Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

“Then do it. I don’t know what’s happened to cause this regression, but I
don’t like it.”
“And you think screaming into nothing will make me feel better.”
Hugo shrugged. “What could it hurt?”
Wallace sighed before joining Hugo at the railing. He felt Hugo’s gaze on
him as he looked up toward the stars. He’d never felt smaller than he did at
that moment. It hurt more than he cared to admit.
“Do it,” Hugo said quietly. “Let me hear you.”
He wondered when the threshold had been crossed that he couldn’t refuse
Hugo anything.
So he screamed as loud as he could.
He put everything into it he had. His parents, telling him he was an
embarrassment. His mother, taking her last breaths, his father next to him,
though he felt like a stranger. When he died two years later, Wallace didn’t
shed a tear. He told himself he’d cried over them long enough.
And Naomi. He’d loved her. He really had. It hadn’t been enough, and she
didn’t deserve what he’d turned into. He thought about the last good days
they had, when he could almost convince himself that they’d make it work.
It’d been foolish to think that way. The death knell had already sounded,
they’d just ignored it for as long as they’d been able to in hopes that it wasn’t
the end. They went to the coast, just the two of them, a couple of days away
from everything. They held hands on the drive there, and it was almost like
it’d used to be. They laughed. They sang along with the radio. He had rented
a convertible, and the wind whipped through their hair, the sun shining down.
They didn’t talk about work or children or money or past arguments. Deep
down, he had known this was it, the last chance.
It hadn’t been enough.
They had made it a single day before they were fighting again. Wounds he
long thought scarred over reopened and bled again.
The car ride back was silent, her arms folded defensively. He ignored the
tear that trickled down her cheek from underneath her sunglasses.
A week later, she served him with divorce papers. He didn’t fight it. It
was easier this way. She’d be better off. It was what they both wanted.
He’d drowned, unaware that he’d slipped beneath the surface.
And so here, now, he screamed as loud as he could. Tears prickled his
eyes, and he was almost able to convince himself they came from the