Afterglow

dismal

"You know that you can speak to me about it if you want, this is a safe space," the psychiatrist urged, her voice soothing and calm and while I wanted to hate her, I just couldn't bring the emotions to the surface.

It had been two hours since the news had been dropped on me like a bomb, and my mother had immediately called our family psychiatrist for an emergency session. I didn't protest, didn't do anything, actually.

Just stared at the half frozen flecks drifting down the window of her expensive car, just welcomed in the blessed silence frocked with rubber tires slushing through the frigid rain.

"Kate?"

I snapped my head up at her words, those tortoise shell rimmed glasses positioned against her dark skin making her look the part of dutiful psychiatrist, knowledgeable and able to fix a person's emotional turmoil with a few pointed phrases and, like always, a prescription written on a white pad in chicken scratch.

"Yes I know this is a safe place, I just don't feel like my emotions are safe to discuss at the moment."

And they weren't, because once I let them out, once I allowed myself to truly feel them in their own naked and raw light, then I would be as broken as my birth mother.

"And why do you feel that way?"

This was going in circles. If I didn't want to talk yet, then I didn't want to talk, so I remained silent, noting the dark bookends gleaming with polished paint on her bookshelves, the potted plant in the window on death's door, her certificates framed nice and pretty on her wall to prove she was as qualified as she seemed.

"Alright, you don't want to talk, I can respect that, but I want to see you back here in one week. Until then, here's a prescription for some Alprazolam," she said firmly, scribbling on that white notepad a prescription that I knew damn well I wouldn't take.

"Thank you," I said gruffly, snatching the paper out of her hand and stood to leave on wobbling legs, but I didn't dare allow that weakness to show as I shoved the prescription into my bag and swiftly exited her office, the scent of lavender and vanilla escaping my nostrils as I welcomed the dull grey haze that awaited me outside, the sun trapped between clouds leeched of all color.

A shard of anger slashed through my consciousness, then, as I took in the dismal landscape stretched before me.

Ferns and evergreens adorned with pale, dusted snow seemed to cower to the stinging, piercing sleet, and as if I had been burned from the inside out, steam rose from my skin and curled into the air around me, that rage bristling and suffocating the coldness that attempted to burrow into my bones.

And yet, in one huff of breathlessness, it evaporated as the strength left my body in a flourish of pain and despair. Images of Ian's broken and listless body snapped into my mind and the thoughts simply wouldn't stop.

my fault my fault my fault

Leah, a girl I'd never laid eyes on before, took shape in my chaotic consciousness, my friend from back home letting me know that she looked similar to me, so I pictured her.

Dark hair, dark eyes, caramel skin glittering in the warm California sunshine as she rode in Ian's Jeep with the top down as they sang endlessly to their favorite songs at the top of their lungs, just as we had used to do.

And then, as the panic trickled in, an unmarked car began trailing them, allowing a generous distance at first but as they turned down more illicit streets, their intentions became more obvious.

No seatbelt strapped across that chest that I'd once run my hands up and down, the car flew close, attempting to pass them on a narrow road that curled upwards into the mountains, the steep edge an afterthought as Ian swerved out of its way, but that was enough for him to lose control.