Creative Writing School Assignments I Kinda Like And Want Feedback On

Fall Short Story/ENG 125

Written for a fall assignment in ENG 125(creative writing). Was mostly just supposed to be descriptions of fall, but oh well. 

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I watch as a leaf falls slowly from a tree, fluttering in the wind.

It looks so peaceful and content following every leaf that has gone before it, dying to make way for the growth of new leaves that will start to arrive when spring gets here.

As of now, though, the trees will look barren for a while.

It's been getting colder, and the sun has been hiding for a while. It has rained for three days straight, and I wouldn't have been surprised if it had rained for three more.

However it didn't, and the sun is out of hiding.

It would be hard to tell it was raining at all, if the petrichor wasn't ligering.

Today feels alive, despite the fact I'm in a graveyard, and anything remaining here is dead or dying.

With a bouquet of Aster flowers in hand, I make my way over to a familiar tombstone.

I place the flowers on the dirt, tracing the letters carved into the stone.

Cynthia.

How I miss her.

She passed away just last autumn.

I remember it very well.

The aching sound of her voice as she pleaded to stay alive. The prominence of fear in her eyes.

The surprise when she tumbled back and knocked her perfume bottle off of the table, shattering into glass shards and leaving the smell of chemicals and sandalwood soaked into the floor for weeks on end.

The silence after her heart stopped beating.

At first I recall the regret of knowing, but now I'm almost certain I never did it, and perhaps something else had happened that led to her death.

But if it wasn't me, then who could it be?

I feel a chill run up my spine.

Who could it be?

I look around the graveyard.

The air always feels a bit colder here, for whatever reason. Maybe it is simply the shaking of trees against the wind that makes it all seem colder.

I stood up, collecting the old and dried roses I had placed at Cynthia's grave just a few weeks before.

Who else would it have been? It was just me. I was the only one there. The only one with a knife. And the only one to watch her bleed to her death.

The wind kicks up, whispering past me like someone quietly telling a secret.

A secret indeed.

I move back and start heading towards the exit of the grave yard.

I can't help but wonder if Cynthia will ever forgive me.

Assuming it was ever truly me to begin with.

Perhaps I will never know myself.

The memory haunts me just as much as the regret.

So long as no one knows, perhaps I don't need to know, either.