I know none of you are accustomed to things like this from me. Keep in mind as you read that this is some semblance of horror, it is meant to bother you, and I unlocked my warped side for this. I'll never continue it and will probably take it down after a couple of days when I come to my senses.
Why? Because I just finished reading Stephen King's 'Pet Sematary.' It was foul, disturbing, and never should have been published with the content that it contained, and so now I feel the need to participate in an act of hypocrisy in order to sort out my complicated feelings. I don't feel that the content of this oneshot is truly deserving of the M rating...but the book most definitely was, and better safe than sorry, right?
I really want to go back to school sometime soon.
Before it happened, I was good at school. I like math, and art. The teachers liked me. I was smart, I think. I talked fast and got done with tests early and whenever we ran in gym class, I was always the fastest. They called me Bird because it looked like I was flying.
I don't fly anymore.
I'm pretty sure I didn't believe in God or heaven before, and I definitely don't now, because if there was a God, I wouldn't exist. I wouldn't be shuffling through the halls of our house, keeping to the darkness and avoiding mirrors and refusing to wash my hair. I'd really be flying, with angel wings. And Daddy? He would have been struck by lightning the second that he climbed over the deadfall with that hideous bundle in his arms.
No, it wasn't me. He wasn't carrying me. He was carrying something else. I wasn't there. I don't remember where I was, exactly, but sometimes, I wish I could go back there.
I want to start painting again. Sometime soon. I've tried a couple of times. I went into my room and picked up my brush and pressed it against the canvas that I set up the afternoon before it happened (I was going to paint in the morning) but I kept dropping it. I kept trying, but after I figured out that I wasn't making any marks on the paper and I wasn't going to make any marks unless I remembered where the paint was, I dropped the brush for the last time and shuffled out of my room. That's when I noticed Mom. I don't know how long she'd been standing there, I'm not too good with time. Or noticing stuff. But she looked gray, like how I always look, her face all tight and her eyes shiny.
What were you painting, Dawnie? she asked. Her voice was too high and it hurt my ears, but I didn't really care. I stared at her for awhile before I remembered to blink and realized that she had asked me a question.
She's called my Dawnie ever since I came back. Before, it was always Dawn, ever since I was little.
Uh, I said. I wanted to tell her that I was planning on painting the demons that hauled me out of the grave that Daddy put me in. They scrabbled at the dirt that I was buried in and hauled aside the stones and laughed, but it wasn't cruel laughter, it was jubilant. They guided me back to the deadfall and sometimes I can still feel their hands on my arms. That's what I wanted to say, but I'm not so good at talking anymore. Nothing ever comes out like I want it to.
Maybe it was for the better. Whenever Daddy tries to talk to her about what he saw when he was taking his bundle across the swamp, the lights or the faces or the big things moving through the trees, she tells him to stop and puts her hands over her ears and sometimes she cries.
I sometimes want to cry with her. Because I remember that it felt good. But the tears will never come, my eyes just stay wide and dry and unseeing, and I can't sob, only make a low moaning sound in my chest that makes Mom shudder and scream at me to Stop it, shut up, Dawnie, I can't take it anymore, why won't you stop it, I hate it when you do that, shut up, shut up, shut the hell up, shut—
Then Daddy comes in and holds her. He still has dirt under his fingernails, and so do I, and I don't think it's ever coming out for either of us. Mom cries into his shirt even as he tells her to be strong for Dawn, for me, because I'm just coming back really slow and it'll take awhile before I'm back to normal.
She'll never be back to normal, Mom tells him. Really quiet, like I can't hear. She's never coming back, Darryl, why can't you accept that? Everyone told us what Louis Trenton's suicide note said. The warnings, the—the descriptions.
And then, even more quiet, Damn you, why didn't you let her die?