For Sam
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Collin pulled up the sleeves on his cardigan and hooked his fingers around the top of the fence. He couldn’t believe he was breaking into a cemetery, but the gates were locked until late morning. Besides, if he came in the afternoon, old people would be everywhere. Collin wanted to be alone with her.
He jammed the toe of his converse into a fence hole and pulled himself up. For a moment, he balanced like a bird waiting for the sun to rise, but then he he swung his legs over and let go.
Collin fell on top of Marie Sue Smith. Actually, he fell onto her grave – but it was all the same to him.
“Sorry,” he whispered to the stone, “I usually come in by the gates, but—” He bit his lip, stood, and dusted off his jeans. “You probably can’t hear me, anyway.”
Until now, Collin had only been to Pleasant Dreams Cemetery in the day time. It usually looked like a dilapidated park with an unconventional admiration for gravestones, but by the light of the moon it resembled the set of a bad horror movie. Everything was a dreary shade of grey.
He followed the walk way to where she slept; grave C-12. He knew the path better than the lyrics to I Will Follow You into the Dark. Collin kissed her for the first time when that song was playing. It was their song.
Passed the Robinson headstones, past the still born child and the drunk driver; he could feel her heart beating in the earth. It fluttered when Collin got closer; or was that his own heart?
He came to row twelve, stopped, turned, five steps.
“I’m here.”
Collin sat down in front of the head stone. He rubbed his fingers in the wet grass as he read over the engraving. Each letter floated on his lips as he tried to accept what it told him.
Burd Kristiana Vorobey
February 16, 1992 – February 14, 2008
You will Always be in our Hearts.
It was only a rock, carved and etched with a few words, but it was all he had left of her. Collin sometimes thought about stealing her gravestone, keeping it with him so he could remind himself, even though he never forgot.
“Nothing’s left, you know,” he started. “Your house burned down.”
Collin waited for the gravestone to grow lips and speak, but he knew it never would.
“Your parents made it out, but it’s gone.” He licked his lips and leaned forward. “They don’t know why it happened.”
A quiet laugh escaped from his lips; he didn’t want her to hear.
“I know, I’m horrible, aren’t I?” Collin pushed his hair out of his eyes, rubbing the dew on his forehead. “I shouldn’t laugh. But don’t you think it’s a little funny? It’s just like you.”
He paused again. Collin would give his soul if it meant she would reply.
“The firemen said, ‘We have no idea, it just burst into flames and that was that.’ Just like the doctors when they said, ‘We don’t know why she’s dying. She just is.’ You just were. You were just dying, like it was nothing.”
Sinking his fingers into the dirt, Collin squeezed chucks of grass to keep back his tears.
“You died like people breathe. It’s normal to die, they told me.”
Pushing farther into the dirt, he pulled out the chunks and threw them against the headstone.
“But you really didn’t, you really didn’t just die. You were tortured and sick and you couldn’t eat and maybe your lungs stopped working or your blood wouldn’t move but you died so horribly and they still can’t tell me why.”
Collin kept shoving his fingers under the grass, pulling out more and more dirt, throwing it at her grave stone, around him, back into the earth.
“I sometimes think they don’t tell me because they want me to suffer.”
He paused for a moment to catch his breath, to catch himself and keep himself from crying. Collin could feel the wet heat behind his eyelids, pressing and trying to flow out but he wouldn’t let them fall. He stared at his hands. Slowly, he pulled them out of the ground and crossed his arms.
In a whisper, quieter than before, “God, I’m so sorry, I’m just…” Collin wiped his hands on his jeans. “I didn’t mean to defile you.”
The patches of exposed dirt looked like wounds, eye sockets left bare by Death’s decay. Collin laid his hands over the holes to hide them. His fingers tingled and he pushed them farther in.
“You know, it feels like we’re holding hands.”
He pushed in deeper. Collin could see the sun starting to stretch across the sky.
“I wanted to let you know about your house. I thought it was only fair.”
A bird started to sing.
“Does God know why you died?”
Collin squeezed the ground again. He wanted to feel the dirt push under his nails and never come out.
“I lie in the grass sometimes and pretend you’re lying with me. Your hair is everywhere and we’re looking at the shapes in the sky and you’re comparing them to geometric figures and I tell you you’re too much of a nerd and you say, ‘oh, hush!’ like you used to when…”
A tear escaped his careful restraint and rolled down his cheek.
“When I would tell you that I loved you and because I loved you you would never die because the people I love aren’t allowed to hurt or be scared or die.”
The dirt suffocated his skin. He pulled his hands from the ground and brushed them against her gravestone.
“Why are you haunting me?” Collin whispered.
He found a rough edge of the stone and pressed his palm against it. Then suddenly, he rubbed it with such force he could feel the skin ripping. Collin wanted to bleed for her. He wanted to give her a piece of his life so he could have her back.
“I love you so much, but I can’t sleep anymore and I dream when I’m awake and all I hear is you crying…”
A red smudge marked the place where his palm had been.
Why does God want me to die?
He pressed his thumb against the stain and rubbed the blood into the engravings.
“I knew your house was gone before they told me. I didn’t even see the smoke. I heard you screaming.”
Collin traced the B and left it red.
You’ll still love me even if…?
“Everyone says you’re dead, even this damn stone says you’re dead.” More tears traced the way down his face and dribbled off his chin. “But you’re so loud, you’re louder than anyone who’s alive. I hear you screaming and every time I close my eyes I see you with all those needles and machines and your blood pumping out but there’s so little life in your eyes.”
His finger followed around the U, going over it a few times for good measure.
I don’t want to be in the Dark.
He wiped his tears on his shoulder again and moved to the R. Collin would make every letter red. Even if he had to scrape his wrist against the rock over and over and over until he bled all six quarts. Every letter of her name would shine with his blood and his life. The life she didn’t have.
“I can feel the Dark inside of me. It’s not even where it should be and I can feel it. I don’t want to be in it without you, Burdie, please...”
Collin couldn’t see the letters anymore. He couldn’t see his blood or his hands. Everything sloshed together into grey because he couldn’t hold it inside anymore. Collin lied on the grass and cried. He cried more than he had at her funeral, because everyone was watching him and he couldn’t cry without her to hold his hand, because he needed her to wipe his tears away and tell him it would be OK even though it would never be OK.
Between deep breaths and sobs, Collin started to sing:
“If heaven and hell decide
that they both are satisfied,
illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs…
If there's no one beside you
when your soul embarks,
then I'll follow you …”
Collin pushed his hands over his mouth and screamed. He wanted his lungs to burst and his ears to bleed and he didn’t want to feel himself think any longer.
“Burdie, Burdie, Burdie, I can’t follow you, Burdie. You’re gone and I can’t follow you.”
He squinted through the tears and rubbed her name one last time, to feel the bumps and lines against his fingers once more before he left her there in the cold ground alone with only the worms and the dirt and Death.
“I’m scared,” Collin whispered. “I don’t think I can find you in the dark.”
THE END
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Воробей (Vorobey) - Sparrow
This was for Clo's Contest, thus, the picture! It's #10.
Oh! And the picture was awesome, I especially love how it was shot upside-down. ^_^ Good luck!
