The rain poured relentlessly, a cold, biting torrent that plastered Silas’s clothes to his skin and turned the ground beneath him to mud. It drummed against his back and drowned out the muffled cries of the others who had gathered nearby, helpless witnesses to the worst moment of his life.
Silas cradled the lifeless body of his best friend, his arms wrapped around the still-warm form as though he could shield it from the storm. Blood soaked through his shirt, sticking it to his chest, smearing his hands, painting his trembling fingers in cruel streaks of red.
“Wake up,” he rasped, his voice barely audible over the rain. His throat felt like it had been torn raw, every word scraping against his vocal cords. His chest heaved, his breaths coming in shallow gasps, his body shaking uncontrollably. “Please… *please, God, wake up.*”
The body didn’t move.
Silas’s eyes were wide, unblinking, locked on the pale, slack face in his arms. His tears mingled with the rain, streaming down his cheeks in a torrent that matched the storm above. He couldn’t feel anything but the weight of his friend in his lap—the unbearable, unnatural stillness of it.
“No, no, no, no, no,” he whispered, the words tumbling out in a frantic mantra. He shook his friend gently, then harder, his hands gripping their shoulders, his voice rising until it cracked. “You can’t do this to me! You can’t *leave me!*”
The first sob hit him like a punch to the chest, doubling him over, forcing a scream from his lungs that echoed across the empty street. It was raw, animalistic, a sound ripped from the deepest, darkest part of his soul.
The others froze where they stood. Some flinched, others turned away. No one dared to approach.
Silas clutched his stomach as the sobs overtook him, his entire body convulsing with the force of his grief. He pressed his forehead against his friend’s blood-soaked chest, his cries muffled but no less devastating. “I can’t do this,” he choked out, barely able to breathe through the violent hitching of his chest. “Don’t leave me alone, please. Please, I’m begging you!”
The rain plastered his dark hair to his face, droplets trailing down his temples and mixing with the tears that wouldn’t stop coming. His screams started again, tearing through the night like thunder. Each one felt like it came from somewhere deeper, somewhere he hadn’t even known existed until now.
His hands moved to his own head, clawing at his scalp, gripping his hair as he screamed, the sound rising and falling in waves of unbearable agony. He slammed his fist into the mud, over and over, the wet earth splattering across his arms, his knuckles splitting open, but he didn’t care. He didn’t feel it. All he could feel was the weight of the body in his lap, the emptiness where there had once been life.
His breath came in choking gasps, his sobs so loud and forceful they seemed to shake the very air around him. He threw his head back, rain pouring into his open mouth as he let out another scream—a sound so piercing, so devastating, that the others instinctively covered their ears.
“Don’t leave me!” he screamed again, his voice cracking, breaking under the weight of his grief. His fingers curled into the bloodied fabric of his friend’s shirt, pulling them closer, shaking them as if he could will them back to life. “You’re not supposed to leave me! We were supposed to—” His voice broke, collapsing into shuddering sobs that wracked his entire body.
He couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t think beyond the unbearable, suffocating pain that threatened to swallow him whole.
Silas collapsed forward, his forehead pressing against his friend’s as his body trembled uncontrollably. The rain continued to fall, washing away the blood on his hands but never enough, never fast enough to erase what had been done. His cries grew quieter, hoarse and broken, his voice nearly gone. But the sobs didn’t stop. They came in waves, each one hitting harder than the last, each one stealing the air from his lungs until he thought he might pass out.
His shoulders shook as he whispered over and over through his tears, “Please don’t leave me. Please. I can’t do this without you. Please come back…”
The world around him faded into the background. The rain, the thunder, the muted sobs of the others—they didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. There was only the lifeless body in his arms and the unbearable, soul-shattering pain consuming him from the inside out.
And when the last scream tore from his throat, a sound so anguished it made the others cry out in unison, Silas collapsed completely, his body folding over his friend’s as the storm raged on around him, Silas in the rain cradling his best friend's lifeless body. Intense emotional scene with grief and pain. Blood on clothes and mud beneath. Surrounding figures are distant and blurred. Dark and somber mood
