Shilo

(See also Shiloh, Shyloh and Shylo)

A name of Hebrew origin, meaning "His gift"

The first thing she was aware of upon waking was a large and gnawing hunger within her stomach. She let out a small groan, burying her face deeper into the pillow. WIlling the light of morning not to find her. Willing the fuzziness and comfortable embrace of sleep to overtake her once more. But it was not to be. With a jolt she sat up and blinked. The world rushed back. Those few blissful moments of peace were over and she was keenly aware that she was not in her bed, and that the world was not how she so desperately wanted it to be. Everything came rushing back to her at once. Hot tears sprang to her eyes. She picked up the pillow and hugged it to her chest, hunched forward in her father's bed.

She knew, straight away, that it had not been a dream. She was here and he was not. A ragged moan, expression of her grief, escaped her throat, an odd keening sound. She let it build, squeezing her eyes shut against the tears, gripping the pillow so tightly she thought it would tear.

She tried not to think things like: He'll never sleep here again and If I ever wash these sheets, they'll never smell like him again.

But she did.

No. She couldn't spend the day in his bed. She forced herself to let go of the pillow, climb out of the bed. She looked around his room, furiously rubbing her eyes.

Stop crying, Shilo. Time to be a grown up. No one but me now.

She desperately wanted to crawl back into that bed again and let sleep take her once more. Maybe for weeks. Maybe forever. To drift in and out of consciousness, breathing deeply in his slightly cinnamon smelling sheets. She had gotten in the limo and directed them to take her home, where she had changed and then walked to his room as if in a trance, to fall upon his bed and let overwhelming exhaustion overtake her and fall into a dreamless sleep. Now that she woke she found she only wanted to repeat the process.

But no, she could not fall back to sleep, if nothing else, she needed to eat. Shilo felt the need to eat perhaps more keenly than she could ever remember feeling it. Many people, in grief, would lose their appetite completely, so she was given to understand. But she, who had never truly felt a loss of anything - for he had been her everything and had always been there - she found that in her grief, she was ravenous.

Her bare feet on the soft carpet padded comfortably over to his dresser. Saw herself in the mirror there. The mirror was slightly dirty, smudged. But she saw herself, all large eyes and pale skin, totally bald. She snatched her wig from the dresser where she had put it before she climbed into his bed. She pulled it on, an action she had done so many times in the past that it was second nature to her now. Presently it occurred to her - would her hair grow back now in time? It had been the result of years of medication - poison - that had caused it to fall out, right?

Sobs threatened to overtake her again, her shoulders heaved in grief. She had forgiven him all of it, of course. Of course she had. Because he was her father, and her world, and her everything. How could she have held it against him that he'd done this to her? He thought he was doing the right thing, hadn't he? Hadn't he always cared for her and loved her?

And yet she felt so sad. So sad to find out that so much she had believed about her life had been a fabrication. So, she wasn't truly sick. She didn't have a blood disease that had been passed to her from her mother. So, he wasn't a doctor, he was a repo man. A killer. An assassin. How many had he killed? How many people had died screaming before him? How many times had he washed his hands and come home to her, to kiss her on the forehead and hold her close. To tell her how much he loved her. To smile sadly and stroke her hair, clutch at her.

Father.

He had always been so strong. Hands so warm and capable, strong yet his skin soft. His voice comforting and soothing, capable of such emotion. His eyes had always shown her such warmth and kindness. Eyes that filled with love, shone when he smiled, glazed over when he was sad. Always framed by his glasses.

His glasses had been left here, discarded when he had come to find her. And she took them now, holding them in trembling hands. All she had now. These were what she would take to remember him. Because she would not be like him. She woudln't build a shrine to him and barricade herself within it. She knew that, even in the depths of grief she knew that she was going to be strong. She knew that she was strong.

A jolt of sorrow overcame her as she took them and noticed the photos. Black and white and colour. Hanging in frames near his dresser, directly across from his bed. She had thought they were photos of her mother. There were so many of them around the house that she had taken for granted the presence of more of them in his bedroom. She had so rarely stepped foot in this room, not since she had been a child.

(Never in his bed. Perhaps that was a way for him to justify it...The fact that it was never in his bed, never in the bed he'd once shared with Marni.)

She had never seen that there were photos of her, Shilo, gracing these walls. Her eyes filled with tears and they spilled out onto her cheeks. Down her cheeks and she felt them drop. So many tears, because her father really had adored her. So many times when he had compared her to her mother. When he had seen her mother in her face. Now she saw just how much he had cared for her. Because in his room there were no pictures of Marni. Just Shilo.

She walked closer to them and ran a hand down the smooth, cool glass that protected the photo behind it. It was Shilo, when she had been about twelve years old. She was grinning at the camera, sitting on her bed holding tightly to a stuffed animal, a penguin. Shilo remembered that photo being taken, it had been her birthday. A sad day for her father, as it was the anniversary of the day Marni had died, but he had always gotten her a present anyway. Had always let her have a special day despite the fact it was the day his wife and her mother had been taken from him. How had he been able to? Another photo, she was older in this one, looking a little sullen. Probably about fourteen years old, the beginings of teenage angst had set upon her. Half smiling at the camera, dark eyes glinting a little in the light. Arms folded across her chest, across the white nightgown she wore. And the next, she was about sixteen, her father was in the photo too. She remembered he had told her he wanted a photo of her for the family album, and she had folded her arms and pouted that he had to be in it too. Otherwise, she had said, all the photos in the album would just be of her, Shilo. How boring, she had exclaimed, and her father had laughed. He had his arm around her in the photo, and she had a small smile on her face, looking at him rather than at the camera. And he was looking at her, looking a little serious, a little self conscious about being in a photo. Shilo ran her hand over their faces in the photo. It was a beautiful photo. She wished she had known. She wished she had known that he made sure that she was the first thing he saw when he woke up.

Shilo went down to the kitchen, the house seeming strange and alien to her. It was a strange thing to walk down the hallway, visions of her mother watching her from photo frames, and know that her father wasn't coming home. To know that she could go downstairs without fearing he might come home and find her out of bed. Without fearing being scolded for leaving the haven of her bedroom, putting herself in danger of airborne germs, which could make her sicker. But rather than giving her a sense of freedom, it filled her with unease. The world seemed open and available to her now, but it also seemed strange and frightening. Without her father to guide her and care for her, she felt quite adrift and alone.

She reached the kitchen and went to the fridge. It occurred to her presently, that she had never prepared her own food before. Her father had always cooked for her. Had always supplied her with the food she picked at and never finished. She had never had much of an apetite or an interest in food, something which displayed itself visually in her small frame. It was, she expects now, a by-product of the poison she had been fed for so long.

Shilo prepared some cereal for herself - figuring that it was something that would be difficult to get wrong - and sat down at the kitchen table to begin to eat it. This in itself was a novelty, since her father had so very rarely let her come downstairs. Often they had both eaten dinner together in her bedroom. He said it was safer for her there. He said it was less draughty, that the plastic around her bed was a guard against germs. He said it was just until he found her cure...

A wave of nausea overcomes her presently, and she drops her spoon midway to her mouth. It clangs on the bowl with a metallic sound. Withrdrawal, perhaps? She feels light headed and slumps forward in the stool, pushing the half eaten cereal away. The kitchen is swimming before her clamps a hand over her mouth, feeling bile rise in her throat.

Damn. I really wanted to eat that.

It's an odd thought to have, but she genuinely is annoyed that she can't finish the cereal, the first meal she has ever made for herself. Instead she has to run for the bathroom to be sick.