Thilo's Crusade For Justice

The quiet, the calm, when I step out of the alleyway and onto the street. The world is still here, but for a moment it seems to be next to an open window, listening to distant music. It's a small thing, just some birds, the rustle of leaves in the wind that has grown stronger since morning.

It's still early and already the sun is warm on my face. In this city, you can feel the rain before it falls. The clouds linger over the spires and hills, not quite ready to give up their water. If they did, they would be gone too soon, so they hang around in grey curtains waiting for the afternoon.

I close my eyes. I can smell the dust and damp of last night's rain as it evaporates into droplets of moisture in the air. This town is two thousand years old, but new buildings are rising above their ruins every day. There are people who say they can see ghosts in those walls like drifting shadows, but I don't believe them. Those ghosts are just people passing by at night or caught in the corner of your eye when you're looking elsewhere.

When I open my eyes again, I'm walking towards her house. The sun is climbing higher now, making deep shadows where I know it will be cool and dark later when I return from visiting her grave. The house is old too, a little way down the street and past another building with a sign that says "Beer." This was our last stop before we went back to her house to finish what had started in her bedroom one hot summer afternoon three months ago. Our house was only a few blocks away from here, but today every step takes me further away from it and that makes me feel uneasy.

I left home before dawn and made my way through the city streets until I found what I was looking for: a narrow alleyway on which no one ever walks at night. When she died, she left me with more than just memories; there was blood on one wall of that alley when I found her body in the morning and more blood on her door when I went back to check on her late that night and again first thing in the morning when we said goodbye to my sister before sending her body out into space on its way to join all those who had died before her. But that's not why I'm here now; she won't mind if I'm a little late or that I didn't write yesterday as promised because there were things I had to do before I could sit down at my writing table again and articulate how it felt to stand by her grave and feel those tears run down my face as if they weren't mine after all but part of something larger that had always been there but was never noticed until now.

The sun is still high overhead when I reach her house and knock on the door three times as quietly as possible so that no one will hear me except for him, who must have heard me because he opens the door within seconds and stands there looking down at me with those eyes that have haunted me ever since his trial ended nine months ago with a sentence of life imprisonment instead of death by hanging. Sometimes death seems like such a small price to pay for what he did to my sister that day, but then life is a long time when you're stuck inside four thick walls with only your thoughts for company. Today, however, is different because we're both free men for a little while anyway. He doesn't have to worry about being careful anymore, although he won't be leaving this room today or any other day anytime soon either because most people hate him these days, even though some still like me better than him.