temporary fix || george harrison

57%

THIS COULDN'T be where our story ends.

George's dying words clanged around inside my skull for days following Paul's surprise visit. The former Beatle was kind and overly genteel, wishing me happy birthday with a hug and a chaste kiss on my forehead. The kind of kiss only an old friend could deliver. He left shortly thereafter, leaving his personal phone number so that I may ring at any time and enjoy a cuppa with him and his wife Nancy. 

Ringo isn't too keen on rehashing the past, Ju. Paul added quickly as he jotted down his digits, causing me to feel a broil of guilt turn in my stomach. Ringo was the singular reason I was able to set things right, the foremost reason why the boys had even survived at all.

 It made complete sense as to why he wanted me to remain as I was, frozen in amber, nearly 60 years in the past. To Ringo, and perhaps to Paul as well, I was no more than a well-preserved fossil that needed to be encased in glass. The world protected from me.

I was an icy runaway comet, whose arrival was dreaded, and whose departure was celebrated. 

I was a living ghost, transparent and bound to my memories as if I carried them in suitcases full of stones. The next handful of weeks flew by as I regathered the last remaining piece of me that had any desire to live here - to make good on George's dying wishes. 

Admittedly, most of me died too when I'd finished that letter. How would George really know if I was really living or just... being. He was dead. And here I was. Sullen, sad, craven.

The parcel contained a jumble of old trinkets, photos, and other random scraps of clothing that had belonged to me in 1963. I could tell that this box was thrown together in haste. A completely desperate attempt to remove any and all sight of me- to banish my fleeting existence from George's life as soon as humanly possible.

I tried and failed to ignore the supermassive pit that formed in my stomach as I'd come to that realization. 

I  attempted to readjust to life as I once knew it- a runaway bride hiding out in a massive city, gathering her bearings as she reemerges without the shackles that once previously held her down.

I'd nearly forgotten about Jack and our ill-fated nuptials until I saw the pearlescent cascade of my veil and moth-eaten Vera Wang gown stowed away in the corner of my closet. I grimaced at the sight of it but then wondered what it would be like if I married George instead- all at the same time.

George's parcel was left out on the coffee table, glaring at me with contempt, as an extracorporeal reminder of all that I had done to fail him. All that I had done that had nearly ended his life. I hand't touched it since I'd received it, I was working up the courage to really see what George deemed as castaways of what we once were. 

Did I really want to see what was behind that locked door?

Carefully getting up from my spot in my reading nook, I slowly trodded over to the parcel as if it were a slumbering lion that shouldn't be disturbed. With light hands I gently reached for the worn and weathered box and picked it up like I would an infant, cradling it close to my chest, carrying it back to my nook like it would break at any moment. I could almost feel George's heartbeat echo within the parcel- racing, thundering, raging like a storm at sea. It was nauseating.

I opened the box with trembling fingers, half expecting it to set ablaze under my touch, and poked through the assortment of items that were mine in a past life.

Hairclips, a pair of gloves, aged and tarnished jewlery that I can hardly recollect wearing, photos of the boys and I- noticbly, none of him and I. At the bottom of the box was the Christmas present I received from John. It felt like an intentional knife to the gut.

A Brave New World.

With a sudden jolt of anger electrified my bones, scalding my skin, I fierily tossed the parcel onto the floor as I ground my teeth with tears collecting at the corners of my weary eyes.

"You ass!" I roared as my rage scintillated from every pore of my being. It was totally irrational- my petulant tantrum at George's carefully wielded stroke of pain.

My former lover was anything but mindless- no, he was intentional. With every word, with every breath, with every kiss. Each held their own purpose, held their own meaning. 

My copy of A Brave New World was an arrow that was released with fatal accuracy. And he meant it.

"Lucky for you- you don't have to answer back anymore! You rip-roaring, matted dog looking bug man!" I screamed hysterically at the top of my aching lungs as my hands balled into tight, charged fists. 

I did what I had to do to keep you safe. Don't you think I regret lying to you? Do you think I didn't understand what I sacrificed? The whole planet could've been engulfed by the sun at this very moment and yet still- I wouldn't have felt a single thing. The grief violently gave way to the rage that had simmered beneath the cool visage I fought every waking second to maintain like a forest fire. 

Scorching the earth as it indiscriminately struts with a laviscious sneer, with the confidence of knowing the charred land was smoking in defeat behind her. 

My love, my life, my one. You weren't the only one left scorned. My heart slammed in my ears at breakneck speed, my mind zeroing in on all of the loss, on all of the limitless pain that threatened to breakfree from my body like a nuclear detonation.

My vision tunneled and without even thinking straight, I marched straight towards the parcel and kicked it with all of the brute force that I could muster within this dreadfully worn body of mine.

I barely had enough wherewithal to notice the familiar warmth of that terrifically spectacular wormhole wrap its loving arms around me once more as I plunged headfirst into a chasm of violet fractals.