I'M SET FREE



And so she stood there, staring at the ground below her that seemed bare

and unforgiving. She stood there staring at the ground and tormenting

herself with the same old option, the short cut. She had thought about it

for a long time now, whenever there was a moment for her mind to wander

back to that same image that same thought. The thought that she should have

done this before that maybe if she had everything would have been simpler,

better. Because she was the only on left with those moments now, somewhere

back there she had lost herself, somewhere in that room. But no matter how

hard she tried to pretend everything was ok she couldn't make herself

believe it and no one else was there to reassure her because after

everything had happened she had slipped into the shadows where no one would

notice her, she hadn't wanted them to see her she enjoyed the idea of being

so isolated that no one would even look her in the eyes anymore. It wasn't

because they didn't want to see her, it was because they couldn't see her

if they had tried. She had made sure of that. And at first she had been so

proud of the good job she had done at making herself disappear never

disturbed by the fact that they had let her, that they had looked away. As

much as they were hurting they didn't know what it was like to feel the

cold the way she had, to feel the stiffness. Now the darkness was a relief,

a quiet protector that had wrapped its self around her and kept her warm,

kept her away from the cold that now seemed inevitable. But in the harsh

light of day there was no where to hide, no comfort in the suns blinding

rays that made all the reasons for this so clear. She had tried, she truly

had, and no one could say that was false it had been a long painful year

and she had done her best to get through it. For their sake if nothing

else, but the longer she stayed here the more obvious it became that no one

cared and that she was completely alone. So now faced with this choice she

thought it best to go with her intuition, something she had never really

used for fear of it being wrong, of her screwing up again. It was that,

that scared her more then anything. How her choices affected others, what

they thought of her because of those choices. So here is where her

intuition had taken her, or that is what she had tried to tell herself at

least. She knew the truth, that it was a combination of pure exhaustion and

defeat that had brought her here. She knew that behind everyone of her

'noble' decisions was the inability to struggle and the need to lay her

arms down and rest, that quiet voice whispering in her ear "Give up, you're

tired and broken just let go" She stared off of the high ledge ready to

plunge into the endless abyss just below her feet, she looked up as the sun

began to rise and leaned forward ready to relinquish herself to the

darkness. But a part of her couldn't die that way, so instead she sank to

her feet her body heaving with dry sobs, she hadn't really expected to die

a part of her thought maybe one of them would come. One of them would have

seen her suffering, seen her disappear and they might have stopped her

before she could do any harm to herself. But no one showed, no one came

looking for her, no one had noticed. Why she had expected them to she

couldn't quite grasp, she had done a good job of disappearing and no one

would ever come looking for her again. So she lay there on the ground

silently staring into the nothingness that was this world and let herself

sink into the empty feeling that stopped her from screaming at them for

letting her do this to herself. They didn't deserve that. Why would she

want to leave this earth anyway?

"You're not even here" she whispered to herself before getting up and

making her way back to the life she had been so ready to give up. And so

stood Liz Parker, cold and stiff the way she remembered them.