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Was it over yet?
Of course it was.
Dazai could feel it in the recesses of his mind. The part he shared with one Fyodor Dostoevsky was now a ringing in his ear and a warm, bloody drip down the curve of his jaw. A murmur in his heart, backflow in his veins. Not the sharp and instant pain of being gutted as he wished it to be, the type of pain you find dull pleasure in among the ache.
This stupor had him failing to recognize the crying and the gunshot, the gas smell in the French night air, the sirens, the screams, the way he was called to maybe thrice and left on the landing, and the sturdy grips of guards around his arms.
How long had he stood?
It mattered not.
“Osamu Dazai, is it?”
There was a shooting cramp in his neck. Must’ve had his head on his shoulder again. And a sore on the inside of his lip. Bitten ‘til he tasted copper. A rude hammering of auditory sensation from both sides, words he didn’t even process as words. Just sounds in his oh-so empty head.
It was lonely now.
No clarity in his thoughts beyond the feeling of absence.
“Do you know where you are?”
Hunger. Thirst. His skin itched but his hands wouldn’t scratch it. Not necessarily because he physically could not do so in handcuffs, but the muscles wouldn’t allow it. How long does it take for muscle degeneration to set in? He would’ve smiled at the offhand thought, but nobody was there to share it with.
So there was no point.
So his jaw hung at rest and his lips grew a seal.
“Such a dangerous person, and he’s practically a ragdoll.”
Isn’t what they said about Al Capone in Alcatraz? Except he was at the end of syphilis’ rope. Dazai was far from those circumstances. Yet reduced to nothing all the same.
And why hadn’t he died?
Why hadn’t he been the one to end it all?
It’s simply bad manners to finish someone’s game. To take his gambit and make it theirs. Violating, almost.
There was a spot unfinished. Wax on paper refusing to let the spec it creates be stained.
And it was maddening.