The sharp 2am air pricked at her skin. Goosebumbs arose on her uncovered arms but she wasn't cold. Climate was a state her mind had grown oblivious to. Judging by the colour of the river, she concluded that Bristol was currently devoid of all catalytic converters. A thick, murky suspension occupied the water, speckled with a greeny coloured grime. Her eyes traced the pathway of a lone crow as it swooped and swirled, its flight heavy and graceless. It let out of an unsettling wail before launching down on a tiny dead bird, pecking ferociously at its lifeless body with the hunger of a horse.
'What ever happened to beauty?'
Her words addressed only the silence.
She knelt down by a streetlight at the water's edge. Her body was tired but her mind was restless. Before leaving the house, she gathered together all the bottles she could find. There might have been two dozen, maybe more. Each one was empty bar a few drops, so she trickled the lot into a tumbler and hoped her concoction would give her the peace, the escape she longed for. Four hours later and it still had no effect. That was the problem these days. Her body had hardened to everything, leaving her with only her thoughts. There was one other thing that would allow her escape her haunting mind but she wouldn't dare go near it. The pills were laid out on the windowsill, neatly labelled with instructions and dates and recommended quantities of consumption. She wouldn't throw them out. Part of her wanted to get rid of them, to clog the sink with every last one and run the water full blast. Part of her wanted to create that flooded mess because it wouldn't be her mess. They were John's pills. It was John's mess. It would be his fault. Part of her wanted that physical reason to blame him but instead, she lived her life around the pieces he left scattered behind, afraid to touch them incase she caused further destruction. It was her fault really. If she hadn't screwed up, there never would have been a John.
'itsmyfaultitsmyfaultitsmyfaultitsmyfaultitsmyfaultitsmyfault'
Those words were permanently woven along her thought process, twisted along each monoamine of serotonin. They wouldn't go away. They would never go away.
It had been eight months. The gang was quite literally scattered across the globe but she was frozen. Fixed to the spot she vowed to leave many years ago. Time changes everything. She tried to carry on but she'd given Freddie too much of herself for that to be possible. Before she took a step forward, that part of her rooted firmly in him dragged her back. She was living in a delicate bubble, those few weeks endlessly on repeat in her mind. She'd allowed herself to be happy. That was the problem. That's what caused the mess. Now, each new day wound her further back into the world that slipped from her fingertips. And it wasn't that it was difficult, it was just that it was strange.
Often, Freddie floated into her mind. She'd hear him speak, see his face, his whisper blowing through her. She'd keep her eyes closed long after the moment had passed in hope of its return. The distinction between past and present, between reality and illusion, had become a hair-line fracture and that line was often blurred. Memory does strange things to the mind. Each moonlit evening drew her into a melancholic state of lonliness and she grew to crave the ghostly illusions so much so that she savoured them. The visions were seemingly unattainable without being triggered by the moonlight and so each evening, she wandered out towards the river with nothing but her cigarettes and a lighter and stayed until the early hours. Tiredness tricked her mind into seeing all sorts of things. The streetlight reflected golden shapes onto the water and her memories danced along with them; figures, faces, fascination. Illusion. She didn't mind. She didn't notice. She was tripping on her own thoughts. Nothing was real anymore. She wasn't real anymore. Like a moth among a colony of tarantulas, she no longer belonged in the real world.
She'd read something once. Victor Hugo, from a time when her ability to focus hadn't gone to shit.
"Separated people cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing each other and cannot write; nevertheless, they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, but sending each other the songs of birds, the scent of flowers, the sighing of the wind, and the gleam of the stars- all the beauties of creation"
That was what she hoped for. She found the snippets of Freddie but unfortunately it doesn't work quite the same way when you're separated from your own self. Those parts were gone and whilst she could obtain those glimpses of the one who held her heart, the part of herself that enabled her to feel joy was perpetually lost. And that really was a problem.
She was hollow. A shell. All she wanted was to feel again. That night, she was in a trance. Leaning over the water's edge, she pierced her skin with the blade, her hand trembling. Like spilt paint contaminating an untouched colour, the thick drop of blood formed an expanding suspension in the water until it faded from her sight. That was when the noise started. Her head filled instantly with an incessant drone. A sudden image of Freddie's devastated face after she woke up in hospital that night sliced through her mind and refused to go away. His eyes. His worry. His fear. His death. His death. His death.
It was like someone had sawed open her head, filled it with razor blades and shook it. The drone was deafening. Her words. Her 'GO AWAY' screamed through her mind repeatedly. She got her wish and now he was gone. It wasn't John. It was her. It was her. The blade slipped from her trembling fingers. She was killing someone who was already dead and she couldn't bear it. She just wanted to feel him with her. She could see him. She could hear him. She just wanted to, needed to feel him. She should never have done it like this though. The noise was relentless and she'd never felt like this before. She tried to scream but no noise would come out. Her body was overcome with delayed grief, with the accumulation of eight months of guilt and she could do nothing but hurl her body into the icy water. She once again was oblivous to the cold. Her arms subconsciously flailed in an attempt to push her up towards the surface but with all her willpower, she tried to stay submerged. An eerily empty silence occupied that present moment and found momentary relief, allowing her weak body to succum to the polluted darkness of the river bed. She wasn't suicidal, she just wanted to block out the noise, to block out the voices. For a while, it worked and she got a moments peace. It was like she was flying, floating.
She hurtled back up to the surface after several moments without even realising she was doing it. She felt like her lungs were exploding, burning, tearing. Her whole body was trembling. She wearily followed the faint orange light as she clambered onto land, gasping for breath. He was gone, but she wasn't. This was death, this was life. This was everything, this was nothing.
That night, she found her way home through her daze. For the first time in eight months, the tears came. A single silent tear slipped out to start with until her aching body was racked with sobs early into the morning. She just wanted him. Was that really so bad? Her Freddie was gone. She was gone. This wasn't life. This wasn't death. This was existance.