Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 184: I Was Only a Child

Chapter 184: I Was Only a Child

I relived something. It wasn’t a clear image, not a vivid memory imposing itself with force. It was more diffuse, more visceral. A sensation, a light, a breath... an ancient fragment that I had, I felt it, deliberately erased from myself. Not forgotten by time, but erased at the root. Suffocated. Set aside. Torn out so I would never feel it vibrate again.

And yet, it was there.

It had always been there.

Buried in a dark fold of my memory, lurking in the hollow of my chest or in the very fibers of my belly, that something was waiting for me. Motionless. Patient. And now, at the contact of that hand placed on me, it was rising slowly. It unrolled slowly through my nerves, my bones, my throat. It was taking shape again. It was becoming again.

How long had I carried that within me, without wanting to see it?

How many years, how many silences, how many escapes had been built to lock it away?

And why... despite the pain... couldn’t I push it away?

A closet.

Small.

Cramped.

Dark and dusty.

A space too narrow to breathe fully, too low to stand upright, too dense for a thought to move freely. The walls were close, oppressive, heavy with ancient dust that clung to the skin like a memory never washed off. The air was heavy, thick, saturated with forgotten smells — damp wood, dried sweat, something indistinct and rancid, belonging to another time, another fear.

And in that closet...

Something of me had stayed.

Something that had never grown up.

Shadows passed under the door, shifting, vague, like ghosts stirred by an inner storm. They danced without form, but each of them carried a specific fear, rooted, known. Then came the noises. Dull. Heavy. Blows against the walls, against the furniture, against something... or someone.

Screams broke out.

Not clear.

Not articulated.

Just raw bursts, a man’s screams, saturated with rage, with chaos, with that brutish violence without language that devours everything in its path. And then, amid it all... a whimper. A muffled whimper, strangled. As if someone had tried to stay silent, but no longer had the strength. As if the pain had finally pierced through, even through the fear.

Then a crashing sound.

Dry. Irrevocable.

Something had just collapsed, hit the ground with the limp certainty of a body no one catches.

And I, on the other side, was no longer breathing.

And I... I was there. Curled up in the dark, reduced to an almost shapeless form, pressed against the walls of that too-tight closet, as if I could disappear by folding enough, by contracting until I no longer existed. A hand pressed against my mouth, not to muffle a cry — I no longer had the strength — but to block the slightest breath, the slightest sound, the slightest sign of life.

My eyes were wide open, stretched to the point of breaking the sockets, fixed on the sliver of light under the door, where the shadows passed, where the world crashed down. I didn’t blink. I didn’t even think anymore. My gaze was staked in fear like a spike.

My body trembled.

In jolts.

In waves.

But unable to move, unable to rise, unable even to curl up more. Every muscle taut to the breaking point, but without motion. As if frozen in a scene too familiar to still try escaping it.

And in that silence saturated with noise... I stayed there.

Too alive.

Too aware.

Too alone.

In my ears, through the chaos, through the blows, through the raw fear, a whisper had slipped in. Soft. Reassuring. Human. A voice I knew too well, a voice I should never have heard in such a moment. It hadn’t shouted. It hadn’t begged. Just a breath, slipped like a thread of light into the night.

— Don’t make a sound. Don’t move. It’s okay, my love...

But it wasn’t true.

I knew it.

I felt it in every fiber of my body, in the uncontrollable trembling of my legs, in the burning of my wide-open eyes, in the silent choke of my throat. Everything wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay.

Everything was collapsing.

Space. Time. The house. The world.

And that whisper... that whisper was no longer enough to protect me.

But I clung to it anyway.

Because it was all I had left.

And I... I wasn’t helping.

I didn’t move.

I didn’t scream.

I didn’t reach out, didn’t do anything to change the course of what was unfolding on the other side of the door. I was there, folded into myself, petrified in a muteness stronger than pain, stronger than love, stronger than anything. I watched. Not really with my eyes — I saw nothing, or almost — but with that inner eye, the one of consciousness, the one that records everything, even when you want to tear it out.

And I stayed silent.

Not by choice.

By instinct.

By terror.

By helplessness.

But the silence, that day, had a taste of betrayal.

And that silence... I carried it within me far longer than the fear.

The memory didn’t return like a film, nor as a series of sharp, ordered images. It gave me no narration. It told me nothing. It lacerated me. Raw. Not through visions, but through sensations. Raw. Irreducible. Unbearable in their precision.

Fear, first — that ancient fear, rooted, lodged deep in my lower back like an acidic vibration, ready to paralyze me with a single breath.

Then the smell. That of damp wood, of the too-tight closet, saturated with forgetfulness and silence, that smell that clung to the throat and reminded me I wasn’t just hidden: I was locked in.

And the taste.

The taste of my own breath, held in too long, recycled into my palms, acidic, warm, like the mist of a cornered animal.

But most of all...

Shame.

Not a thoughtful shame, not a guilt shaped by time. A pure shame. Instinctive. Infinite. A shame that isn’t thought, that isn’t explained, that exists before words and after tears. A shame etched into the marrow, into the belly, into the memory of muscles.

And that shame... pierced me far more than the memory itself.

I opened my eyes again.

Slowly.

As if my eyelids weighed more than everything else, as if the world I was about to see again wasn’t the one in front of me, but the one I had just relived, within me.

The Firstborn was still there.

He hadn’t moved.

His frail, translucent silhouette held its place with the same peaceful, almost unreal presence, but now... it was unbearable. His hand, placed on my chest, where everything had vibrated, where memory had bitten, weighed like a truth too dense.

And I... I could no longer breathe.

My breath was trapped by something. Maybe that hand, maybe that memory, or simply myself. I was suffocating without sound. Inside. As if my lungs refused to keep playing their part. As if my body, saturated, no longer wanted to pretend to be alive.

I couldn’t bear it anymore.

Not him.

Not his patience.

Not what he awakened.

I was on the verge of rupture.

But with no escape.

I growled, first as an animal reflex, a primal defense against what I could no longer contain. Then I backed away, clumsily, as if the ground beneath me also rejected me. My body tilted. I fell backward, heavily, and my breath broke into short, ripped, chopped pieces, unable to rebuild a coherent rhythm.

— That’s it, murmured the voice.

— That’s where... you broke.

I was trembling. My whole body trembled, not from cold, not from raw fear, but from an overflow with no outlet. That trembling came from inside. It rose from the root.

— Shut up... I whispered, powerless.

But the voice continued, soft, almost sad:

— Since that day, you refuse to be weak.

And then I screamed.

— I WAS ONLY A CHILD!

The scream echoed, torn, irrevocable, like a door slammed shut with no intention of reopening. And after that scream, nothing more.

A silence.

Thick. Vibrant. Saturated with everything that had never been said.

A silence... that didn’t judge.

But didn’t erase anything either.

Then the voice resumed.

Barely a breath.

Barely a phrase.

— And you never forgave yourself for having been one.

A child.

I curled up immediately, as if those words had closed something in me again. As if that simple truth had folded me from the inside. I didn’t cry. I was past that. But my body... my body had become cold.

Not frozen.

Not dead.

But cold from within, as if emptied of its own warmth, of that instinctive fire that keeps beings standing without them even realizing it. It was a hollow cold. A cold without edge. A cold that didn’t bite, but that inhabited.

I couldn’t stay there.

I didn’t want to.

I mustn’t.

So, in a stiff, almost animal gesture, I crawled to the edge of the islet. Every movement cost me. Every gesture weighed. But I dragged myself, clung, moved forward, until I felt the void beneath me.

And I jumped.

To the next one.

Without looking back.

Without a thought for what I was leaving behind.

But this time... it wasn’t the world that was chasing me.

It wasn’t the light.

Nor the pain.

Nor even the voice.

It was me.

Myself.

In what I had fled the longest.

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