Hold the Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

right. Nathaniel always knew what to say to make everything better. He was always planning for the long term. Mural wished he had that kind of foresight. The present was all he had counted on for so long; it was all he could ever count on. It was the only time he felt alive.

    "I will come back on my leave and start my new life here, with my wife and brother. The war can wait. I will spend December here."

    The two wrapped in a hug and agreed. Two things they hadn't done in ages.

    "I'll see you in three months then," Nathaniel said as they parted.
    That day was the most of Mural's past that he ever wanted to revisit. That day marked the beginning of the end. Ever since that day, his every attempt to make pleasure, his every hope, had turned into pain. Everything he thought wonderful turned out to be terrible. It was all or nothing, Mural learned that from the war, so he chose all. But nothing chose him.

    It killed him to even think about the days after that one, so many good intentions and nothing but bad to show for it. Mural blocked it all out from his memory and remembered the war instead. Everything was simpler then. It was pure and simple survival. Once the fighting stopped things got complicated again. Their country was free and Mural paid for that freedom heavily. Mural wasn't a farmer or a banker; he was a killer and knew it. Once the war was over and there were no more enemies, Mural adopted a completely new purpose, one that was the problem and the solution.

    It began for Mural when he embraced his color-blindness. His eyes and heart, at some point during the revolution, both saw in coarse black and white with shades of gray. He often wondered if it was his values, or even his soul, filtered out the good and the bad, coming to rest on the oh-so gentle and forgiving gray. But as time passed Mural's morals, the lines he drew in the sand, disappeared like they did in the war, while his new purpose harmonized with the black and white he saw in.

    And shortly after the war ended he began his familiar flirtation with violence again. It was all he knew. That violence would ring in his skull and cry out for nourishment. At times he would try to recall when these cries began, but it was like trying to remember the first time his stomach cried out for food.

    Mural's new purpose involved him sitting in the taverns that lined the streets of Boston with a pint and a plan. Women that hobbled out onto the cobblestone streets were the ones to fall into his web. Out on those dirty paths covered with lust and pain, he watched through the pub's window as whispers within his head told him which one to choose. Everyone within these taverns would laugh and chatter on as Mural clutched his head in agony, and the night only seemed to amplify these sounds in his head.

    Walking the streets in the day, the screams were lessened by sunlight it seemed and left him alone, as if to force him in a nocturnal life. He would lug his nearly seven foot tall frame along the streets, doggedly refusing to give in and become a creature of the night. But as soon as the sun set, nothing else but these women whispered in his mind. They enlightened him on the plights of the entire city. He would have thought all was right with the world after the revolution - after all the hard fought bloody battles, but these whispers told him that one fight was over and another was beginning.

    This city used to be so great, bustling with life, with carriages drawing ladies and gentlemen to the theater. Great ships lingered in the bay with sails shimmering in the moonlight and perfect clothes draped like curtains in the shops. But not anymore. Mural's beautiful city was going to Hell and he knew he had to fix it. No one would ruin his Boston. The air blew freshly free in this city of great heritage. War's stench still resonated on the people's minds and they lacked the stomachs to another war so soon. But not Mural. Corruption would not return, not in his