Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 202: I Laughed With What Was Left of Me

Chapter 202: I Laughed With What Was Left of Me

In that unbearable dizziness, in that mute vision of horror that no longer even screamed, I fell. Literally. There was no resistance, no jolt of will, no delay.

My body gave out all at once, like a hollow thing that had been held upright for too long out of pride. My knees hit the nacre with a dull, flat, almost obscene sound. A crack in the joint, something giving way, collapsing, with no promise of return.

My thighs trembled, my arms buckled under the weight. Not just the child’s, but everything’s. The world’s. The past’s. What I had fled. What I had just found again in that frozen gaze.

My torso folded in two, as if split from the inside, emptied of axis, of bone, of meaning. And my forehead, finally, struck the steps. Brutally. Without hands to cushion it, without restraint, like an offering made to the stone.

The impact echoed in my skull, shook my jaws, made my teeth vibrate. A sharp, precise pain cut through my temples and drove into my neck like an invisible blade. The taste of metal rose to my tongue, and I didn’t even know if I was bleeding — or if it was the world bleeding me through myself.

I stayed there, crushed, stuck to the damp ground, in that grotesque, faithless posture of prayer. My breath broke, caught in my throat like a strangled gasp.

My muscles were nothing but twisted cords, unable to hold anything. My shoulder blades pulled at each other, my vertebrae screamed their misalignment, and my whole being screamed soundlessly: I can’t anymore. I can’t. Can’t carry, can’t climb, can’t convince myself.

The child was still there, crushed against me, his little dead body clinging to my skin like a definitive truth. A tepid warmth, almost gentle, but unbearable, because it reminded me of what I had just lost, what I still had to carry.

A film of sweat covered my cheeks, mixed with something dirtier, murkier — tears, or something else. And the world around me remained frozen. Spectator of a collapse that had nothing symbolic left in it.

I had fallen. Truly. Completely. And this time, I didn’t even know if I wanted to get back up.

The world turned around me. Slowly. Very slowly. Not like a fall. Not like sudden vertigo. More like a thick, silent spiral that coiled around me without letting go.

Everything spun, but without urgency. As if the universe itself was sliding around my slumped body, to observe me better. To weigh me.

The outlines melted, the lines twisted, and even the light seemed to follow that movement — pale, stretched, false. I felt like I was at the center of a frozen whirlpool, a core of weariness around which an exhausted storm revolved.

Nothing rumbled. Everything was calm. But a calm that pressed down, that smothered, like the gaze of a sick sky on a body in agony.

And in that wavering, in that slow tilt where everything seemed to want to fade without noise... the child... moved.

Barely. A shiver. A faint twitch, almost unreal. But I felt it. I felt it in every fiber of my numb arms, in the sweat of my skin against his, in the silence itself, which seemed to fold over that movement like over a betrayed secret.

His body, which I thought extinguished, began a mute resistance — not a clear awakening, not a start, but a troubled quiver, as if something deep within him still refused to disappear completely.

And that simple gesture, in that abyss of pain, made something else waver inside me. A stupor. A fear almost greater than his death. A spark of hope... that I no longer had the strength to carry.

He didn’t complain. He didn’t scold me. No reproach, no word, no sign of blame in his gestures. He didn’t even seek my gaze.

He simply existed. Again. As if he had never truly left. As if death had only been a passage, a painful pause, and that his return needed no explanation.

His presence now needed no justification. It weighed differently. More gently. But with an impossible-to-ignore certainty.

He settled there, against my still warm chest, still sticky with blood. Without hesitation. Without fear. As if his body recognized mine despite everything, despite the fall, despite the violence.

And his breath... returned. Slowly. Calm. Steady. A fragile rhythm, almost imperceptible, but real.

I felt it against my chest, beating softly, breathing as if nothing had broken, as if the world could still tolerate a form of peace.

That breath, tiny, echoed in me like a forgiveness I had never asked for.

And I... I cracked. Literally. I no longer knew if it was fatigue, madness, or simply both, intertwined, melted into each other until they were indistinguishable.

My body trembled, my breath fell apart, and a laugh rose — nervous, broken, strangled in the throat — a laugh I hadn’t expected, didn’t want, but which imposed itself on me.

I laughed. And I cried. At the same time. As if everything had snapped at once. As if one could no longer exist without the other.

— I... I don’t understand...

My voice came out in fragments, saturated with tears, cracked.

— He was dead... You were dead... You were... I saw it...

I looked at him, held him, searched for an answer in his warm skin, in the weight returned, in that breath that shouldn’t have been there.

— I gave in... I gave in to your death... I...

I placed my hand on his back, as if to make sure, as if to betray my own doubt.

— Did I imagine it? Tell me... Did I make it up? Am I...

I fell silent. The words broke in my mouth. I no longer knew what was real, what had never been. Only that I was still here. He too.

And that simple fact... was enough to make everything tremble.

I laughed. I laughed again. And it was ugly. Not a joyful laugh. Not a human laugh. A torn sound, strangled, as if my throat had opened by mistake and let escape something too ancient, too dirty.

I laughed with my guts, with my bones, with what was left alive in me — or maybe of dead. And at the same time, the tears flowed, spilling from my eyes as if my body no longer knew how to choose a language.

It was grotesque. It was grotesque and I couldn’t stop.

— He’s here... he’s alive... he’s dead... he’s...

I stammered words without sense, teeth clenched, cheeks soaked, chest slashed with dried and fresh blood. His? Mine? Both? I didn’t know anymore. I didn’t know anything.

The world spun, vibrated, breathed in a breath I didn’t understand. I was cold and hot at the same time. My limbs burned, my head throbbed from the inside, and my skin trembled under hands that maybe weren’t mine.

— They broke me, didn’t they? They... they mixed everything up. Everything.

I looked up, at nothing, at the sky, at the mist that never answered.

— You hear me? You won, is that it?! You put a dead one in my arms and waited for me to love him... to abandon him... then to love him again!

I slid on my own knees, my back arched, and I laughed again, mouth full of blood and saliva, teeth bare like those of a worn-out animal.

— And now... what? Huh? I keep going? I keep climbing with this? With this weight? With this... thing? This breathing silence? This corpse that beats?!

My voice broke, but I kept speaking. Not to be heard. Just because if I stopped, the void would come back.

— I’ve... I’ve forgotten who I am, I’ve forgotten why I’m here. I just know it hurts, it burns, it lies. Everything lies. And I lie too. I pretend to believe. I pretend to be strong. But I’m a damn puppet they push and who bleeds and who still laughs...

I collapsed forward, arms around him, forehead on his skull. The world receded. Or maybe it was me.

My heart beat beside me. My breath came out through my ears. I no longer controlled anything. I was engulfed.

A tide of mist, blood, memories that might not even have been mine.

— Help me...

The word came out so low I wasn’t even sure I had said it. Maybe I had only thought it. Or dreamed it. Or begged it in an ancient language no one listens to anymore.

But he... he didn’t answer. He existed. Against me. Motionless.

And maybe that was the worst part. That was what I couldn’t accept: that mute peace, that burning and calm truth... while I... was drowning.

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