Tristan sat in perfect stillness in the old wooden chair.  A stranger walking into the room would scarcely have noticed the micro-movements of his shoulders, rising and falling.  A friendly soul would not have perceived movement of his muscular chest and trim stomach. He was statuesque to the observing eye, but inside, he was a volatile scene of things tumbling, and careening, and heaving, and thundering and crashing into themselves.

Inside, he stood, grasped the old wooden chair firmly by its back, and heaved it through the single-pane window.

Inside, after he had thrown the chair, he moved to his left and grasped the back of the dresser with both strong hands, and drove in into the floor, shattering it to splinters.

Inside, after tossing the chair, and destroying the dresser, he pulled the curtains from the window frame, took the matches from his pocket, and set them ablaze.  He then lit another match, and set the flame to the sheets on the bed.  In minutes, the flames on the bed joined those from the curtains on the floor as Tristan stood nearby, feeling the raging heat from the growing inferno in front of him.  He smiled slyly, and mischievously, and watched as his handiwork consumed the compartment where it was created, while he took several slow stride towards the door.

The ring and little fingers on Tristan’s right hand twitched slightly upward, then repositioned themselves on the armrest where they had previously rested.  That split second of movement was the only break in the otherwise completely placid scene.

Tristan stared at the wall.  It was a hard, long, and intense stare.  It was the kind of stare that puts a man at a distance from himself.  It was the kind of stare that burned a hole in the wall, though its intent was miles away.  It was a stare that opened a window into his own soul, though it appeared directed across oceans.

Tristan’s gaze did not waver for many heavy minutes.  It didn’t waver at the half hour mark.  And it was nearly an hour before a flicker of light chanced through the curtains, and caught his eye.

Tristan slowly lowered his eyelids, breathed a count of three, and opened his eyes.  He could sense what others would see if they were sharing the room with him.  He could feel the chaos in his mind manifesting itself in the rapidly shifting colors in his pupils.  An outside observer would have noticed the prismatic flicker of colors sparking and shifting from green to red to yellow to purple, back to green, and then to blue, never settling too long on one color.  The directionless, senseless shifts made it so that any sense of prolonged focus was impossible.  He once again tried to shut his eyelids, but the firework burst of rainbow colors practically stung his retinas.  He opened them, and flares of neon and strobes of pastel streamed across his vision.

Tristan took a deep, very noticeable, breath.  He folded his hands together and placed them on his lap.  He looked down at his hands, switched the position of his fingers to interlace, and pressed them so deeply into each other that the normally pink-hued flesh, turned white.  He closed his eyes one more time, and when he opened them, the shifting stopped, and converged.  His vision went completely black, and for just a moment he felt that he had gone blind.

But a warm, grey light appeared, and shapes began to take form in front of him.  There was a thick-truncked tree in the dark grass in front of him.  It rose about ten feet, before, like the hunched back of an old man, bending sharply to the left, then broadly spreading its leafless, ashy limbs towards the sky.  A tall tree formed from the shadow to his left.  It was a great deal taller than the first, perhaps thirty or forty feet, straight towards the sky in its ascent, limbs also devoid of leaves.

Pale moonlight accentuated the trees, and then Tristan noticed the thick, dark grass upon the ground.  It was wet, and Tristan saw a pearl-sized moon in the droplets of water on the grass. Then he heard the rain.

It was a rain of the pleasant, tolerable sort.  It was the type of rain that doesn’t soak one to the bone in an instant, nor is it simply a mist.  It was the kind of rain that doesn’t require rain gear and galoshes, but also would necessitate an umbrella to not quickly become slightly damp.

Tristan felt himself pulled forward towards the trees.  He made no effort to resist, though part of him knew that such an attempt would be futile.  He knew his hand was in hers as his bare feet impressed upon the soft, wet grass.  He took exactly eight steps, and then turned, his right arm instinctively wrapping around her waist, his left caressing her body down from her shoulder to where it found its natural resting spot, on her waist.

As if it had been practiced a thousand times, his lips found hers in the dark.  They savored the sweetness of each other’s taste as the length of the kiss drew out.  The rain continued to soak their clothes, and eventually, made its way through to cool and dampen their skin.  The connection continued as their lips refused to part, intensity, passion, contentment, joy, and love, the adhesives that kept their mouths together.

The moon doused this intimate scene with an ethereal, magical light, but Tristan knew it would not last.  Pinpricks of unwelcome reds and greens burst through the grass.  Shimmers of purples and yellows occurred in the trees.  And the moon became splotchy with blues and oranges.  Having already withdrawn from the kiss, Tristan glanced about as the scene broke apart into kaleidoscopic chaos around him.

In the room, Tristan dug his nails into the arms of the chair, forced his eyes shut, and shook his head back and forth violently, trying to loosen the memory from the hold it had in his mind.  His stopped shaking his head abruptly, clenched his teeth, and uttered a frustrated growl.

Tristan then rose quickly, grabbed the base of his shirt, and pulled it up over his head.  He clenched it in one hand, stepped forward, and flung it against the wall.  He crossed the room determinedly, and entered the bathroom.

Tristan picked up the knife that lay on the counter, and took another long deep gaze into the mirror.  The scars from the time before mocked him.  He glared at the painful reminders with disgust, knowing he was going down the same road now.

Tristan knew he couldn’t handle this many more times.  He vowed he wouldn’t be at this point again.   He had so much to do, more to experience, and even more to accomplish. Yet, here he was, about to reopen the old scars.

He couldn’t continue to suffer these effects. Tristan knew there was no choice.

Slowly, he brought the knife to his chest, and pressed it into his flesh.

To be continued…….