my ankles.

Enough to make me understand that it too — this world — knew.

And that it didn’t blame me.