Playground school bell rings
Again
Rain clouds come to play
Again
… Rebecca had no time to turn and run, Bridgette flew at her and grasped tightly around her waist… but Rebecca's arms were still free.
There faces so close, Bridgette's sickly… inhumanly pale. Rebecca pressed her hands against Bridgette's shoulders… and pushed.
Pushed with all her strength… and pushed Bridgette to the ground, on her back.
Rebecca grabbed the handle from her back pocket… and pulled the pistil out, holding it tightly in both her hands, her finger on the trigger.
By the time Bridgette was able to get up to her elbows, Rebecca already had the safety off.
Bridgette lowered her eyebrows a little… but besides that, her face was blank. That good old blank stare, with the eyes that look up so menacingly…
And Rebecca, whose face, too, was blank… except for her eyebrows, which were drawn as if in pity or sadness…
They stood like that for the longest time… it could have been five minutes, it could have been fort-five… Who knew?
The images… Rebecca's memory… flashed through her mind, discolored as if they had been through a green filter. Finding Bridgette's gun in the top drawer of Bridgette's dresser, picking it up and examining it, feeling the ach in her heart, admitting it to herself: "I might need this…"… the sickening memories.
"Is this the only way?" Rebecca cried finally, demanding.
Bridgette took a minute to reply… but then, slowly, gently, nodded her head only twice…
Rebecca let out one single sob… and not another… not allow the tears to come to her eyes. She fought them with all her being… and even looked away from Bridgette… looking around, as long as it wasn't at Bridgette.
Bridgette saw her chance… and took it. Stretching one of her legs out as far as it would; she brought it around and hit Rebecca hard in the ankles.
Taking her feet right out from under her…
Rebecca fell to her right side, hitting the ground hard enough to knock the air out of her… then she heard the gunfire
BANG!
It shattered through Rebecca's world… shattering everything in sight.
She turned over on her back and looked at Bridgette… who was clutching the right side of her abdomen with her left hand… her right arm was at her side.
At some point in time, she had sat up.
Rebecca watched in disbelief as blood began to trickle between Bridgette's fingers… and Bridgette moved her hand away slowly, shaking with fever, to reveal the gunshot wound in her side…
Rebecca's mouth fell open… her features twisted in a mix of horror and indescribable sadness.
Bridgette placed her hand over her wound again when a sudden gasp and her head shot up, staring up at the sky.
She sat like that for a long time… it frightened Rebecca all too much, she didn't understand. She was frozen there… unbelieving.
Bridgette's head slowly came back down… until it was hung. Then lifted a little, and she looked up at Rebecca… and smirked, slowly, weakly… warmly.
"Goodbye, Strange."
The words sounded like a foreign language… Bridgette's voice, uttering Bridgette to Rebecca's greeting--- the same greeting they had used since they were four years old--- as a farewell… Had Rebecca heard right?
But, with those words, Bridgette's last, she slunk back slowly… and lay limp against the ground… the rain softly pattering her clothes.
"Bridgette?" Rebecca whispered, her voice shrill as death… it rose as she said it again, and screamed as she said it a third time. "Bridgette? Bridgette!"
She crawled on the ground… on all fours, mostly dragging her legs… over to her cousin's limp body.
"Bridgette?" she whispered… so shrill… staring at the pale face with the blank expression and the closed eyes. "Bridgette?"
Rebecca put herself besides her cousin, and picked her upper body up, setting it against her lap, cradling it in her arms.
"Bridgette…"
No response… she placed her hand under Bridgette's nose.
(She's not breathing…)
The words shattered in Rebecca's head... she placed her fingers against the side of Bridgette's neck.
No heart beat.
She was dead…
(He Who Walks Behind the Rows has abandoned me… and you shot me, Becky. What a special day!)
(Goodbye, Stranger.)
Bridgette said… no… no, wait… it was just Bridgette's voice in Rebecca's head.
(Goodbye, Strange.)
"Bridgette…" Rebecca whispered for her sixth and final time… and then she was mute and clutched Bridgette tightly… hugging her.
Has no one told you she's not breathing?
Hello, I'm your mindGiving you someone to talk to
HelloBridgette had been dead for over an hour. As far as Rebecca knew, she could have been there for years. The two cousins, together forever in this morbid dance of death…but it didn't matter anymore, not really, as long as she stayed with her.
She sat in the same place she had always sat, gently rocking back and forth, cradling the upper body of her fallen sibling. The rain was still falling, all around them, though it was no longer battering; it had become a gentle sprinkle… and Bridgette was already cold. How did she ever get so cold?
"You done yet?"
Rebecca winced in confusion and raised her head; looking up.
"Hello, Stranger," Bridgette said. She stood in front of Rebecca, about half a foot away, her head angled down at her cousin. "You look worse then me on a Sunday morning and that's saying a lot." She wasn't dressed like the corpse in Rebecca's arms… she was dressed as she had been the first day she arrived in town; her last innocent moments; in the red crush velvet tank-top, the black skirt, the signature stalkings, the white slipper shoes, with her black hair all bundled atop her head. "… Are you okay, Becky?"
Fresh tears sprung to Rebecca's eyes, following the trails stained on her cheeks by their predecessors, but she still couldn't tare her eyes away from Bridgette.
"You know, Becky, mud isn't really the best hair accessory on you." Bridgette chuckled, mildly; speaking only after shrugging off her own question after Rebecca hadn't answered her for a long time. "I think it makes your cheekbones look fat," she wrinkled her nose and nodded approvingly.
Another long pause with nothing said… a small frown began on Bridgette's face.
"Becky…"
If I smile and don't believeSoon I know I'll wake
From this dream
A twitchy, trembling smile slowly twisted Rebecca's pink lips. This was not real. Bridgette was not dead. Rebecca was not alone. It wasn't possible. This thing, this human before her which had passed away from this world, was not her cousin, could not be her cousin, could not be her other half; the only person she'd ever had in the world. Bridgette was somewhere else, not in Gatlin, waiting for her. Rebecca would open her eyes and everything would be alright again.
She allowed her eyelids to slip apart, slowly, the ability of sight beyond their backs returning to her… and there was Bridgette, who now sat cross-legged opposite Rebecca, their knees only an inch or two apart… the same vision she had seen moments earlier.
"Becky…" So beautiful, Rebecca thought, even if no one else did.
This was a dream. That was it! Rebecca was asleep and this was a dream, a horrible nightmare, and all she had to do was wakeup… just wake up and everything would be alright again… just wakeup and… and… just…
Don't try to fix me I'm not broken
Hello, I'm the lie living for you so you can hide
Don't cry
The image of Bridgette began to haze as Rebecca turned back to look once again at the cold and clammy body, damp with rain, of the dead teenager… Bridgette?
"I almost had you…" Bridgette whispered. Rebecca looked back up at her. Her emerald eyes were sorrowful, and staring at the ground, and she was as still as if she were carved from ivory stone.
"Bridgette," Rebecca tried to say… but her voice was drown out by her own sobs, rising repeatedly like hiccups from the deepest pit of her belly until she was overcome by them, hanging her head as they came again and again and again.
"Oh God, Becky, don't cry!" Bridgette pleaded, a dreadful guilt in her voice.
Suddenly I know I'm not sleeping
Hello, well I'm still here
All that's left of Yesterday
Eventually, the sobs died down… but shivers caused Rebecca to bolt up, her eyes frantically searching all around her for her lost counterpart. She was gone, nowhere to be found…there was only the corpse… Rebecca, the corpse, and the corn…all alone in a timeless world of death and madness.
(Don't leave me here, Bridge, not on my own…)
This was it… this was the end… this was what it all came down to… this was the truth… the truth that Rebecca could not bare… could not even comprehend…
This was the end.
Rebecca store out vacantly – now gazing into the corn – where the vision of Bridgette had previously been. She watched as a figure began to push through it. Perhaps one of Bridgette's children, come to kill her for bringing down their leader? Good. Let him come.
(God, let me die, let me die with her.)
She watched him come closer and closer… but, long before he reached the line where the corn ended for the little clearing she sat in, she knew who he was.
(Mathew… no! No! Don't come! Turn back! Turn the other way! Don't come here! Don't separate us! Don't take her away! You can't! You can't take her away from me!)
Rebecca clutched the corpse tighter to her in a panic. She would not let her go. She would never let her go. Her eyes flicked back and forth nervously, until they stopped only a few feet away from where she had, on the gun… the gun.
Rebecca held Bridgette to her tightly with one arm wrapped around her waist, and began to crawl over the muddy soil, until she crossed onto the thin grass that lined the line where the clearing ended and the corn began again. She went back to where she'd fallen, and where the gun still lay.
With shaky hands she grasped the gun away.
The image of Bridgette was back again. She crouched like a schoolgirl at Rebecca's feet. Rebecca didn't notice her. She picked up the gun, the metal feeling as if it were made of ice yet weighed a thousand pounds.
"Becky," Bridgette urged her cousin, quietly, thin black brows knitting above her olive green eyes… all the light had gone out of those eyes.
"It'll only hurt a minutes, right?" Rebecca whispered, her voice barely above a breath. She looked back down at Bridgette's face again, and lay one last gentle kiss on the corpse's brow… then she lied back and pressed the end of the mussel of the gun to her temple, her elbow pointing at the sky. (Together forever…)
(Together forever, even in death.)
And that was all…
Because in the end… the real victims… were the cousins, who everyone said mine as well be sisters, Bridgette and Rebecca.
Goodbye, Stranger.