THE SUN THAT WILL SHINE TOMORROW

BY SAYDHAR BILKIS

"A man who is a master of patience

 is master of everything else"

   

 Stevie wondered why he woke up that morning, if he had known that the sole purpose of his waking up would be a disaster, he would have flirted with his sheets till they took him back into the loving arms of sleep. What had his therapist said the other day? ‘stay positive’. Like that was an easy thing to do.

    He scanned the email one last time and decided to delete the email that proved he was once again a failure. He couldn't even get a job at a volunteering center, then what good was he?. This was the 78th bad thing that had happened to him in two months. And he had been counting because when things keep happening in a sequence of disappointments you count the times you've willed yourself to be patient. 

    So when you finally decide to let all hell loose, to God you have a number of the times you let things passed. At least that's what Stevie tells himself anytime he raises a pen to the white paper of ‘my patience is running’ stuck by a 50 cent magnet to his refrigerator. A magnet that was the only visible proof he was ever married, as it was the only thing his gold digger of an ex-wife left when she ran away with all his money and a 20-year-old college boy. Talk about rubbing it in his face, the boy was everything he wasn't. He was 18years younger, way out of his league handsome, wasn't suffering from an eating disorder, was fertile and his family did not consider him useless as Stevie's did.

"Endurance is not just the ability 
to bear a hard thing,
 but to turn it into glory"

    Stevie had spent the whole day lamenting over his incompetence to do anything right, or at least to attract a speck of good luck to come his way. He has been short on those lately. His microwaved burrito stayed unattended to by his side as he flipped through the manuscript he has been trying to get publishers to publish for the past two years. The book was titled ‘The Sun That Will Shine Tomorrow', how ironic as it feels he has been living in an entire world of his own, one that only knew storms and cloudy days but blatantly ignorant to the sun. He was still combing through it when his eyes caught something, the ending to chapter 11, which said ‘in the end, what do we live for?’ at the time he wrote it, it meant something happy but now, it means a whole lot different to him now.

    The phrase kept repeating itself like a mantra in the tiny cubicle of his brain. What do I  live for now? He thought, nothing. So what was the point of even living? He had nothing to look forward to, no family, no wife, no job, no friends, not even money. So what exactly was he living for?. After 4hours of thorough thinking, Stevie got up from his chair, he was a man with a purpose, he had decided that he had nothing to live for so why suffer, they say death was a sweet escape and he was a man craving anything sweet, in any way it would come. Stevie did not allow himself think any further or look too long at anything in case it made him emotional and changed his mind from what he was about to do, what needed to be done. What he should have done a long time ago.

    He walked into his darkly lit kitchen and strolled to the cabinet, he purposefully withdrew the long steel knife and willed himself not to think of the pain what he was about to do would cause. Vegetables don't feel the pain when they are sliced and at that moment, he was a vegetable. Without thinking twice, he plunged the knife into his stomach and screamed, his vision got so blurry he could not see the pool of crimson around him, he could not perceive the stink of copper. And there Steve Johnson dropped to his knees and took his final breath. In the end, what do you live for?

    It was 8:00 am and Peter had just sat down behind his office desk when his phone rang.

‘Hello’ he spoke into the receiver

‘Hello, is this Mr. Keating’s office?’ a woman answered

‘yes, this is Susan from Potter’s publishing house. I am calling in respect of a client of yours, a Mr. Steve Johnson. My publishing house went over his manuscript and are interested in publishing it. Please, could you speak to your client and get back to us?

‘y- yes of course. I’d be delighted to’ Peter could not believe his joy, he could not hide his astonishment that after all these years, Stevie's book was finally getting published.

‘Thank you and have a nice day Mr. Keating’ Susan said and the phone went off before he could reply. 

    He only allowed himself a minute before he shouted to his secretary ‘Lucie, get Stevie on the phone. Today is a good day for both of us’ he was already spinning around his office. A few minutes later Lucie walks in, phone in hand and face as cold and white as death.

Peter grabs her hand and begins to spin her along ‘ why so gloom Lucie? Didn't you hear me, today is a good day’ he yelled again

‘S-Stevie is dead’ she stuttered

‘Yes, and he just got his book published’ he joked

"Be strong enough to let go and
 patient enough to wait for what you deserve"

‘Stevie is dead Peter’ she screamed ‘he committed suicide’. Maybe it was the tears rolling down her face that convinced him to believe her or he too felt it. The coldness, people alive feel when a loved one dies. But he says nothing after, he just slid into his seat. He couldn't ask why or how. Questions like that don't matter anymore, he was already dead.

‘But why on Earth did you kill yourself, Stevie? Didn't you say the sun will shine tomorrow?’ was all he could muster, questions, weren’t they all that’s ever left when people take their lives. And he wasn't waiting on a reply. Dead people don't talk, but do they regret? If they did, then Steve Johnson where ever he is was in an ocean of it. Because tomorrow had come and the sun is shining so bright, but Stevie is absent.