THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TFIOS
I'm sorry but there was no other place to put this and its kinda like it so yeah any ways, Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrate and i hope you have a good day. This is a total work of my own personal fiction so please read at your leisure...
We all have something terminal. We all have something that someday it will claim us and we don't have a say what that thing is. It could be anywhere between cancer to a drunk driver, his just happened to be the latter. It could have been anything else anywhere else at any other time but I guess that just shows that we live in a world that sucks.
In a world that doesn't even give the mercy of goodbyes. Maybe its meant to be that way. That the people who don't get the chance at goodbyes are the ones that have already said them. The people that were ready to go. I want to believe that it's true, that the people who didn't get to say goodbye was because they were ready but I can't.
I don't want to believe that. I don't want to believe he was ready. That he was ready to walk on clouds or float in oblivion or wherever you go, but that doesn't change the fact I knew he wasn't ready. Or at least I thought so. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe i was right. All I know is that as I sit here, leaning on his headstone and getting dirt on his favorite blue dress, that I know I want to so badly know that he wasn't ready to leave me yet
. I want to leave the cemetery and never come back but I know I have to. I know that he wants me to leave and I know that he would make a lame attempt at a joke and say I was hogging his space. I know that he would wipe my tears for me and that he would hug me like there was no tomorrow. Well for him now there isn't. I really need to go though , I cant miss his storm.
I stand up and place the flowers i brought him over the headstone and walk away. I walk away from his body but I know i'm walking towards his soul. I get into the car as the wind starts to pick up. Now I know I need to hurry up or else ill miss everything. I start to drive as i see the branches on the trees start to swivel around.
This one is going to be good. I finally turn down the dirt road that leads me to our special spot. It always does. I finally get to the end and park between the two big branches we set up months ago. We called it "Penelope the parking space". I get out of the car and bend as I walk so I can feel the branches as I walk towards our spot. The spot only we knew about. The spot where some nights we would sneak away just to sit in silence and watch the stars.
Where we talked about how we both wanted to be like owls so we could stay up all night flying and just watching the world slow down for a bit. I move the barrier of leaves we made by stringing up branches and i am exposed to our space. Our own oblivion. Where we could always come and talk about nothing that seeming like something then.
My eyes move to the swing set. The object that brought us together all those years ago. We were thirteen and just found this place. We called it our best friend bungalow and to us it was heaven. The swing set just showed up one day when we came. Probably just a lazy person who hated swings but we gave the thing a back story which the only part I remember now is something about it being carried over all seven continents.
After we made the story up though was the thing I remember most. There was a huge storm that day and me and him were about to leave when it just started pouring and all of a sudden I turned around and there he was on the swing set swinging higher and higher. The thing that caught my eye though was he had his head laid back and his mouth open while his eyes were shut. He just stayed that way as I just stared at him and then he finally opened his eyes. He looked right at me and told me to come and do the same thing. So I did. I got onto the swing and started to kick my legs higher and higher.
After getting to the appropriate height I held my head back and opened my mouth. All at once the feeling came, it was freedom and happiness and joy all wrapped into one huge emotion so i started to laugh. I started to laugh and cry because i never realized how much I had. He did the same, he laughed with me and when I started to cry he stopped his swing and grabbed the chain on my to slow me down.
He finally stopped my swing and I stood up trying to turn away so he wouldn't see my face. So he wouldn't see my tears, but he wouldn't let me. He grabbed my wrist and put his hand on my cheek making me face him. It was the worst best moment ever. He just held my face as i cried and he just looked at me like he wanted to say everything. I looked straight at him and wrapped my arms around him. He just smiled which made me cry more. He frowned but still held the eye contact.
He finally after an eternity leaned in as did I and he kissed me. He stole my first kiss from me, but it still made me feel worse. After he finally broke the kiss I broke down. I grabbed him and hugged him tight. I hugged him so tight I knew he couldn't breathe but he just hugged back tighter. Finally he asked the question i was wondering myself. "Why are you crying?".
I didn't know at the time but I know now. I didn't know what to tell him but I do now. When that happened I just shrugged and kept hugging him. We stayed like that, hugging in the middle of a storm, until it finally started to get dark Everything after that day is a foggy mirror with some clear spots but i know they were all amazing. All I regret though out of everything is not telling him what i felt that day. What made me cry. What made him kiss me. What started everything.
I felt as though I never looked at the world with big enough eyes. That I could never fully appreciate something. I even for a split second thought I was too ugly for this world. That I was being silent shunned by everything because i wasn't good enough to look at things with a new perspective. He taught me that nothing is ugly. Even though he never knew it he taught me how nothing can ever be called by the word.
That the word should never have existed in the first place. I can never repay him for that. I can never tell him what I thought that day. Maybe I was never supposed to. Maybe I can just tell the sky and it will pass on my message until it finally reaches him. Or maybe he already knows. I hope he does.
Or I might even get the chance to tell him in person when the time comes. There is too many maybes in that equation for my liking but I guess ill just let time do her thing. I make my way over to the rusted swing set and pray that it can still support my weight. I lightly sit on it testing its abilities then I slowly, as the rain starts to come down in hesitant drips, put all of my weight onto it. It still holds. It doesn't even shake which is a miracle. The rain now comes down in full drops but its not full on raining yet.
I got here just in time. So I do what we did every time we knew there was rain coming. We would kick ourselves higher and higher until we would get to the perfect height and then we would hold our heads back and open our mouths, taking the whole world in. That's when I feel it. I feel him next to me. I can feel swinging in sync with me while his mouth hangs open but his eyes remain closed. I can feel the structure shake every time he laughs. I can feel his eyes looking at me.
I can hear his words as he tells me that he's now just like an owl. That hes taking the whole world in at nighttime. I can even hear him telling me that i'm too beautiful for the world to handle. He's saying that's why they took him away. Because my smile was too much to handle. That frowns are easier to control. Hes telling me that i need to show them otherwise.
That my smile is what makes his world and his world is our world, just a little different. I can feel when he gets off the swing so he can push me higher. Just so i can experience our world from a different height. A new perspective. I can still hear him laughing even when i open my eyes. Even when I realize hes not here. That he wasn't pushing me, that he wasn't swinging with me. That's when I start crying.
This time not because of the world but because hes not coming back. I'm still swinging but not with my eyes closed and not with my mouth open but with my head back and I look towards the clouds. The dark blue clouds. I'm searching for a lost item, for him, but hes not there and I had no hope we was. I finally make my swing come to a halt and get off of it.
I walk to the middle of our place and start turning. I keep turning and and turning and I keep finding things that are connected to him, that are connected to me, yet I keep turning and turning trying to find him, but all I find are things that were once his.I stop spinning and look back towards the swing set. I wont be back for a while so I might as well get a good look at it. That's when I look and i see him. I see him there really swinging. Really taking the world in.
I'm to afraid to move for i fear that once i do he'll disappear so I stay put and just watch him. I take him all in. He finally opens his eyes and his gaze goes straight to me. The only words he speaks are ones he's spoken before. In this place. "Why are you crying?" and then I do what I normally do. I just shrug at him and smile.
He smiles back and he gets off from the swing and walks toward me. When hes about ten feet away I put my hands up in a gesture that tells him not to come any closer. He just gives me a why look and I answer with "Because I know you're not real that once I touch you you'll disappear" I tell him and he smiles. He knows i'm right so I just look at him and he just looks at me so finally I say the words I need to tell him.
"It's been a while" I tell him and he laughs and nods. I want to talk to him but I have nothing to say. Maybe my last words to him were goodbye enough. I hope to god they were. I know I have to leave soon so I say the last few words I will ever speak to him or my imagination or whatever is causing this.
"Merry Christmas James" I say to him and he just nods towards me and says his final goodbye to me "Merry Christmas Celia" and then he walks towards me. This time I let him and he gets closer and closer and finally he stands right in front of me and then he just walks through me. I turn around to look for him but he's nowhere to be seen.
I knew he wouldn't be but I still had to look. I hadn't even noticed but the rain finally stopped and now out of nowhere it began to snow. It was wet flakes that i knew wouldn't stick but it was still snow. He favorite was always rain but when there was no rain he would always find joy with snow. I make my way into my car and back myself out of Penelope and back onto the road. I keep looking into the rear view mirror to see if hes sitting in the back seat but he isn't.
I know he won't be. That was the last time he was going to visit me I know. Next time though i'll be visiting him and taking his world in, with him.