I took the larch cure and vomited it up again.
I heard a dull thunk. A dull thunk behind the basement door. The dull thunk of a thing grown weary of beating its head on the door waiting for the truth of some exit to birth itself whole from the head like a goddess of love who could never be born, never leave its hard clam shell skull. A dull thunk.
All the lights had gone out and I stood in the doorway a long while, adjusting my eyes to the dim light. The door rattled as if it might one day give up its slim restraint beneath the pounding. I held my hand on the knob to read the intention behind its vibrations.
What did I expect? Her driven mad with darkness, loneliness and bitterness? Or the last beats of her heart thrown out of her body in dull spasms? Or hunger? Or her empty cage of a body caught in its last instructions, damned to pound until it split its skull and dashed all its brains out, pounding sharp shards of bone into the sponge of last visions.
I held the knob till I could bear it no longer. I flipped the latch. I turned the key. I twisted the knob with all a man's mastery of simple things. I was a man again after all. I knew the cure for whatever ill aggrieved us. We just needed a larch to live again.