Since the rain was gone, all the summer noises had returned, chirping and singing through the night. I tried to focus on them instead of the words running through my mind. The ones that haunted my every waking moment and now my sleeping ones, too.
Don’t. Edy, please. Let me go.
Time passed slowly but it had passed. It took with it so much I knew about Phil, like his voice and the feel of his fingers on my cheek. Sometimes, I even swore that the image of his face that played in my dreams night after night was only a pale imitation of the perfect man that had walked into my greenhouse.
But time didn’t change those words. And it didn’t change my sorrow, still as fresh and new as the day I’d watched him die. Time only brought new ways of tormenting me.
This evening’s was a doozy.
It had begun as a nightmare. That wasn’t all that extraordinary, I dreamt of him often. But this one had been different, straying from the truth to a time of what could have been, where I’d forsaken what Phil had asked of me on my own selfish whims. He woke cursing my name, promising to hate me for as long as he still drew breath.
He'd been fully engrossed in choking the life out of me when I bolted upright in my makeshift bed of old flannel shirts and the tarp we’d found hanging over a junker in the back, sweat pouring over my skin.
It should have provided me some comfort. I’d done the right thing. Now, all there was to do was reap the consequences as they crept closer to pull me under. And the reminder was ever present, in the harsh breaths and whimpers that eased through the walls from my only companion, in the grey that blinded me when I thought too much, in the ache settling deep in my bones like I was turning to stone.
Lily would meet her end before I did. I hoped the prospect brought her some form of peace.
As I walked barefoot through the untamed wild, the sound of civilization gradually faded into existence. I must’ve walked a great deal further tonight than any other spent escaping my roommate. My first thought was to change course. Avoid them like I avoided everyone else, if not for my own self-imposed suffering than for protection. So long as my par…the pain shimmered in and I stopped the thought before it could yank me to the ground.
So long as they kept hanging my picture, along with the famous banner, Have You Seen Me? it wasn’t safe to show my face. Lily had estimated it would be another year before the circus of my disappearance died down enough to make a trip to the grocery store. I doubted it. They would never stop hoping. Never stop praying. Never stop looking.
Either way, it mattered very little to me. Whether one year or twenty or fifty, I would be long dead, succumbed to the grey and the pain and the fear.
Logic failed me. My feet moved steadily in the direction I’d taken up when I first left the shack. It was a task much more suited to distraction. If I looked down, I could make out the swing of the fronds of greenery blow in the breeze. If I looked up, the canopy of leaves separated enough to make way for the starry sky. While I took no joy in it like I might have in my former life, the wind caressed my face.
The sounds of faraway grew and, with them, my curiosity. Did people still look the same as they did when last I saw them? I chuckled to myself, despite the lack of humor. Of course they would. And they would disappoint in comparison to the face behind my eyelids, a face screwed up in pain as he bled out from a gunshot wound through his middle.
My throat swelled, constricting my airway so I had to, again, stop and lean on a nearby tree for support. I shouldn’t have strayed so far from the house. My mind always ran away with me on these walks, which never boded well for me. Sinking to the ground, I wondered idly if Lily would come looking for me if she didn’t see me in the morning, or if she was already too far gone to care.
I kept my sight enough to count the stars while I waited for the feeling to pass. Was there anything beyond that sky, like he’d told me? I liked to hope so, because there was no way Phil wouldn’t have made it up there. And that had to mean that he was watching me, pathetic in the dirt.
My teeth sank into my lip. Did it make me a lunatic to picture it? Did it make me like Lily to fade away into this delusion of angelic Phil watching over me like a guardian? The taste of blood brought me back to the precipice of reality.
“Phil?” I croaked through a throat that was dry from disuse. Only the crickets replied. “Can you hear me?”
It made sense that there would be no answer. What had I done to deserve a guardian angel?
Nevertheless, my mouth continued to rush around words, hoping beyond hope that I could win, just this once. “Please. If you’re there, can you give me a sign? A hint? Anything?”
Singing crickets. I sighed, ordering myself in vain not to cry. This was why I wasn’t allowed to hope. It only made the fallout that much worse.
Pulling myself to my feet, I wiped away the blooming tears with the back of my hand. I just had to shake it off. At least until I could make it back to the cabin, where a collapse meant a bad day, not a week lost in the woods. But I didn’t turn back. Like a magnetic pull, I gravitated further down the path, where the only hint of life beckoned.
As I drew closer, the sounds became less of a buzz of white noise, distinguishing themselves into varying timbres of boisterous laughter. Even through the melancholy pervading my person, I couldn’t help but find it…pleasant. Somewhere among the rips and tears and bruises within me, it soothed my pain.
Not entirely, of course. There would never come a time when I would be healed. But, like Novocain for a toothache, I could feel myself growing numb. My legs came to a standstill and, for the first time in months, I felt nothing. No pain. No fatigue. No fear.
Just…nothing.
The laughter continued on, interspersed with encouraging shouts and the occasional utterance of profanity. It felt like sunlight.
Until I took my first step closer and the familiar ache from my joints shot into my legs. I didn’t expect it and the shock took my breath away. Still, above the call of the pain, there came a greater insistence: the need to walk. I shifted every other thought onto the backburner and answered its call, forcing one foot in front of another in pursuit of that sound.
Their babbling grew into a dull roar before I was able to make out the shine of a floodlight through the breaks in the trees. Clinging close to the trunks, I kept enough of my wits to stay out of sight as I stalked. If I squinted hard enough, humanoid shapes took form against the heavy light, although, from here, their countenances looked like blank, black canvases. Each of them held a can in their hand, except for one who held two.
The sight of him sent the dizzying agony through me anew. He was tall, very tall, among a sea of men of humbler statures. His chest shook with his musical chuckles as he downed another long gulp from his first can and crushed it in his fist. Then he started on the second one to the soundtrack of his friends’ chanting:
“David! David! David!”
With a satisfied gasp, he broke free of his drink and crushed that can, too. Looking around at the others, he demanded, “Another!”
That voice reached me like I’d heard it in a dream. Driven by a mindless need, I eased closer to the strangers without even the pretense to duck behind the trees. They were so fully engrossed in their festivities, they wouldn’t notice the strange girl weaving through the shrubbery.
They looked younger than I’d expected when their faces came into view, too young to legally be drinking the beer they passed to their biggest friend. At least his size implied that he was a tad bit older, more on the side of college sophomore than high school freshman. Of course, my eye flew instantly to him, and I went still.
Even if I hadn’t been able to recognize the mere shape of him, the clean cut of white hair falling over his forehead reflected the floodlight. A soft jaw puckered around his third beer, just as round and perfect as he’d been months ago as he lay dying.
Phil.
And my dreams had been wholly flawed. That kind of perfect couldn’t be comprehended without
constant attention because it wasn’t human. And, while I would’ve drooled over that an eternity ago, now it just filled me with…warmth.
From the center of my chest to the tips of my fingers, pleasant, soothing warmth coursed through my body, driving away the aches and the cold as if it had never been there in the first place. A single glimpse down at my bare hand saw that I glowed. I glowed like the sun. To be full of life after so long devoid of it was a bliss so strong it made the world around me spin.
Stepping ever closer, I sought out his eyes, still scrunched up as he downed the whole can in a single gulp. Leaves crinkled and poked at my feet. For once, I felt them, just like I felt the pain of thorns in the soles of my feet, which had all gone unnoticed through the grey.
I didn’t care.
All that mattered was that I hold the sight of him in my gaze, knowing that the next thing I saw would be a pair of crimson eyes, opening to look on me with the same adoration I remembered. Maybe even more. If I’d gotten his face so wrong, how much had I underestimated every look and smile he’d shot my way?
But as he reared back from the can and opened eyes that shone like glass, a pair of vibrant blue irises turned from his loyal followers to the tree line. I couldn’t stop fast enough to avoid his stare as it fell on me. The last of my hopes crumbled as I saw those human eyes.
Utterly devoid of recognition.
The Amaryllis Page 26