Blue Is the Color of Despair, Sadness and Melancholy

It was pouring outside. It felt a little ridiculous, like how in the movies it always seemed to rain at funerals, the world submitting to the emotions of the protagonists. But that's how it was.

It seemed like the perfect environment to leave this world forever.

But no one would mourn his loss. That was part of the reason he had finally decided to take the plunge. Two years, and he still couldn't find anything. Not even a hint of how to get back to his world, the real world, where his loved ones were, where what he had was a life, not the crushing repetition of days as his options and hope dwindled.

Two years. Two whole years.

In this world, no one would mourn his loss. He had no one. In the other...it would be different. He knew that. Perhaps some would say it was selfish of him to give up like this. But what if it was indeed impossible?

After all this time, his mother would surely have grieved for him by now. She would have already assumed he was dead.

So this... it wouldn't really change anything....

The boy who couldn't fight anymore put the rifle to his mouth.

He had fought long enough. If they could see each other again, if there was anything beyond this, then he believed she'd understand. He believed she'd forgive him.

In two years, he hadn't known peace. That elusive thing they called happiness had always slipped through his fingers, buried under the shadow of the world he had left behind. But maybe everything he had been looking for was out there. In the roar of the wind, in the raindrops.

In the flashing thunder.

Like the thunder, he would shine for a few seconds in the midst of the dark stormy night. And then disappear forever.

His finger slowly closed over the trigger.

He wanted to leave, but he was afraid of the pain and the darkness. Who wasn't? That meant nothing. Most of all, he was afraid of missing the shot and only making things worse.

He could, let's say, get trapped inside his own body. A prison of flesh and skin from which he couldn't even escape by biting his tongue. Dying (dying, not death) was scary. Being dead in life was a step too far. It was the scariest thing he could think of, even knowing what kind of monsters roamed the shadows of this world that was full of magic and strange creatures, but had little that was fantastic about it.

Yes. He was so afraid.

Then he heard the door to the inn open, and the boy tensed and froze, his trigger halfway to fire the rifle and blow his brains out.

If this were a normal inn, there would be nothing strange about that noise. People were supposed to come and go in places like this. But he had made the inn his base when he came to this world because he had found it abandoned.

There shouldn't be anyone out there.

He recognized that it was foolish to worry about an intruder when his plan was to kill himself. Once he pulled the trigger, it would all stop mattering to him.

But he cared anyway. Otherwise he would have already pulled the trigger, finished what he had started.

I mean, what if... what if they did something to him? What if they didn't just, whoever it was, rob him? He wasn't talking about... nastier things, but the mere thought of them trampling his corpse, spitting on him, or throwing him around to be eaten by forest animals made his guts churn.

He had to leave in a way where that wasn't possible.

He wanted to rest in peace. There was nothing stupid about that.

So the boy rose from the chair and withdrew the rifle meant to kill him from his mouth. To sneak up on the target. All the lights in the inn were out and the night was dark, but that was okay. The boy could see perfectly well in the dark. This world hadn't just brought him trouble. Though he wouldn't need any of these abilities if he wasn't in this terrible place to begin with.

Can't wait, he thought, as he headed for danger again, rifle in hand. Can't wait.

Once he dealt with the intruder, he could have peace, even if happiness was forever out of reach, as well as the face of his mother and the friends who had always been with him.

His mental state was shattered. Good excuse, but it wouldn't fix that the intruder had managed to surprise him. In the blink of an eye, he found himself on the ground, his own rifle shoved against his throat.

The intruder was a girl. Her clothes and hair were a mess. She looked like she had come out of a war zone, and probably had, considering the rumors.

That wasn't the only clue. The girl was too thin, she had been starving for a long time. Still she had managed to catch him by surprise, she was in a favorable position. And she possessed the strength that adrenaline, desperation, gave her.

However...

"Do you think it will be that easy?" he said, defiantly.

The shot echoed in the night, making itself heard even above the drums of thunder.

——

Author's Note

Stephen King says it took him a long time to realize the parallels between his life and The Shining. It always seemed to me, at best, an exaggeration. It's so obvious, after all, isn't it? But only halfway through this story did I realize that it had a lot to do with my own flirtations with the idea of suicide. Which, fortunately, I left behind a long time ago.

But it's a heavy chain, indeed.