Disclaimer: I don't own the show. Also, this is my first fiction in quite a while so please excuse me if it's not A-rated.
Please review.
The Ghost of You
I cried softly, the salt from the warm tears that fell from my eyes burning my cheeks. It was time to say goodbye, time to wish that circumstances had been different and regret they weren't, time to watch a mournful full moon instead of a romantic sunset.
I felt like I was trapped in this single moment, trapped in the knowledge that yesterday was dead and over while tomorrow would never truly come. After all, there is always another today waiting for each and every one of us on planet earth as soon as the moon sets. That was why the tears would not stop now as they lowered the casket into its final home, a seven by three rectangle set six feet deep in the soft dirt.
The rain fell endlessly on top of the canopy over top of us, a wall of water flowing off each side and up to the edges of the rug that the chairs had been placed on. It felt like the rain was boxing us in, its hundreds of millions of tiny droplets surrounding us with themselves so that there would be no way of turning and walking away from this sad, sad eternity until the whole thing was over but I didn't care. I was here for her and that was reason to stay even if the path away was completely clear.
"She was a very special person who had nothing but love for those around her. She was always willing to help out anyone in need and was never afraid to take a stand for what was right." Her mother said. "She will be missed, that much is definite." She stepped down from in front of the casket, the rain now falling from her eyes as well.
Words. Every single thing they said was just a word. There was no emotion, no meaning, no love, no truth behind what they were saying, the sycophantic bastards that sought to fulfill whatever selfish desire they had by speaking for the dead. They had no right to speak for her, no right to say what they thought she was, no right to tell how they 'knew her' and how she was closest only to them. Liars! Phony devils, each and every one of them! They didn't know her! They never heard her sobs at two a.m. in the morning, they never felt her heart as it beat out an unsure but welcoming rhythm in her chest, they never tasted the sorrowful joy that bound itself to her lips forever, they never saw the loving truth that hid itself behind the shadows of her lilac irises.
They didn't know her.
I wanted to stand up and shout out her truth, to point them out for the lying snakes they truly were. I wanted the whole world to know who she was, wanted to tell them why she had been there even in the darkest of times when despair was all around us, wanted to tell them what she had meant to me. But I could not. They would not ever fully understand her truth, her love, her soul. It would be nothing but wasted words.
"She was better than any of us and will never be forgotten." The speaker, her forty or so year old father, finished as he rested his hands on the Plexiglas podium in front of him, one hand on the edge of it with the other on top of the Bible sitting in the middle of it, unopened and untouched until that moment. "I only wish she was here still." With that he took his seat next to his wife and wrapped his arm around her shoulder as she sobbed.
Looking at them only helped to make me sick and angry. That was supposed to be us in twenty years, a forty-year-old couple that had gotten married and grown old together for the last twenty years after raising a family of our own. We were supposed to be together until death did us part at a time that was far further into the future than this. But did death care? Of course not, it just did its job and got its jollies by taking the one person who had every ounce of me and even more. I hated it, hated it beyond all reason and understanding to the point of wanting to scream at the top of my lungs and curse the bloody cycle of life. I wanted to kill the man who had stolen her time with me, the man that had separated us but death had stolen that privilege from me as well. Damn it!
I sobbed silently still, my eyes fixated on the casket where her body now laid in an eternal slumber that I knew she would never awaken from. The tears rolled down my rosy cheeks unabated, each one leaving a little dark, wet spot where it landed on the black suit coat that covered my white shirt. It was almost ironic that when we cry, our cheeks redden as much as when we blush. One action caused by sadness, another caused by cheer or embarrassment. Why are our bodies so messed up?
"Let us close with prayer now as we commend her body to the earth." Said the minister as he once again stepped up to the podium, dressed in the normal suit and tie of a man of the cloth. "Heavenly Father, your Son taught us that death is only the end of the body, not the end of the soul, which will live on within your loving embrace for all eternity. Thus, we pray today that You would welcome this magnificent woman unto your golden kingdom and thank You for the time with her that You have given us. We thank You for just allowing her into our lives and pray that You would never allow us to forget all that she has meant. In Your holy name, amen."
I wanted to walk up there and beat him senseless, just pound my fists into him again and again and again until there was nothing left but a bloody mess of flesh and bone for praying such an impersonal little amen for her. She deserved far, far more than that and I don't think that there was a soul here who did not know it.
The minister stepped down from the platform that the podium was setting on as the pallbearers began to walk towards her coffin to begin preparations to lower it into the ground. The bastard was all smiles as the crowd rose from their chairs and he began to shake the hands of anyone important in the audience, starting with her mother and father. In the background, the grave attendants continued about their work, just as they had on a thousand different days at a thousand different graves.
One by one, each member of the audience left, every one of them walking solemnly into the torrent of rain that continued to ravage this damned cemetery like they had lost the most important thing in their lives. They knew nothing about loss. Nothing. None of them had known her like I had. None of them had felt her very soul inside them. None of them had seen her through my eyes.
Eventually, the audience left and the pallbearers finished up their work, leaving only her and me. Even though they had covered the coffin with dirt again, I could still see the outline of where they had dug the grave, could still see the lines in the muddy ground that would be forever burned in my mind's eye.
Slowly, I stood up from my chair and walked to the edge of the grave's outline, alone in the graveyard save for her and the other residents of its grass-covered depths. I hated looking down at this blank patch of dirt with its lime headstone with the words "Loving Daughter" carved underneath her life dates. It did not feel right, it was too real for me to feel anything but unbearable sadness.
I cried violently, screaming out things into the thunderous distance that were for her ears alone. I told her everything I had wanted to tell the audience today but hadn't. I told her what she meant to me and what I had felt for her, told her that I would have taken her place if I could have, told her that I loved her.
"I know you do, Danny." She said, wrapping her ghostly arms around my waist as I knelt at her graveside.
"Sam!"
The Daemosian