Eloi! Eloi!

It's... A sad story. Most sad stories, you think it would be night time, or raining.
But no, it was hot and bright. A typical midday in August. A warm late-summer breeze was pushing the first few dead leaves across the pavement. I had gone out for a walk to take my mind off of Chinese studies for a while.

I saw the woman sitting, slumped on the ground. Her shoulders were trembling, and at first I thought she was laughing, but I wish that were the case.

She was wearing ripped jeans, with suntouched red hair falling over her brown-skinned shoulders and piercings in her nose and lip. Her white tank top was stained with dirt and what could have been makeup.

And then I heard her crying... No, weeping. Such bitter weeping. She was sobbing as though every good thing had been taken from her, and every loving person had either died or deserted her. I barely heard her words through her heaving and retching, and through her tears I heard her wailing,

"ELOI!!! Eloi, lama sabachthani?!"

Her eyes were shut so tightly that I thought I saw blood stream from them, but her makeup was running down her face. She was pounding at the concrete with her fists until they were bloody, with her face towards the sky, asking again,

"Lama sabachthani?! ELOI!!!"

In her words I heard years of pain, I heard the crying of children and the buzz of locusts. She was screaming so loudly that a small trickle of dark blood slipped down her upper lip, staining her teeth.

No one around seemed to hear her-- Only me. I screamed, "This woman needs help! Somebody HELP!" But I couldn't move my feet, I couldn't look away. The cars kept driving, the shoppers kept rolling their red little carts to their cars and unpacking their groceries. No one noticed-- Or no one cared.

She continued to scream at the clouds until a young man walked up to her slowly. He was wearing jeans frayed and ripped at the knees, with a black beater shirt shiny with blood pouring from his nose. His palms were dripping blood, chapped and raw from rubbing against the streets and as he knelt down beside her he left deep red hand prints on his pants.

He whispered some inaudible phrases to her before he walked away, leaving a single round, black stone in front of her.

She took the stone and rubbed it in her blood-covered palms, whispering to herself before she erupted into another fugue of agony. Again the old words spouted from her lips, and I could only watch as my own tears began pouring. After too long I couldn't take it any more and I stumbled home, breathing too heavily the whole way.

I never knew what blade had pierced that woman, but I will never be able to forget the agony in her wailing. Hell itself could have pitied her.

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Thanks for reading. Stay human, my friends.