Proud Dead Man Walking

It's the kind of smug-face only the defeated can wear. After all, he can't afford to wear his loss on his sleeve. That would have been twice the defeat.

But inside his head, the monsters are alive and could not be silenced: "How could you have done it?" "Do you still have a face to show?" "You let us down."

He will try not to listen, however glaring the mistake is.

"I am protected. I am safe. They will take the cudgels for me" he tells himself, thinking of his friends.

He walks on. But there is no shadow.

Dead men don't have them.