Orion

Red Hot Madness!
Jul 23, 2017 · 3 min read

Laura gushed through the stairwell, tears streaming down her grief-laden face. She hastily wiped them away with the back of her palm. Her world was shaking and was falling apart. Bit by bit. She wasn’t looking where she was going, just pushing herself to climb every step and getting to the roof.

She pushed the rickety door, which led to the roof, all the way, in the hope to displace the hurt in her. She knew it was futile and the thought of it upset her even more.

The cries and the grief were getting uncontrollable. For someone who had to be in control of every action and consequence, Laura had let go of every sane string she was holding on to.

The pain and the hurt suffocated her. The emptiness around made it worse.

She looked up to the night sky. A stray cloud hovered up above; here and sometimes there.

It was a cold November night. She grasped at the railing and looked up, once again the breathlessness from excessive crying getting to her. Time had slowed down. But the grief seemed to keep up.

Her strength and her vulnerability were up in arms against each other and she was the collateral damage.


Laura’s life had turned upside down, pivoting to the hopelessness since the last two weeks. It all started with ending her eight-year old relationship with Clive. She had promised herself she wouldn’t cry. She didn’t.

This was followed by the suicide of two of her close friends. How was she to deal with this? She was getting tired of the comforting, the memory flashes and hours of staring into their names on her phone. The sound of silence, indeed is the loudest.

Laura’s folks and friends wondered if she was okay, and she always did respond with an affirmation and a bleak smile. Believable to many. Even to herself.

Today was no different.

But sometimes, something as harmless as an empty room blows the lid off of your sanity. It finally did happen.

All the buried and ignored hurt and ache, all of it gushed out, like someone had opened the floodgates to her dormant emotions.


Laura looked back up at the night sky. She was searching for a pattern. A cluster. A constellation. Orion.

She couldn’t find it. She scanned the entire sky that was visible to her now puffed and moist eyes.

She walked and then swiftly hopped to the other end of the roof to get a different view. Still no Orion. She knew she was looking at her panic button go off.

Laura, while she was young, the constellation of Orion in the night sky helped her through many hopeless nights and lonely times. Over time, it became one of the threads of her sanity. Something about the stars, their placement and pattern comforted her. It was ironic, really. Something so far and away was the pacer to her feeble heart. Looking at the night sky, finding Orion and an instant smile made her world all right. Absolutely all right.

And now, she couldn’t find her sanity. Her Orion.

Hidden, but never gone. She knew she’d find it someday when she would look a little harder, breathe life into the memories of an ancient encounter. Know her Orion again.


20 July 2017

My Orion has been Chester Bennington. His music has been the thread to my sanity and a million others. He’s gone, but never forgotten.

I miss you Chester. More than my feeble heart can handle. Thank you for everything! Farewell.

Red Hot Madness!

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I dark fiction to brighten your day.

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