Pricked

12

I realize it's a Sunday when I hear the first bell chime. The noise seems to echo across the town and bounce off the castle walls. I move to the window to watch the children and church goers. A small red haired girl, in a pretty blue dress bounces up the stairs holding her mother's hand as she goes. The sight is so innocent and beautiful it makes my lip drop in sadness and I want to hold my mother's hand again, just one more time. I blink away invisible tears as I watch disappear through the doors. Then I see a tall dark man walking up the steps, its Will. He holds the door open for an elderly couple then he follows them inside the church.

How can he go to place that allowed his sister to die? How could he praise a being that let the doctors turn her away!? I imagine that he cursed Gods' name at first but now, he looks content as he walks through the doors.

"How can you still praise to someone that caused you and your family so much pain?" After seeing Will I don't feel like people watching anymore. The final bell rings and I hear a click of the castle doors opening and closing, the clink of silverware for breakfast and the church doors closing with a solid smack.

Every Sunday was another excuse. Sick, headache, need to apply for a job, need to go to work... it was an endless cycle. Mitch's dad, Daruis tried each week but he knew that I never wanted to go back. That no matter how many weeks, how many months, then years passed I would never believe that the once sacred, holy place was ever going safe. I still believe that, I haven't gone back since that day and I will never go back again. Part of me breaks at the thought of never being with my parents, with Mitch, with God himself but it breaks for different reasons for each person.

As the voices hush and everyone has cleared the town square, there are two things that I have had a lot of time to think about in the silence. Alone is solitary but lonely is misery with a party of one. The days seem to meld together. Doctors come and go. Peter comes most days to steal Arren away, always telling him to give up. It makes me hate him but also respect that he says what he feels, and thinks, but mostly its hate for taking away my only current friend. I move back to the window slowly dragging my feet. My tired eyes scan the sky, in search of the birds, tweeting obnoxiously in the gardens cherry trees down below. They fly up and around as if they are dancing. The sun cascades against them causing beautiful shadows on the gravel road. Everything is so silent, so peaceful, that for a moment I forget that I'm stuck. But then with a creek of the stairs, and a squeak of a neighboring door and it makes butterflies in my stomach and pulls me back to reality. Leaving me with my heart feeling like it is playing hop scotch, waiting for me to step on a line, to end the game for good.

It seems as though a full day has passed of watching birds and people walk along the path. There are beautiful red apples and crisp corn stalks lining the vendor's baskets as people gather around to buy food from the market. While their parents shop the children play, kicking balls around the fountain, pebbles from the ground flying with every kick. A full day of waiting for someone to come and remove me from the castle, and bring me to my grave, but no one came. I find joy and peace in still being alive. If I were dead then all this suffering would end but... if I were to be woken up, I entertain the idea for a moment. There are so many things I still wish to do, to see...

The agonizing waiting is worse than all other parts of my situation. The unknowing is what upsets me the most. That there is no timeline for waiting, and the reason for our wait, it is never for sure. No matter what you do God has a plan, (or so they tell me) some of us just don't know what that plan is, so waiting and more waiting occurs. I don't like waiting, I don't like the idea of someone having control of my life and that my life is in their hands. Nothing I could do to change my future, nothing I can do especially while stuck here, until the day I die.