text: A couple of people asked me to post this on an askreddit thread when I mentioned it, so I thought I'd post it here, it seemed like it fitted. Michael stood with his back to the body of his dead wife, and took a long, weary drag on his cigarette. A lonely pearl of sorrow rolled down his pale cheek, and fell to the ground below. He was told it would help to cry. He was told it would give him ‘closure’. But all it did was remind him how much he missed her. He breathed out, allowing a suited arm to fall to his side and watched, detached, as the smoke drifted away on the breeze, carefree and untroubled by the worries of men. The cigarette was nearing its end. A second tear cruised down his cheek. He sighed. "Dadda” That one word carried for him more emotion than anything he had heard in his miserable life, a stark contrast to the innocence with which it was muttered. Michael turned with a heavy heart to see the short, stunted steps of his beautiful son. His cigarette was almost entirely finished now. Another tear crawled towards his chin. Felix’s messy, blonde hair matched his fathers, but he had his mother’s eyes, pools of wisdom, fascinating and vivid. But they only served to remind Michael of his guilt. Her eyes had been the last thing Michael saw that day. She had died of asphyxiation, from the smoke of the fire. The emergency services were already there when he returned from the shop with Felix. The stove had been left on; Michael had been the one to cook that night. The cigarette was gone now, lost in the jungle of grass. Michael shed one final tear, before wiping the sadness from his face and pulling his son into a tight embrace. Michael took a deep breath, and they turned to face her together. He resolved there and then to do everything to protect Felix, all he had left in the whole world, and to never let him go. Michael was at war. He slashed left and right through the enemy, dragging them to their knees. But all too soon it was over, and Michael stood, resolute among the bodies of the fallen, his vindication shining through the destruction surrounding him. He knew it had been necessary, to protect his son. His young, vulnerable son. He found relief, not pleasure in his actions, seeking only to shield Felix from the world. Only then was the billhook allowed to fall to the ground, replaced by a can of petrol. Michael spent a minute catching his breath, before dousing the ground in petrol. He reached into the recesses of his pocket, withdrew a box of matches, and lit one; it twirled through the air on to the bed of nettles. He looked on grimly as they slowly began to wither and curl in the flames, painfully aware that he could not prevent their return. Michael lit a cigarette. Michael sat in the empty, desolate shell of his house, on a dark September morning gripped in the throes of an autumnal battle, and watched the son he had spent 19 years nurturing and protecting leave his life. He was not a happy man. He had spent the years since his wife’s death keeping his son away from the world, and now he had failed. His son was leaving for a university on the other side of the country, where Michael could not protect him. Where Michael could not ensure he went to bed at the right time, or ate well, or went to the doctor for every tiny ache and pain. So he wept. He allowed the cascade of emotion to erupt from his very soul, and welcomed the feel of pain in his chest, comforting him with its familiarity, until no more tears came. Then he lit a cigarette. But it did not hold the same appeal now, the arid smoke slowly choking him like ash filling up his battered lungs. So he cast it aside, and once again began to weep. Michael stood with his back to the body of his dead son, and stared out across the rolling green ocean stretching out in front of him, punctuated by regular markers of death. There were no tears now; he had none left to give. He knew now it would not help to cry. He knew he would never get ‘closure’. He turned, this time alone, to face the graves of his family. He remarked on their passing to himself. A fire and a car accident. His son had been drunk. It was the last in a chain of mad stunts. Michael blamed his constant restraint and protection. To him, his grave was here now too. This time, there was no cigarette.