He spoke my name. Just once, like a breath. Yet it felt less like an ending, more like a promise to return.
Sentence in the Fog
“Stand right there.” A pin-prick of light glints through the fog and spears my eyes. Between the black gloves his fingertips are so cold I still feel them graze my cheek. I step back. A branch cracks underfoot, striking my ear like a vein of fire. He nears; his breath arrives first—cool air laced with tobacco and azaleas from some far country. His hand hesitates. The fingers aimed at my pupils tremble, barely. In the same instant I knew: the face he saw in my eyes was begging him to stop.
The Mark of Silence
There was a season when endless newsreels covered every screen. I traced the curve of his brows in the wanted-man montage for hours. After that I hunted his scent: the chill draft when subway doors close, cigarette smoke seeping from a midnight construction gate. The rumor that drifted through the dark was simple. Someone is sent back—no, released. Alive, but no longer intact. So we swore an oath of non-aggression, not with lips but with silence.
The White Note
Last April a woman known only as “Ms. No-Name” collapsed outside my building. A red V-shaped wound stood out on her nape. No bleeding. Only a white slip of paper remained.
You have been chosen I met her in the restroom. She whispered, “Should I be grateful for being chosen? No. He simply noticed I’d quit dying. That day I was already living like a corpse. He came and confirmed it.” The scar on her brow was faint, but the silhouette of death was still nailed into her gaze. We wept at each other’s scars—not the scars on living flesh, but the scar of having survived.
The Gathering
Every Friday we meet. In a cellar corner, the only light comes from abandoned glasses. We call one another the ones who came back. Few words are spoken. Someone walked into the fog again; this time no one returned. Still we do not give up. After a near-death, some mimic death again just to keep living.
Why He Chose Me
I still see that night’s gaze in dreams—eyes looking down at me, equal parts pity and ruthlessness. The reason I survived, or rather was chosen, was simple: that night I had exhausted every death inside me. So he no longer needed to kill.
In this very moment, what do you wish to kill? Or what do you suffocate because you cannot kill it? Perhaps we all go on living, waiting for a certain pair of cold fingertips.