He Died without Mercy

This is a flash fiction story I wrote for a prompt. I lost a contest I entered, but I love it anyway, and it was written during the Holy Year of Mercy, so I'm sharing it with you guys.

Part 1: I am damned.

I haven't wanted a room without a view, and yet I'm in this claustrophobic attic surrounded by the past relics of bygone years. Shame on death for linking me to this world when I was too young to die. I could have done exceptional things had I survived the dip in the river last September.

My parents sold my childhood home with little fanfare. How will I communicate with them now that they have abandoned my home, abandoned me?

Salvation might be true, yet at twenty-three, I had no plans to see the other side of human existence, and so I haunt this space as tiny as my hope to avoid damnation. If I would have loved others like I loved myself then I might have believed the judgment I'd find by a higher power would give me the peace I seek.

Oh, sorrowful heart, how utterly did you fail to give while on the earth? Could a soul be redeemed without a contrite prayer? No, I fear too much.

This world of lives lived without regard to consequences in the afterworld continues and leaves me without comfort as I haunt the attic of my past. Someone, anyone, if you might hear my plea, I live in anguish at my folly! To whom would I appeal, and how would I, trapped in the world of condemned men, escape into the truth of mercy?

Regret night and day lives inside my innermost being. If I would have left hate behind and refused to taste the pleasures of sin…

(The shadows of a damned soul trapped inside the safety of his childhood home will fight the inner war of self forever.)

Part 2: Only Memories

You grew distant as you left childhood, dear son. You wouldn't listen to me as you were headstrong. You found the bitter without the taste of sweet in the moments of discord before you died.

Oh, I pray for peace, dear son of mine. If God finds you tonight I pray for mercy in your death circumstances. You had lived away from faith for many days before the untimely nature of your death, yet still you must trust in the mercy bestowed on those pierced by a sudden end.

Flesh is weak and men are cold, the wayward son is blessed by hope in the mercy of God not turned cold to a restless heart.

Dearest son, turn back from sin, from death, from self, and turn to the light of the giver of life. Truly you must believe the faith of saints before you went as I believe that you are good. Oh son, turn your face to mercy and yield not to the tempter, full of hatred of flesh, turn towards the faith of old – the salvation beyond bitter death! You bestow upon your kin the deep-seated desire of sight beyond the grave, to see you again I live on throughout my rapid tears, dearest one!

You shall not have lived in vain. Sorrow will live inside my breast for all the days left for me to count until you see my face full of loving regard for you.

The safety of ordinary days, cooking your father's dinner, reading your favorite book, sweeping the floors of the house which ceased to be a home the day you died, continues. This house scatters my memories of you, unfamiliar it might be, and still the hollowness of trying to forget will not suffice.

Each waking hour I yield to the pain of seeing you as a boy, hearing you holler for me, touching your face as the cold turned your cheeks the color of roses in the summer.

The fate of those who survive is to suffer! Only memories are left for me whose misfortune was that God chose me to live.

Part 3: He wills

He wills to haunt, to pace to shock the owners of his childhood home. Suffering beyond the grave has no relief for him. Too fast for mercy to catch up, he died. Alone born into the world, alone a new birth removed him. So few souls feel the relief of God because so few have sought Him. To all the lost ghosts of the lowest point, hell would be the exit point without mercy! Oh, the hidden other world! Why is death allowed to hunt him?

Fallen men would not yield to divine help, nor scatter the ashes, nor gather the moments thoughts preserve. He is one with despair, one with futile attempts to communicate with loved ones, left to go on beyond the hurt, throughout the pain, ahead of the next untimely death.

If time would rewind what ghost would haunt? No, the haunting of broken men will continue throughout Time, which ungrateful men have assumed will stretch on forever and have foolishly allowed the day to pass without a nod to the Creator.

And so on the basements of houses creak throughout the centuries, if not at the footsteps of ghosts shamefully aware of lost chances, then through the neglect of the living to remember the dead and utter a prayer for mercy.

Time has no consequences beyond the graves of mankind, for time is a make-believe yarn that all is well in the living dreams of those left behind.

(What will become of the boy whose purpose was to die well with love professed upon his lips for those whose lives he shared?)