the memory
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genre: angst and very moderate drama
summary: "This thing, this losing you, I hate it. But there isn't much I can do, right? You're already gone."
note: The title is a song by Mayday Parade. Technically, it's a guy point of view. But whatever, I changed it.
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You're sitting in the front pew of the church. Head-to-toe black outfit, solemn expression, tear-brimmed eyes: you've mastered the look quite artfully. They want you to say something, of course. They don't know about the fighting, and the screaming, and all the things you wish you could take back.
You stand up, swallowing thickly and habitually smoothing out the lines of your black dress that you'd only ever worn at your grandfather's funeral in Michigan three years ago. You walk forwards, trying not to think of how out of place you are.
"I, um, I don't really have anything prepared," you begin, wringing your hands. "I didn't know I'd be up here, I guess. I, um, he and I… we were close for a while."
You pretend not to notice the looks of shock on everyone's faces; confusion vividly etching itself into the pools of haunting despair that rest on their features.
"But in our world, I guess a while is a little too long."
Like the few people before, you talked about happier times. You don't mention the bad, at all. You merely skip over it; your life is a movie and you're using the fast-forward button like it's going out of style.
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The graveyard is quiet. It's a Tuesday, you think anyway, and it's been twenty-nine days since the funeral. It's been forty-one days since you've seen him alive. It's been one-hundred-thirty-seven days since you've seen him happy.
You look down at his grave, but you don't cry. It's a guilty feeling, this not crying. You really should, because you loved him. You love him still. Yet you still can't muster up enough tears. Your well is dry, long since spent on tissues and nightmares.
You talk for a while, wondering if he is actually listening, or if you're just talking to some polished rock. You've always been the realist, though, and your thoughts bitterly resided more-so on the latter.
The sun is dipping into the sky, leaving languorous streaks of peach and salmon behind to soon fade into violet.
"This thing, this losing you, I hate it. But there isn't much I can do, right? You're already gone." With those words, you lean down and gently kiss the top of the headstone.
You're feet carry you away. And for a brief moment, you wish they'd carry you further: maybe up into the sky and across the clouds. Anything to get away from the pain that wore you down every day.
You don't even notice the slight breeze that nips playfully around your ankles—the only movement in a still dusk.
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Memories are painful, unforgiving things. You don't know how it got to this point. You just know that you avoid everyone and everything.
An emptied glass bottle smashes against the wall, the tinkling noise like a slam of hammer to the fragile state of your mind. It takes you a long moment to realize that you're actually the one who threw it. But it's really no wonder. With everything going through your mind, it's surprise you're even mildly coherent at all.
The memory of him is raging now. It's an inferno and it's burning every last thing it can.
Before, when you were happy and he was happy and everything just seemed jolly, you realize it was all just a hoax. Happiness would never last forever, for you. And you were coming to terms with that, slowly.
But then the fighting started. At first, it over pitiful, useless things. The shouting was naïve and useless. Eventually, the shouting turned to screaming. Eventually, the fights were over huge things, and then puzzle-pieces afterward were scattered and torn. Eventually, you both stopped fighting through the remains and crawling back.
The tears are back, you realize. Streaming down your face with reckless abandon.
You're screaming and cursing the world for taking him from you.
You could've saved him, and you know it well. You could've told him you still loved him and begged him not to leave. Begged him not to walk home that night. It's your fault he's gone. For rejecting his plea to try again and to stop fighting. For brushing him aside.
You need him. You need him so bad it tears at you from your very core.
Yet, and you know this well, you aren't getting him back.
It is dark and it is late.
He is, or was, Landon Crane, and he was killed walking home one night when a drunk driver hit him.
You are Massie Block, and in your mind, you are a failure. You failed the one person that mattered the most.
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Well, that was depressing. But I had an idea, so I went with it. Hope you liked.
xx. i'll be a runaway