When She Took The Train Home

And it wasn't as though he didn't know that all he had to do was to pick up a telephone or to log onto the internet but somehow, in this state he had worked himself into, he just sort of forgot. He stood on the station platform, waving at the departing train until it dipped over the curvature of the earth and beyond his eye-line. Given how tall he was, this was a longer visual departure than for most men, but it wasn't as though it lasted that much longer so that he might feel better by the end of it, as if time would do it's healing by the time that train had gone; quite the opposite. He sighed into the empty platform, and along with his recent happiness, the sun departed, leaving him with clouds of gloom and uncertainty.

He scuffed his feet along the concrete as he made his way out of the station and, without any conscious thought, took the bus out into the countryside instead of to his house. His head was beginning to fill up with sounds, but not those of the diesel engine of the bus, or the screaming child at the ice-cream parlour where he alighted, but instead with his own voice saying things:

I can't believe she has gone. How will I go on? Can I really go on living here alone? Is this really what I want? Are these circumstances the best or should I change them? Do I just accept what is going on or do I change them? She is gone now. Shit. She is gone now. Oh fuck, I am lonely. She has gone home and I am still here.

The sounds stopped as, suddenly the real life sound of the running water, the singing birds crept in through his ears. For just a few moments he listened and smiled, looking at the river, and then the voice started up again and he began to frown.

This is where she made me paddle. This is where she made me take off my socks! I haven't taken my socks off outdoors for anyone ever. This is where she made me paddle. This is where I was happiest. This is where she was.

And he began to cry. Through sobbing, audible gulps and whines, he collapsed down on the bank of the river and began violently pulling off his shoes and socks.
"JESSIE!!" he cried out.
"JESSIE!!"
And he threw his shoes toward a rock and a mother sheltered her young son away from the crazy man as they watched him run into the water. His great frame; clumsy and awkward and pathetic. He was splashing the water around with his feet at first and as he moved into the deeper water he started to bend down and swoop at it with cupped hands. He was crying harder now, with real tears falling from his eyes.
"JESSIE" he screamed over and over again above the sound of the water.

Needless to say all of the birds had left in fright and the mother and her young son did the same. A few passers by were quoted as having seen "some sort of lunatic crying in the water" and "a giant man dressed in black throwing water at the sky" until well into the setting sun. The river, with the tears of this heartbroken madman, had begun to swell. The police sergeant in charge of the scene had said in the press conference the next day "It's really only his extraordinary height that kept him alive for so long. But even a man as tall as he, could not survive the kind of depths he was dealing with. His tears were more than he was tall, and in the end, that is what killed him."