Disclaimer: I don't own Ib.
The Faintest Whispers
I catch glimpses of her wherever I go. She's like a whisper, an itch I can't quite reach. A blurred memory that might have been a dream.
Something happened that day at the art gallery. Something strange...
I don't know who she was. I don't know if she ever even existed. I see her sometimes out of the corner of my eye, but when I turn, there's nothing there.
I don't even know her name.
I have a recurring nightmare where I'm dressed all in blue, wearing a blue rose like a collar around my throat, its thorns pricking my skin. And I'm running, both toward something and away from something. There's a red rose ahead, red like the blood dripping from my neck, and it has no thorns, and for some reason I know that if I can get that rose, I'll be free. Behind me is a yellow rose, almost like a monster, and it twists itself around my leg and causes me to fall down hard, and I reach out for the red rose as the stem around my leg drags me away...
And there's her voice, saying, "I know you can do it, I know you can do it, I know you can do it," as I'm pulled further from her, powerless, unable to save anyone.
It's just a nightmare, though, just a nightmare...
That's what I tell myself, anyway.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm even real. I look down at my hands and I think of the way they bleed when they're cut and I start to wonder who decided blood should be red, and why the world is made of three colors, and why no matter how hard we try we can never create life.
My image of her is strongest just after sunset, and I sit outside looking at the washed-out blue sky and I can sense her presence beside me.
"Are you here?" I say, and every night, she responds the same way.
"I'm not."
And she laughs like it's some kind of joke and I stare down at the ground and pretend the reason I'm blinking so quickly is because of the wind.
The evening melts into night and she fades away with it, like a sketch the universe decided to erase.
I don't think I'll ever know what Guertena did to my mind that day, and I'm never going back.
I've put it in my will that I want red roses planted by my grave.