Short Fiction · Mathilda 9 (9/13) (2/2)

Before I see another day

Oh, let this body die away!

Let me not be reproached then with inutility; I believed that by suicide I should violate a divine law of nature, and I thought that I sufficiently fulfilled my part in submitting to the hard task of enduring the crawling hours and minutes59⁠—in bearing the load of time that weighed miserably upon me and that in abstaining from what I in my calm moments considered a crime, I deserved the reward of virtue. There were periods, dreadful ones, during which I despaired⁠—and doubted the existence of all duty and the reality of crime⁠—but I shudder, and turn from the rememberance.