"Find what you love and let it kill you" –Bukowski

Abbie's Symphony

He thought about her often in the solitude of the darkness. At first, he often thought of the dark to be something tormenting, a useful trick to scare a being, prickling their nerves and causing their fears to blossom like a wild flower. Ichabod had dreaded the dark for he believed it to personify malevolence. In his time black had represented evil and its entire wrong doings.

Now, however, when he thought about the color black he thought about the silence inside his mind, and the thoughts that would only come during the darkness.

He thought about her for the first time way before he was trapped in his own hell. It was after he and she saw the sandman. He had almost lost her. He had been accustom to loosing something special because he had lost his wife Katrina. He had loved her very much and she had been his reason for living each and every day. Then he died, and was brought back to a new and very abnormal world. He had to learn everything all over again. He became a uneducated school boy relearning the proper tools to survive in this world. Abbie was his new breath, he soaked her into his lungs, and she filled him up with the sweetest realization.

That night after the sandman he merely dreamed of holding her hand. Such a thought should be considered duly improper, however, he didn't care. It was his own mind and he should be allowed to think of anything he wished. He had longed to simply touch her hand to make sure that she was in deed alive and that he too wasn't dreaming. It would have been easier that way, if all of this was a dream, then she wouldn't have gotten hurt.

He would find himself starring at her when she wasn't noticing. He liked looking at her while her long black eye lashes covered her caramel colored eyes. He liked when her hands danced through her hair as she looked down at some article of paper thirsting for understanding. She was a seed soaking up all the knowledge that she could possibly obtain continuously craving more. She was nothing like the women of his time. She was indeed quite different and in a way he liked that about her. She would always speak her mind and it constantly kept him on his toes. He liked taunting her getting small reactions from her like the rolling of her eyes, or the sarcastic responses that she would dish back at him.

He loved her everything.

He recalled her talking about an orchestra once and of course she had to have him listen to the music that brought her to composure. She placed an odd object inside another even weirder object and she told him, despite his inquisitive questioning, to be silent and let the music explain everything. He heard the sweet sounds of the instruments inside his ears and it caused every bit of thought to slowly dissolve away. She sat next to him, on the chair on the side of him, and placed her chin on her hand, her legs crossed, eyes glazed over as if a dream had taken her away. He watched her then, truly looking through her skin, bone, and gazing into the depths of her soul. For once she seemed unoccupied with the weight of her duty as a witness and for a moment Ichabod desperately wanted to get lost inside her mind with her.

As the orchestra plays he cannot help but find her to be like her own orchestra making his body, mind, and spirit react to her whimsical tune. Her breath as she inhales and exhales it's like a beautiful symphony slowly beginning to unfold. When he sees the slow pulse of her neck beating he can hear the violins of her heart slowly beginning to play. Oh and when she laughed, the most delightful sound to his ears, it makes him think of these trumpets that she tells him about. If he understood how to create his own symphony she would be his story he would want to tell.

He had felt quite horrible thinking about Abbie in such an intimate way. He was still married, and Abbie was a selcouth sensation. Katrina had been a lacuna, a mysterious rose filled with thorns, which drew him in pricking him in the process. Yet he had to admit something about their love made him contemplate everything. When he found out about all her secrets he couldn't help but wonder if everything she ever told him was a lie. He didn't want to lose Katrina and he did want to get her from purgatory. However, he mostly wanted to question her and remove this haunting image in his mind that she even lied about loving him.

When he had seen her again something was amiss. Ichabod felt it the moment he walked inside of purgatory with Abbie that something about himself altered. Maybe she was changing him, exorcising his demons, and creating him a new. A part of him hated to admit it, but, a part of him wasn't as thrilled to see Katrina as he hoped he would have been. He had prayed that once he saw his wife again all those old feelings would return, that his visions, his longing for Abbie would die away.

He was wrong.

Then when he had to leave her, watching her cry, broke him into thousands of pieces. He would have given himself up in her stead, but, of course she has always been so stubborn. He knows she would have never let him take her place. Oh, but how he would have rather suffered a thousand painful deaths than re watch those tears spill from those pools of caramel.

He couldn't help himself at that moment while she cried. He didn't care that his wife was standing only a couple inches away. He had to hold her to comfort her even if it was improper of him to do so. As he held her close, and she pressed her cheek against his chest, she whispered to him,

"I'm not asking for your permission, it's my turn Ichabod."

There was something breath-taking about the way she said his name. Just like that his universe had been altered by the mere utterance of her seeping his birth name from her lips. For so long she had simply called him Crane, but now their destinies were changing, and he knew there was a possibility that she knew that they may never see each other again. She was so selfless giving up herself for the good of mankind even when she realized he could easily forget her. It's as if he read her mind for he responded,

"Remember our bond, I'll come back for you." He swore.

She is what he believed in, in this new and furtive world where nothing made sense, he gave his beliefs, his optimisms and dreams of the future to her. He had seen her inside his future and he would be damned if that future faded away.

Of course he had spoken her name as well, even though he didn't want the first time to be such a disconsolate moment. However, he had to let her know that he was serious, that she was truly something special to him and something that special couldn't ever be forgotten. Abbie was kalon, and her splendor had only begun to take him over.

He had told her once, "I've lived on borrowed time; more than any man deserves. I've seen wonders beyond my wildest imaginings. And through these centuries, against the impossibility that we would find each other, we did. And I am most grateful for it."

There had to be some reason other than destruction, for why God had placed them together. He liked to believe that in an unadulterated world, in a diverse time, they could have enjoyed their company more without the world collapsing around them. He had prayed, wished, for different circumstances.

However, now he is stuck right back where he used to be. Buried alone, slowly fading away, underneath the ground. It gets quite worse, as he hears the chaos going on above him, the darkness of the walls of this box closing in. Life chuckles at him and the walls chime in with their own hysterical banter. They whisper everything they've known about his underlying feelings for Abbie, every flaw that he has held, but yet again maybe it's his fault because he holds so many. Maybe, this is his punishment, desolation, for feeling what he does while still being married.

Yet, deep down in his own darken hell, he thinks about her, and that beautiful symphony of her memory plays throughout his head, and suddenly things don't seem so quiet.

Hey everyone. I truly had a tone of fun writing this, and it made the long wait for SH a lot less miserable. I know last week I wrote through abbie's thoughts, so I decided to kind of get lost with Ichabod. He's such a wonderful character to play with and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this snippet of writing! I hope you all enjoy! remember to comment, I love feed-back. Also, if YOU have an idea of what you would like to read let me know!