Chapter One:
Present Past Song quote

"If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating."
~ "Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement" by Sylvia Plath


Take a silent breath.
Hold in the change.
Tell yourself you still live here.
Take your bags upstairs.
It's the only way you'll get through today.
Count the hours.
Take a shower.
Wash yourself away.

The house was cold. Not just in temperature, but also in callousness. White sheets covered the furniture, and the thick dust in the air made breathing nearly as unbearable as it was necessary. Lulu didn't want to breathe. She had come to the abandoned family home for comfort. It was meant to be the place where she could feel close to things, people she would never see again, and maybe ease her way into an empty life. Instead, all she felt was cold.

"Will you just stop! Do we really have to have the same damn conversation over and over and over again!" Lulu yelled as she was coming to realize the origin of certain cliché phrases like, 'on my last nerve,' and 'mind numbing.' She wanted it to end.

"Can you just listen to yourself! I'm trying to have a conversation with you."

"No! You're trying to tell me how and what to think… and then pretend you aren't. I don't even see how this is any of your business."

"You are my business! And as long as…"

"Pull the car over!" She interrupted demandingly. "I need air… space…"

"Are you nuts?" He was slowing down even though he was fighting the urge to just pull over and have a moment of calm collectedness.

"I need to be away from you for just a minute," the lowering tone of her voice convinced him. She blinked and the car was on the side of the road. "Just a minute." The sharp and angry breaths she had been taking were still weighing heavily on her chest when she finally managed to pull herself out of the vehicle. Her head hung down and she began to pace the length of the car. As she started to feel the pieces of her mind slowly being glued back together, a normal breathing pattern being sculpted by her lugs, she could hear the door slam. "I can't do this," she told him sounding completely drained. "I don't have it in me to keep doing this." She shook her head and continued thinking out loud for unwilling ears. "I'm just going to walk home."

"Lulu…" he tried to offer.

"I really just want to be alone." Her eyes closed to stop her from seeing the disappointed or hurt look on his face. She could hear the sounds of his feet hitting the pavement and the loud crash of the car door. The engine roared and he drove away. Her feet started taking steps into his departing direction and she could feel the regret rising throughout her body.

Her eyes took inventory of her feet as the guilt swarmed in her. The world of dysfunction she had just created was ready to swallow her whole when a large clash brought her out of her thoughts. Wind hit her skin and then proceeded to go through her, and she began running instinctively.

Once she had made it to the top of the hill she could see the car she had been so quick to get out of sitting on its roof. From her view point it looked like a piece of garbage somebody had gently tossed aside. There was no break to catch her breath, and she started into a full out sprint towards the car without ever taking her eyes off of it. The rest of the world was a silent shadow to her as she raced to car. She hadn't even blinked when it suddenly wasn't there anymore.

She had to stop in her tracks to wait for a long series of cabooses to pass through her view, and desperately tried to peak through any cracks and gabs just to get a better look. On the street below her she could see pieces of glass, scraps of metal, and chips of paint from where the car had first landed. When the train came to a complete stop, she climbed her way to the other side.

There he was… trapped in the overturned car with copious amounts of blood running overflowing his face.

Another door opened that no longer belonged to her. The thought sliced through her heart as she realized all that she had given up. Hopes and dreams that weren't in some song or lecture, but that she felt throughout her body. They were all lost, and she couldn't fathom how to get them back without risking whatever shreds of her were left in the process. All she could do was stand in the door way and look across the large room. A single large room had encompassed her happiness and love for over three years. Through her mind's eye she could see the significant events that had played out over that period of time as if she had rewound her life to watch it all over again.

"Hey!" A voice crawled up behind her to whisper in her ear as hands worked their way from her sides until they were wrapped completely around her. "I missed you." Dante laid kisses on her neck and her shoulder.

She had to push it all down. All the thoughts, feelings, doubt, and plans she had to cement her escape had to have been never thought of as if they were someone else completely. The slightest twinge in her tone, dullness in her eyes, or quiet from her would expose her as someone new, because the person she was had disappeared long before she had boarded the plane home. She housed a series of tricks passed down in her family through generations that skilled her in keeping secrets so well it created another reality. There was no other option but to believe in her own delusion enough to keep him or anyone else from getting suspicious. She could pretend to be anyone, so she would have no problem pretending to be herself… at least who she used to be. "I missed you, too," was her last honest moment of lucidity.


Your bare feet sliding on the old wooden floorboards,
Home just as you left it but still you're shaken,
Like walking into a museum somehow out of time.
It's all the same except the girl in the hallway,
Where she's been and who she will ripen into,
Your childhood's on the other side of a sprawling divide… too wide.

Author's Note: This story is inspired by a storyline that is climaxing at the moment on the British soap opera Emmerdale. It has its similarities, but vast differences. It is a particularly dark story with polarizing issues, but I hope you come to at least understand it even if you don't like it. I certainly hope you like it, though. Thank you for reading.

The title was inspired by Sylvia Plath. The song in that bookends the first chapter is "How to Return Home" written by Kait Kerrigan and composed by Brian Lowdermilk. Together they written a couple of musicals and this song is from "Tales from the Bad Years."

Also, I didn't forget to not put who Lulu was with in the past. I'd like to know who people think it is.

I'm going to go work on my 50 other stories now.