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Moving On
Current mood: emotional!
Category: emotional! Writing and Poetry
I wrote this awhile ago, it is one of my first attempts at fiction.
Moving On
"Oh no", I said in disbelief. "Oh my God, what have I done?" I had just killed someone. Not just anyone. I had killed my own best friend.
"No, no, no, no, no. I didn't mean to do that!" I started to cry. How had this happened? How could I have let this happen? It was almost like I had blacked out. I remembered that I had been very, very angry and then there was a flash of red before my eyes. It was like a blood bath washing over me but it was only in my head. It had all happened so fast, like watching a movie on fast forward. It didn't seem real at all but it had to be because now there was a body. I checked her pulse and it was gone. I knew I should get out of there, that I should run as fast as I could and leave the scene of the crime but my legs refused to move. It was as though they were rooted to the ground. I felt suddenly hot and cold all over and then it was as though I was going numb. I almost felt like I was floating away from my body. It was the strangest sensation. But I couldn't leave.
Slowly it dawned on me that I was in a very bad neighborhood. The events leading up the murder were just as hazy as the crime itself. I was using again. Yeah that was it. I had been using so everything was hazy. Maybe I was still high and that was why I felt so weird. But it wasn't a good high, not at all. It was that slow insidious high that takes over your whole body. Like a flu that makes you achy, tired, and disconnected. I remember it didn't feel like I had wanted so I needed more. Maybe that was how we got here, we must have been copping. Something must have gone wrong. But I couldn't remember what had happened. All I knew was that I had done it. I had killed her, my own best friend. I was sure of it.
Tears streamed down my face as I looked around. It was really dark and there were all these strange people walking around. Some were muttering to themselves and didn't even seem to notice me. Some just stared blankly into space. They were creepy but I wasn't really scared of them. There were others who did scare me though. You would think with all the guilt I was feeling over what I had done I wouldn't have had any energy left to be scared but I was. There was a group of guys who had noticed me and were watching me intently. They all wore black like it was the official color of their gang uniform. Their clothes looked old and tattered and their eyes looked small and mean. The biggest one started to hiss at me and the others started to laugh. Then they all started to hiss like snakes. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a fire burning in an old abandoned building nearby. I knew I had to get out of there soon or something disastrous would happen to me but I just could not get my legs to move. I looked down and she was just lying there at my feet, my best friend. She looked so beautiful. I was so overwhelmed with remorse over what I had done, what I couldn't even remember doing. I wanted to take it back so badly with every fiber of my being.
"Please, please, please let me fix this" I prayed in a whisper, trying to ignore the men who were still hissing and calling to me. They started to circle me as though they were playing with me, taunting me. I was afraid but more than that I was devastated and I just couldn't bear to leave her. The police will be here any minute, I thought. The men were looking at her and looking at me, trying to figure out what was going on. They didn't even seem interested in her. I guess she was of no use to them now. It was me they were after. Why don't they just rob me or rape me or kill me and get it over with, I thought. I didn't care anymore. I had destroyed everything anyway. I turned to look behind me as the inferno raged on in the building down the road.
I tried to remember why I had done this, how I had gotten here. But all I could remember was that anger springing out of me like a jack in the box. Anger that I had buried for years under drugs and cutting and starving. Then something had happened and it had all came pouring out onto her. I had taken it out on her and I had killed her. I had killed her and I could never forgive myself. Never. Ever.
"I'm so sorry," I whispered. The men were getting closer to me. I heard someone screaming in the distance. None of it mattered. I was going to die here with her and I didn't care. I deserved whatever was coming to me for doing this to her. I deserved it and I didn't care.
Memories come out of nowhere at the strangest times. I suddenly remembered myself a long time ago before I had gotten so lost. I remembered when I was young and still optimistic or naive enough to think that I could change the world. I'd started volunteering at a local nursing home a couple of times a week and I had gotten attached to a lady named Pearl who insisted that I was her daughter. One of the nurses had told me that her daughter had passed away a few years ago but I played along. The nurse had also told me that she and her daughter had a difficult relationship and that her daughter had not come to visit her after she had put her in the home. She'd died in a car accident not long after. My own mother had killed herself when I was a little girl and my father was not around so I had been placed in foster care. So I didn't mind that Pearl spoke to me as though I was her daughter. I even started to look forward to it. I would sit by her as she sat at the window and read to her. She would smile at me and tell me how happy she was to be spending time with me. And even though I knew she wasn't really my mother and I wasn't her daughter I would bask in her affection.
I remembered one day when I had brought her a fuzzy blue blanket that I'd taken from the home I was in at the time. I thought she would be pleased by it but was taken aback when tears filled her eyes as she looked up at me from her worn arm chair.
"Thank you Andy", she said, calling me by her daughters name. "Does this mean you have forgiven me?" I didn't know what she needed to be forgiven for but I knew what it was like to need forgiveness from someone who couldn't give it to you anymore. I had wished many times I could see my mother again and deep down had always blamed myself for her death.
"Yes of course I do" I said to her, feeling a little choked up myself
"Thank you, dear" she said, beaming ,and placed the blanket on her lap.
I hadn't thought about Pearl in so long. The following year I had been sent to a new home with a foster father who abused me and a mother who was to drunk to care. Things hadn't gotten much better for me from there. And so it was and so it shall be and so here I am now before you.
Slowly I came out of my reverie. I looked around me with trepidation and saw that I seemed to have lost time again because I was on another street and neither my best friends body or the men in black were anywhere to be seen. I could still see smoke though, coming from the burning building a few blocks away so I knew I couldn't be to far. I had to squint to see through it but when I did, I saw a woman coming towards me. She was beautiful with soft blond curls framing her face and she was dressed all in white, a sharp contrast to the muted darkness of the rest of the neighborhood. Maybe I am hallucinating I thought. It could be smoke inhalation or maybe it's the drugs. I'll blink and she'll disappear. I wondered why the police weren't here yet. Did they not come to neighborhoods this bad even when there were dangerous murderers such as myself just standing around and waiting to be taken away?
The woman kept walking towards me with a determined look on her face. When she reached me she smiled tentatively. She certainly looked real enough, and when she spoke she sounded real, too. I couldn't trust my senses though, not in the dream- like, drugged up state I was in.
"Hello," she said softly. "I was wondering if you could help me, I seem to have lost my way."
She wasn't much older than me but her eyes were those of someone who'd lived through many things. Old soul, I thought. Everyone told me I was one too.
"Um, where are you trying to go?" I mumbled. As if I could help anyone find their way, I thought with irony. I didn't even know where I was.
"I'm looking for Height St. Do you know it?"
"No, sorry. I'm kind-of lost myself to be honest."
"Oh I see. Do you mind if I walk with you then? This really isn't the type of neighborhood where a girl should be wandering around alone."
I had to agree with her on that one although at the same time I didn't want to get her mixed up in what I had done. Plus I was worried about getting back to my friends body. I hadn't heard sirens but maybe the police had come and I could turn myself in. Either way I felt an almost gravitational pull to get back to her body. I wasn't sure in fact how I had gotten away from it in the first place.
I didn't know what to do and I suddenly felt so overwhelmed with grief that I burst into tears. I couldn't stand the look of sympathy on her face or the comfort of her hand on my arm as she tried to console me. I definitely did not deserve consoling right now.
"You shouldn't be so nice to me" I said, through my tears. " And you wouldn't want to walk with me if you knew what I'd done. You have no idea what a horrible person I am!"
"Whatever it is can't be so bad, now can it? We've all done things we regret" she said, stroking my hair.
"No," I choked out, pulling away. "You don't understand. This thing I did, it's unforgivable, I'm an evil person. Here I'll show you!"
I somehow lost more time because the next thing I knew we were back to where I had started. When we got there, I saw the group of men in black huddled nearby, close to my friends body like they had been awaiting my return. They looked slightly wary now but still seemed menacing. Coming back to the scene just heightened my guilt until it felt like an avalanche about to swallow me up. I couldn't even look at my friend or face what I had done. I just covered my face in my hands and sobbed. The smell of smoke permeated the air and I started coughing. I expected the woman to gasp in shock or scream at the sight but she did neither. She just stood next to me, silently.
"Now do you see?" I asked her through my tears. "I did this! This is all my fault! Someone is dead because of me! Do you still want to be nice to me now that you've seen what I am capable of?"
"I see what you have done" she said quietly. "But do you see?" I felt a chill of terror pass through me and I heard myself saying "no, no, no", over and over like a mantra.
"You don't have to look with your eyes anymore." She spoke to me as though she were telling me a secret. "All you have to do now is forgive yourself. That's all you have to do now."
"I can't" I whispered. "I just can't."
"A long time ago I couldn't forgive myself either. I had been a terrible mother and my own child wanted nothing to do with me. Then a lovely young lady came into my life and it was like having a second chance with my daughter. Through her kindness I was able to let go of some of the guilt I felt and move on. Do you see now, dear?"
I slowly looked up into her eyes and they were just as kind as I had remembered.
"Pearl?"
"Yes, it's me."
"But you look so different...how...?"
"This is how I looked when I was young. Once we have moved on we can look any way we like but first you've got to face who you were and let her go."
I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting back more tears and when I opened them again I was in my bedroom and Pearl was still standing next to me.
"I just wanted the pain to stop. That's all I wanted. I didn't mean to." I said sadly.
"You don't have to be in pain anymore." she replied. "You helped me move on once. Now let me help you."
I considered this. "But how do I move on? What do I have to do exactly?"
"All you have to do is forgive yourself and let go of who you were. Once you do that, you will go to the healing place. There is always help available if you want it."
I looked in her eyes and let myself believe her. "Pearl, will I get to meet Andy where we're going?"
"Oh yes," she replied, her eyes twinkling. "And I do believe you have someone waiting for you as well".
There was no more darkness, no more men in black, no more fire, and no more screaming. There was only silence and there was regret but in the distance there was light, too. I looked down for the last time at my lifeless body and said goodbye like you do to an old friend who you've outgrown but will always love.
"I'm ready now," I said and we were on our way.
~Gigi Marie
6:48 PM
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