Building A Problem | Jasiper

6. When

Piper didn't have to glance twice across the hall to recognise that short dark hair her hands had been buried in on a Friday night. A single Friday night, where she had only had one too many tequilas. A single Friday night, that had then been reason for the worst night of her life. When her eyes met Piper's, she felt her airways were getting blocked. With a single stare, Shel had sucked all breath out of her, and not the same way as last time; last time had been enjoyable. A terrible drunken mistake, absolutely, but enjoyable nonetheless.

   A knot tied in Piper's stomach, but she stayed still, steadfast. Shel would not ruin this for her. Not more than she already had. Instead, she furrowed her gaze on something else, anything else, but seeing clearly was tough among the sea of black that swallowed her whole. She felt the black crawling inside her, like a leech that tried to climb through her skin to join its mates on the outside. Her whole vision was black, her whole body was black, her whole soul was black.

   In a last attempt to find solace, Piper reached for the outside, hoping the sun would wash away some of her blackness—some of her sorrows. And she found it, a speckle of sunlight reaping through a tall tree in the garden. She could step fully into the sunlight, but she feared her body could not stand without something to hold her upright. Her eyes fluttered and veered to find something solid they could latch onto, but no one image would stay in her mind. In her ears, everything sounded like a throbbing screeching; the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves and grass, a bird soaring up high, hustled chatter from inside. All the sounds that she used to love and adore, they all felt dull, all felt flat.

   The black inside her had shrunk from leaving the terrible room, but all the new sensations plucked at her like vultures surrounding a carcass. So Piper tried to cover both her ears and eyes from the sunlight and the sounds. Therefore, Piper didn't notice as Shel crept up to her, her black dress hanging limply around her. 'Hi,' she whispered cautiously.

   Piper felt the black that had vanished from the sunlight flare up once again. She did not wish to see, speak to nor hear her. So she didn't. Her hands stayed firmly pressed against her eyes and ears, hoping that she would just disappear.

   She did not. 'Your eulogy was beautiful.'

   The words carved through Piper with such force that she had to bend over from the feeling of sickness rising through her. How dared she say that to her? How dared she come here, to his funeral, and talk to her like that? How dared she use that calming voice of hers, that calming voice that ran through you like a cold river on a hot summer day, so soothing and refreshing? How dared she?

   'All the eulogies were beautiful, but yours in particular,' she continued, amended. 

   To be honest, Piper didn't even know what she had said in her eulogy, nor what anyone else had said. It felt like a foggy memory to her, something that she vaguely remembered happening years ago, but could just as well have happened to someone else, and she had merely been told of it.

   Shel said something else, though Piper's mind didn't process the words like words, more like a garbled static background noise that filled her head to the brim. And it felt like it was exploding.

   'Why are you here?' Piper muttered through her closed eyes and ears, hoping to stop the noise. Faintly, she heard it worked, heard Shel stop talking. 'You didn't even know him,' she continued, slowly removing her hands from her face in order to face her opponent. She tried standing straight, as to look Shel in the eye, though she realised she didn't need to, for she was smaller than herself. In the light peeking through the tree, Shel's rhinestone nose stud shone back at Piper derisively, like it wanted her to relive the flashing lights she recalled when the crash had happened. Piper tried to peel her eyes from it, but found it difficult to look at anything else about Shel, standing in front of her, all beautifully dark skin and short black hair positioned in such a neatly messy way, that Piper could tell it had taken her at least thirty minutes to do. The way her deep brown eyes caught the sunlight, making them glisten the same way her nose stud did. Piper's jaw clenched at the sight of her and the things it made her feel.