The Catch

by T.M. Logan

People only see what they are prepared to see.

And that was when it hit me. A jolt of nervous static right at the top of my spine, a shiver, as if someone had just walked over my grave. Something shifting in the air between us, vibrating like a plucked string. It was primal, visceral. An ancient instinct that would have warned a stone age hunter there was a wolf crouching in the shadows, ready to pounce. You can’t see the danger, or smell it, or hear it. But you sense it, as the fine hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

I loved them so much, sometimes it was like an ache deep in my chest.

There’s a void behind his eyes, something hidden there, something bad.

I didn’t want to forget how fragile everything was – life, happiness, family – all of it paper-thin. So thin that anything could tear it into ragged shreds.

The fear was constant, jangling around in her veins like an electric current she couldn’t switch off.

‘Everyone has their breaking point, Mrs Collier. Most of us won’t even know where ours falls until we’ve already crossed it.’

Scientists called it acute stress disorder: the brain basically went into a freeze mode where it became detached, numb, with reduced awareness of its immediate surroundings. The common denominator in people who tend to surrender to death like lambs when things go badly, catastrophically wrong.

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

‘No one actually knows anyone, do they? Not really. They think they know, or they know what the other person’s willing to show them, but they don’t truly know them. It’s impossible. The only person you can truly know is yourself.’

Life is a city of crooked streets, death the marketplace where all men meet.