The Eulogy of Us: Martin

On The Drive Home — Niki

The engine isn’t just dead; it’s a monument to everything we’ve murdered. We are parked at the end of the world—or at least, the end of this coast. The fog outside is thick enough to swallow the headlights, leaving us in a pressurized chamber of our own failures. Martin’s hands are shaking. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him lose control, and the sight of it is worse than any scream.

NIKI’s voice pours into the car, but it doesn’t sound like music anymore. It sounds like a funeral dirge.

“Love, keep your eyes on the road. 'Cause when I stare, all I see’s two foggy windows to a lost soul.”

He turns his head slowly, and the moonlight catches the wreckage in his eyes. He looks like a boy who has been hollowed out from the inside, leaving only a shell that still wears his face.

I. The Architecture of a Ghost Town

“Babe, can I build my home in your mind? A disheveled maze constellated and intertwined...”

“I’m still here, Martin," I say, my voice cracking, a jagged sound that tears through the silence. “I’m still trying to find a room in your head that isn’t locked. I’m still trying to build a home in your mind because the world outside is too cold to exist in without you. But look at us... you’ve boarded up the doors. You’ve painted the windows black. I’m screaming into a basement, and you’re acting like the house is empty.”

He laughs, a short, violent sound that makes him wince. “You want to live in here? Look at the ‘favorite view’ you’re so obsessed with. It’s all rot. It’s all debris. I am a walking graveyard of the things I promised you and never delivered. If you build a home in my mind, the ceiling is going to collapse on you while you sleep. I’m trying to save you from the rubble, and you’re begging me to let you stay.”

II. The Cold-Blooded Reality

“And drenched in alcohol and conceit, The cold-blooded bodies quick on their feet, Will tell you how to earn your stripes...”

He reaches over, not to touch me, but to grip the edge of the passenger seat as if he’s trying to anchor himself to the earth. “They’re going to tear you apart,” he whispers, his voice thick with a sudden, agonizing tenderness.— “The world doesn’t care about the way we felt in the library stacks. They’ll teach you how to be cold. They’ll teach you how to be like them. And one day, you’ll look back at this night, and you won’t even remember the sound of my voice. You’ll just be another person with ‘glistening eyes’ who learned that people like me are just lessons you had to unlearn.”

“I don’t want to learn how to be cold,” I sob, the air in the car turning sharp and frigid. “I want to be the person who sits here while the stripes on my back chip and dry. I’d rather be broken by you than be whole with anyone else. Why aren’t you listening? Why are you letting me go when you know that without you, I’m just a ghost haunting a body that doesn’t want to wake up tomorrow?”

III. The Final Driftwood

“And we’ll be two pieces of driftwood, Floating in a sea of missed calls and excuses.”

The silence stretches, agonizing and infinite. We are two people drifting toward a waterfall, and we’ve run out of hands to hold onto.

“I looked at my phone earlier,” he admits, his voice dropping to a tremor. “I saw six missed calls from you. I didn’t pick up. Do you know why? It wasn’t because I was busy. It was because I knew that if I heard your voice, I wouldn’t have the strength to kill this. I had to become the villain so you’d stop loving me. That’s the only way you’ll ever be free.”

“I don’t want to be free,” I scream, though the sound is swallowed by the fog. “I want to be yours! Even if it’s just four walls and a mini-fridge! Even if it’s just the crumbs of a life! I’d take the misery over this—I’d take the fighting over this empty, silent grave you’ve turned us into!”

IV. The Long Way Home

“So darlin’, let’s take the long way home.”

Martin reaches out, but he doesn’t touch my hand. He places his palm against the glass of the window, his fingers tracing the cold condensation. “There is no home,” he says, and he finally looks at me—one last, soul-shattering gaze that I will carry to my grave. “We took the long way home three years ago, and we’ve been lost ever since. I’m turning off the engine now, Martin. I’m done driving. I’m done pretending that I’m the hero of this story.”

He pulls the keys from the ignition. The soft click is the loudest sound I have ever heard. It’s the sound of the world ending.

“Don’t leave me here,” I beg, but he’s already opening the door. The cold night air rushes in, smelling of salt and finality.

“I’m not leaving you,” he says, stepping out into the fog. “I’m just finally leaving myself.” He slams the door. The sound echoes off the cliffs, a lonely, final punctuation.

I am left in the dark, the radio playing to an empty seat, the lyrics of Snow Patrol fading into the sound of my own heart breaking into pieces I know I’ll never be able to glue back together. The night is young, but for us, it is eternal, and it is entirely, devastatingly over.