Sisyphus
an excerpt

He imagined how it had been. She would be sitting across from him at the kitchen table, and they'd just sit there looking at each other and sipping coffee. And hers would have cream and sugar and his wouldn't. And she would giggle and he would put his hand in the middle of the table, and she would grab it and they'd just hold each other's hand. And that was love. Love was being able to have a conversation without saying anything. Love was holding hands and sipping coffee on a rainy morning where the sun would shine golden shafts of light through the foliage and reflect off blossoms falling from the trees. And Love was going to the store together to buy a gallon of chocolate milk at 3 in the morning. And Love was waking up in the morning and seeing her asleep, bathed in sunlight, with a peaceful smile on her face, and stroking her long, brown hair and giving her a kiss on the cheek and going to the kitchen to get breakfast ready. And Love was when they ate breakfast together, and it consisted of undercooked eggs and overcooked toast, but she didn't complain because he only made his mistakes out of affection for her. And they knew that they would never be apart because they were in Love… But Love was why Vincent cut his wrists and nearly died the night after she was taken. And Love was the reason he ended up with weekly appointments with Dr. Peterson. And Love was what put him on a Prozac regimen. And Love begat Hate. Hate for the people who took her from him. Hate for the world for doing what it had done to him that fateful. Hate for himself for not being able to stop it. And Hate begat Misery. And Misery was waking up in the morning and seeing no one by his side, and Misery was making coffee for one, and staring at his own reflection in the coffee. And Misery was looking at this black reflection in the coffee and having a wordless conversation with his own darkened self. And Misery was looking out the window on a dreary autumn morning where the leaves were all dying and blown away by the scornful north wind and where the grass was turning a sickly brown color and trees were reduced from majestic bearers of color to nothing but gnarled black branches. Misery was looking at this deathly scene called autumn and knowing that soon this scene would be completely devoid of any color at all. Even ugly colors would be gone and there would be nothing but black and white left. And he knew that without her he would eventually have no Love or Hate or Misery left in him and he would be reduced to a black-and-white shell of a self he would never know he had been. And Love was knowing the truth in this. And Love was not listening to Roy and "getting over it," because he knew he could not get over it. He would never get over it, and would continue to suffer for her, if only to keep with him his only connection to her. And that was love.
And Vincent was sitting at the table with his face in his hands, awash in emotion, bathed in the insincere sunlight of autumn.