Despair splayed her heft languidly against the nothingness that decorated her halls. The not-floor is damp from the heavy mist, and she relished at the dew forming between the folds of her skin. Today, she would observe pain. Just as she always had for millenia.
The mirror for today was of a small set of three; a rear view mirror and two side ones of a small bus of sorts. In the slums of Manila, they called it a jeepney. This one in particular was driven by a Domingo Rosales. The man was old, with a belly bloated from beer and a towel over his sweaty forebrow.
It soon became time to sink hook into her skin. Poke, snag, pull, she did not feel its pain. Instead, there was heat.
It came at once, like her skin was his skin, his heart, her heart. She felt the scourge of the sun on her face and the buzz of the engine under her seat. She heard the horns and the yelling and the whispering and the coins. She smelled the smoke, the pollution that littered the very air of this city. She tasted the dryness in his mouth, his throat growing hoarse as he called out for payments. One by one, she counted the math of pennies as passengers paid their fares. So menial the task, the man survived through days of traffic simply to feed his shining son.
His son. His son. He had not hit his son yet. He would kill him soon. But not yet. He did not even know yet that his son would skip school today to play some silly game in an arcade across town. That would all happen in a few hours, when his frustration from the traffic would cause him to speed through a red light. She already saw how it must come to pass.
Despair's work was poetry, and it was something the others did not comprehend. The other Endless had such glorious tasks; to weave dreams or collect souls or play games. But her task was to observe. To remember. To feel. To be so intimate with humanity, she knew the way their skin tingled and hair raised like animals nearing a trap.
Despair understood mankind. That must have been why they killed her.
She sat content in the liminal, between states of life, in the unreality of dreams, the dissatisfaction of desire, the wake of destruction, the mourning of death. Always a little before and always a little after. She wasn't the most eternal of her siblings, but she was the most perpetual. It was a shame she would not see them go.
Then, the mirror shattered— and Despair smiled. Finally, she thought, I shall watch a crash from a thousand sides.
