T W O months later:

Despair.

Is guilt greater than despair?

He was guilty at the beginning for what had happened to her because there was a hope that she will be awake.

Slowly, the despair started to reside within him. The light (hope) he had for her was covered with a dark shadow that dissolved the light.

What does this world offers besides the pain that people hold so dear to themselves? Why do people forget about pain, suffering and sadness?

He looks at her lifeless body still on the same hospital bed sleeping a deep sleep that he wasn't even sure about. He had called it sleeping for a long time and now he had lost sight of it.

He managed to find her name after struggling for days.

Caira.

This woman was exceptional. Her name reminds him of soft candy. But the times he had confronted her, she wasn't all that sweet to him. It hasn't been two days since he had looked at her, no words, no stories, no communication and nothing.

Just her in her white clothes and glare reserved for him that he cannot help but chuckle at every single time now that he remembers them. Those things that annoyed him, her challenges, her eyes and herself starting to come back at him like a beautiful memory. How is that what he found annoying now seems something different?

What he did remember now was her glaring at him, guards high, dead eyes, red lips and small nose. The way her body swayed in every step that she took.

He wasn't sure how he ended with her and how does he stumble on her. Why was she sent his way? Maybe he was doing something wrong or perhaps he was a route of her?

Questions, thinking, overthinking and no answers whatsoever.

"God, Caira, you cannot just leave like this. The doctor didn't spend their time on you just for you to leave this world. My mother and I didn't pray each night for your life for you to sleep here. The world was meant to break its people but just open your eyes once. I promise I will fight with you against all those who have done you wrong. You wouldn't be alone anymore. Please come back". He cried

The constant stable beeping sounds of her heartbeats restored through the room, with the sound of his broken heart. He felt himself wanting to go along with her. To the places, she has been to and to the place she was stuck in. To throw her out of that never-ending circle and stay in. He wants to take her to a place where she might have a will to live again.

"Please". He pleaded

The silence of the room was filled with loud sounds from the machine attached to her. He moves back as her body violently shakes and the doctor rushed in, pushing him away from her.

The only sound that remains in his ear was the sound of her last heartbeat. The sound of that straight line that the machine produces was the sound that lingers, repeat and stayed in his mind.

He cannot do this.

His steps start to move and drag himself out of the hospital, where he finds people coming in with the hope that they will be better once they have spent generous amounts here. But were they?

They came in two months ago and they both are dying in different ways.

He drags his feet along the street as his steps swayed from one to another as if he was drunk. To anyone, he might appear drunk. But maybe he was intoxicated by life.

He was sick. Not the sick that was visible to people. But the kind of sick that was eating him alive.

He had a happy family. A happy family who had gone through enough disaster already. Where he was asked about his father and taunted. Where his mother was a piece that everyone had an eye on and his two sisters. Where everyone wanted to have them. Where everyone made sure their life was tough than it would have been.

Where his mother hand would be touched by another man to feel her fulfil his lustful desire. Or when his sister was harassed by some people. When a daughter without a male/father presences cannot be grown. Their marriages were always a question. The demands from the proposal. Father's day. The empty stomach nights.

He had thought that once he was a man himself these words and people, he will be able to stop them. He had become a doctor that his mother wished for him. However, he had dreamed of becoming an army officer wanting to fight. To stop criminal somehow and how are friends went after criminal by being a lawyer. He wanted that.

Then she came,

Caira.

Like a wrecking ball in his life destroying every single wall, he had built.

Only to know that those walls were not made correctly and not by using strong material. They were just cardboard wall that was there temporarily for the peace of his mind but then they crumble with the small amount of pressure on him.

Every wall fell.

The thought of him being a man was destroyed badly.

By who?

People.

People he fought.

How?

They target weakness at the weakest points.

The concept he had made that he once he was a grown man who can stop every eye, word and world harm to come to a woman crumbled to pieces in front of him.

The first week of the incident, people had throw accusations and taunts at them. Then, the shops that provide them food decline causing his mother to travel long distance on feet. Because no taxi provides his mother with any service because of her shameful children.

Second-week rolls in, the landlord demanded a high price, saying it was long due out of nowhere that they need to pay immediately.

With the hospital bill reaching the sky for their treatment and his salary being used for it, they cannot pay.

The third week came as a disaster because they were thrown out of the house for not paying the rent.

Thankfully, Laith took a few of their belongings and took his mother to his house until he recovered.

The fourth week- he healed enough to start at least his routine check-up, if not surgery, so he decided to do extra hours for two reasons. One he needed extra cash and two he needed his mind busy.

The fifth week- he tried speaking to their landlord, who wasn't having it. The people around him talk and taunts him for bringing a prostitute into their pure place. As if they didn't just try to take a life with their own hands.

The sixth week- he had looked for a new place. But with money going towards her treatment, he cannot afford the rent of almost all the places around.

The seventh week- he had lost sight of the need to work for things. The eyes and words start to haunt him so much that he couldn't do a simple task. He worked as a robot and did the tasks assigned to him. He couldn't work on the tasks that he needed to think about.

The eighth week- present- he hadn't come with any solution and had drowned so deep that he forgets what his immediate problems were in the first place.

Losing sight is haunting. It was haunting him.

He had no idea how long he walked and where he ended. He had no wish to communicate with anyone, no wallet and no transport available.

He looks ahead of him to find a man covered in black holding onto a young girl dragging her with him as she struggles in his hand, cursing, crying and begging him. The man was far and he took her somewhere deep in the woods. But he could hear the haunting screaming of her cries and by the time he managed to reach the sounds, they ended.

He looks at a different man moving to the exit of the woods and his face remained blank as if he had done no wrong and it was his right. His smirk displayed how much of a monster he had turned into. His clashing cold eyes depicts his inhumane nature. The man smirks at his man, who smirks back at him as if he had won a lottery by breaking an innocent girl.

He walks closer to the woman and the sight had him gasping. She laid in blood covering every single feature and her clothes torn. Her eyes open, frozen with the last bit of pain and fear she had felt. She was unresponsive. He bends down, checking for any life in her, when he finds the knife that was pierced into various places and then the smell of poison on her that starts to burn his hand as he takes the leaf around to remove it.

She was dead.

No, she was killed.

Murdered.

He stumbles back, calling the police as he walks away from her body when they arrived and questioned him more. When he told them that he had seen the murder of that young girl, but he didn't know the person. He sensed something wrong, so he called Laith, who came running at the scene, saving him from it.

He watches as the girl's broken body was loaded on the stretcher taken away. But her hand stick out that had something clench in it. He ripped it through her hand to find a picture of her smiling face with a little boy in her hands and the happiness visible on their faces.

The happiness the dark man killed without a second thought.

The young soul was gone. Forever.