Collection of Older Works

Faethfully Yours: Chapter Twenty-Five {Part One}

 I broke.

I hurt.

I screamed.

For a long, long time the monotonous sound of extreme heartache shattered everything around me. I wanted to move but all I could do was stand in place and let the sound pour out of me, continuously, painfully, until I could breathe no longer and my knees gave from under me.  Everything stood still in that moment, looking down at Ivan’s lifeless body as if nothing had ever happened at all. Does that make sense?  I was numb and there was nothing.  Beneath me, beside me, around me—nothing. Zilch. Zip. There was just darkness and Ivan… his pale skin stained with blood, the same scarlet fluid pouring from his body, saturating the ground around him. All I could do was watch as the sodden turf nourished itself with the life of my soul mate.  Fate seemed to be on a roll. It was actually surprising that little flowers didn’t spring up from the drenched ground to mock me of my loss. It would have seemed fitting.

Oh but that was much too kind for fate. Screw the flowers, it said. It wasn’t yet done. In its torturous performance, the part of having me kneeling there, mourning Ivan was simply the intermission for Fate.  While it was up getting popcorn, my soul grieved. While it was taking a bathroom break, I heaved. But intermission was clearly over when like the most beautiful of tragedies, joining my vanishing fusion marks was Ivan’s life force.

From the piercing wound, his life-force slowly seeped from his body as if his vessel were deflating. In swirls of black smoke it evaporated into the night without any hesitation. Where before it misted above his body, in wait for the vessel to be repaired, to be healed, there was no mending it this time. It was dead. Nothing remained for his life-force to return to and so it misted into the air. But what hurt most was that all the while, Kheelan did nothing—nothing. He watched on, joining his hands in a strange form. Bringing his wrists together, Kheelan opened his palms into the air in a cradle like manner. Pressing them to his forehead, he knelt before Ivan’s body as his life-force continuously vaporized. He murmured something in the language I no longer understood.  Beannaigh an anam. He said it over and over but it did nothing to keep Ivan’s life from leaving.  And in a matter of seconds, though it felt like an eternity where I could almost map out Ivan’s entire life in the mist, Fate was done.

No more swirls of life left Ivan's body. He was gone.

Just like that, I lost my common.

My eyes closed.  Or were they open? Did it matter? Whether open or closed, there was darkness everywhere.  There was no longer a line between the nightmares of my reality and those of my dreams. With what broken breaths I could manage, I screamed more or tried to, but no sound came out. It was a silent, painful panic; A bitter, soundless grief. It was that last sprout of anguish that took with it what little hope I had left. That’s why my scream was silent, because there was no hope.

But still, I screamed and relinquished all faith until my lungs squeezed to their limits and the pain stabbed me from within.

My father reached to touch me but dammit I didn’t want to be touched! I pushed him away because I didn’t want him! I didn’t want to feel—God, I didn’t want to feel. Never had I felt so uprooted, so trapped within my body wishing I were outside of it.  Desperately, I wanted things I couldn’t have.  Aichingly, my mind tried to comprehend but nothing made sense. How could it? I didn’t even know where I was anymore. What time was it? What day? What was my name and why was I alive?

Kheelan ordered my father around the house, to stall the firefighters and police by telling them that no one else was in the house. He promised he would calm me down. Calm me down?