For the past decade my mind has lingered in a kind of limbo—aware of facts, yet rarely letting them take root. People have told me countless truths about the world, and I have always nodded politely, though in truth the world itself has never truly intrigued me.
But there was one man who made knowing feel less like a burden and more like a challenge. He was a spiteful soul who believed in nothing. He mocked religion, sneered at political convictions, and dismissed anyone who held firm beliefs as mere pawns. He was hardly kind and often unbearable, yet he fascinated me. For someone who claimed to believe in nothing, he could not stop talking about the very things he rejected. His relentless mockery betrayed a quiet obsession, an extended act of hypocrisy. He scorned those who cared too deeply, never noticing that his own scorn revealed just how deeply he cared
"Whatever happened to him?" Angelica asked at last, her voice barely more than a sigh. She spoke on a whim, yet the question carried a strange gravity, as if the quiet of the room had been waiting for it all along.
Outside, the sun and moon seemed locked in their eternal trade, handing the sky to one another in slow, weary shifts. Time itself had grown languid in these latter days, so to keep it from devouring us, Angelica, Misha, and I passed the hours with stories. They were usually nothing more than idle fictions small flames against the vast dark, yet tonight the tale I had told was different. It was the story of the man I once knew, the man whose defiance had left a splinter in my memory.
Angelica and Misha listened with the kind of curiosity that is almost hunger. They wanted to know how his end came: Did he perish in the first onslaught of the apocalypse? Was he torn apart by demons? Did famine claim him, slow and merciless? I let the question hang between us, the silence stretching until it felt like a weight on my chest. Then, quietly, so quietly I almost hoped the words would vanish before reaching them, I answered.
"He killed himself."
The sound seemed to hollow the room. For a heartbeat, even the distant wind stilled; the cramped walls became a vault for the echo of my voice. Angelica lowered her gaze, and Misha's breath caught, sharp and thin. The air itself tasted of iron, of something final.
But I was not finished. Something within me insisted on the cruelty of the truth, on the bitter irony that clung to his end. I drew another breath and forced the rest through lips that suddenly felt too heavy.
"And the most humiliating part," I said, each word scraping against the silence, "was not his death—pathetic as it was—but the spectacle that followed. His body, laid out beneath the vaulted ceiling of a church he had mocked, smothered in flowers blessed by the very divinity he scorned. His coffin surrounded by kin who held high office, the same politicians he had once spat upon. They wept for him there, beneath stained glass, as if he had been one of their own."
The words settled like ash, and no one dared to breathe. I recollected the reasons why i uttered to tell a fool man's story, but nothing in mind came before i internally gave up on looking.
The silence that followed was not the simple quiet of a room gone still.
It was a living thing. It stretched across the cramped space like a slow, creeping fog, heavy enough that even the shadows seemed to retreat from it. The dim lantern light trembled against the stone walls, each flicker exaggerating the contours of our faces until we hardly looked like ourselves.
Angelica sat stiff, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles blanched. Her eyes were fixed somewhere far beyond the dusty window, as if the moon's sluggish crawl across the sky might offer a reason for what I had said. The story lingered between us like smoke after a fire, and no one dared stir it.
Misha shifted once, the wooden chair beneath her creaking like a distant groan. Then nothing. We listened, all of us, to the slow rhythm of our own breathing. To the far-off sigh of wind rattling loose shutters. To the ache of words that could not be unsaid.
A minute passed.
Then another.
The silence grew so thick it felt as though it might calcify, locking us inside its brittle cage. My own heartbeat began to sound intrusive, a drum I wanted desperately to quiet.
And then, a sound, small and absurd: the scrape of Misha's boot against the floor as she leaned back in her chair.
"Well," she said at last, drawing out the word until it wavered between a cough and a chuckle. "That… was cheerful."
The remark fell like a stone tossed into a frozen lake, cracking the surface of our stillness. Misha tilted his head, a sly grin tugging at her mouth. "Honestly, you could give the end of the world a run for its money in terms of mood-killers. If you tell stories like that often, remind me never to invite you to a birthday party."
Angelica blinked, startled by the sudden intrusion of levity. Misha pressed on, undeterred.
"Imagine it," she continued, gesturing dramatically. "Everyone gathered around the cake, candles lit, and here you come—'He killed himself.' Boom. No cake, no singing, just everyone staring at their shoes wondering if the frosting is supposed to taste like despair."
A weak snort escaped Angelica before she could catch it. The sound, slight as it was, seemed to fracture the spell of grief clinging to the room.
Misha leaned forward now, elbows on her knees, the grin broadening like a torch in the dark. "Next time, maybe open with a knock-knock joke? Something like.. knock knock." she paused, waiting.
Despite myself, the corner of my mouth twitched. "Who's there?" I muttered.
"Not that guy." Misha shot back, and let out a bark of laughter so sudden it startled the lantern flame.
The tension finally cracked. Angelica covered her mouth with both hands, half to hide the reluctant smile, half to stifle the giggle that broke free. I felt a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding slip from my chest, and in the fragile warmth of their laughter, the room began, just barely, to feel human again. Outside, the moon slid a fraction further along its weary arc, and the world, for a heartbeat, felt a little less heavy.
The hour that followed passed like the slow exhale of a dying fire.
Angelica and Misha had eventually surrendered to sleep—at least, that's what I thought. Their breathing softened into the rhythm of dreams while the lantern guttered low, throwing long, sleepy shadows across the cracked walls.
I slipped outside when the room's air grew too heavy to bear.
The night met me with a cold that bit through my coat. The sky above was an ocean of dull pewter clouds; the moon had hidden behind them, leaving only a smear of pale light. The ruins of the settlement stretched into darkness—shattered fences, rusted husks of cars, the skeletal remains of houses that once belonged to someone. My boots whispered against the frost-bitten earth as I began my slow patrol, the rifle slung across my shoulder more for habit than for comfort.
Every sound—wind through the hollowed buildings, the groan of some unseen metal—felt sharpened against the silence. I welcomed it. The world, in its loneliness, made more sense than the muffled warmth of the room I'd left behind.
A crunch behind me.
I spun, heart jolting, hand finding the knife on my pocket's grip. "Easy, soldier" a low voice said, half a whisper, half a smirk.
Misha emerged from the shadows, hands raised in mock surrender. Her hair was mussed from the pillow, her dress thrown on hastily. Lantern light from the hut spilled across the frost, outlining her in a faint halo.
"You're supposed to be asleep," I said, my voice harsher than intended.
"And you're supposed to be inside where it's warm" she countered, stepping closer until I could see the glint of amusement in his eyes. ""Guess we're both bad at following orders." I let out a slow breath, lowering the knife. "You startled me.." "Good" she said with a faint grin. "Keeps your reflexes sharp."
For a while we walked the perimeter together in silence. The wind worried at the dead grass; somewhere in the distance, a sheet of rusted tin clattered like a loose bell. The night was a vault, endless and indifferent.
Finally, Misha spoke. Her voice was quiet now, stripped of the levity she'd worn like armor earlier.
"That story," he said. "About the man who… you know."
I didn't answer.
She nudged a pebble with his boot, sending it skittering across the frozen dirt. "Why tell it? I mean, I get it's a dark time and all, but that one… it wasn't just a story. It was… something else."
Her gaze slid toward me, searching. The clouds shifted, letting a sliver of moonlight catch her face—her expression uncharacteristically gentle.
I swallowed the chill that rose in my throat. The night seemed to hold its breath, waiting.
"His hypocrisy" I said at last, the words scraping out like gravel, "..felt like mine."
Misha tilted her head, brow furrowing.
"He wore his disbelief like a weapon," I continued, voice low. "Mocked faith, mocked conviction, mocked anyone who dared to believe in anything. But the more he raged, the more it proved he cared—about all of it. He claimed to stand apart, but he was tangled in it deeper than anyone. He hated what he couldn't stop thinking about."
The wind hissed through the broken fence line. I gripped the knife tighter.
"Something about that, felt so much like me." Misha walked beside me in silence for a long moment. Then she exhaled, a soft, slow sound that fogged in the cold.
"I don't know what you're talking about. But if you really were a hypocrite, i wouldn't care even a bit. You jumped to save my life. No other ulterior motives of yours would disprove that." She reassured me with a soft pat against my head.
The moon slipped free of the clouds for a heartbeat, washing the ruined landscape in a thin silver. Misha looked at me then. Not with pity, but with a quiet understanding.
"I was once lifted by someone else. Before i was bitter, i was angry at the world. But when my burden was carried by that someone, i figured my purpose."
"What is it?"
"To lift people up the way i was."