...because this is what she'll write...
The air was heavier inside. I could tell by the half lit cigarette that someone was there, but the room held a dark, forbidden weight. Everything looked normal, nothing out of place, but the music set a strange aura.
"The wreck of the Edmund Fiztgerald" was blaring from somewhere upstairs. With trepidation weakening my knees, I tool small steps towards the stairs. With every forward movement I felt more frightened. Ignoring my insticts, I climbed the steps.
The music grew louder, yet more tinny to my ears, its haunting melody further increasing my anxiety. Each door along the hall was closed...except my own. A red glow filtered into the hall, casting an eerie visage over my face.
I walked towards my own bedroom door, now soaked in a cold, fearful sweat. The door creaked open, seemingly of it's own volition, until I realized that it was my own hand propelling it.
The music became deafening, and the soft red light from the candlelabras served as a contradiction to the roar. Once again, the haunting chimes and pipes of "the Edmund Fitzgerald" overpowered me, knocking me momenarily senseless as a wave of nostalgia for I don't know what came over me. I was blinded for a moment to the reality of the room.
My room, aside from the eerie red glow, was normal...except for my bed. Lying face up on my bed, was the still, glassy eyed form of my brother.
My brother...who'd been dead for two years. Pain and grief punched me in my abdomen, sending me reeling back against the walls. I wrenched my eyes closed against a wave of nausea, trying at the same time to block the memories that were battling my brain. When the agony began to ebate, I slowly opened my eyes...
...And prompty slammed them closed again.
My brother now stood at the door, my own body on the bed. I was staring at myself from one end of the room; my dead brother at the other.
Chris spoke my name. I breathed his.
"Why?" he asked me, grief etched in his face.
Why what? I wondered. Blissful ignorance prevailed for a few more seconds, then the harsh reality shook me like an earthquake beneath my feet.
The pain. The grief. The xanax to wash it all away.
It all came rushing back to me in an icy wave of regret. I'd done what I said I'd never do. I'd given up.
I looked pleadingly towards my brother as if were a God, a God who could reverse the irreversible.
"Is it too late?" I asked, implying every regret and "I wish" from my entire, short life.
He only nodded. I stared a moment longer, then joined him at the door. I felt etherally numb. He ushered me outside the door, and faced me. In his eyes I saw every laugh, every heartbreak of my life. I reached for the knob and, filled with regret and remorse so strong I felt like I could bleed for the pain, slowly closed the door on my world, my existence, my life.
* fade to black *
shut up. did you write this?
it has its melodrama, but there is some damn good writing in there.
what is the Edmund Fitzgerald???
Posted by: Theresa | February 08, 2008 at 12:24 PM