7. Words Best Left Unsaid
It was Sunday night. Dinner time.
The kitchen was as hectic as Gordon Ramsey’s only there wasn’t all the swearing. It was frowned upon in our family. Even a ‘damn it’ didn’t escape unnoticed. Shouts of: “Ames! You’re in my way!” and “Dylan – move your butt!” were tossed around like pancakes in a saucepan. Dylan thought he was a professional chef. I was quick to point out what tasted disgusting in his cooking, to save him from getting a swelled head, like most loving sisters would. We often argued over what was on the menu for that night. I would want something totally mouth-watering and blissful and Dylan would want some horrible dish which I’d never even heard of before. Of course it would turn into a full-blown argument which he would always win, because he was older and the one who actually cooked the meals. I helped, although Dylan would probably call it ‘getting in his way.’ So what if his recipes were awful and I pointed it out? That was being helpful, wasn’t it? Constructive criticism. Or maybe just criticism.
Where was Mum, you might ask? Well, Mum was sensible enough to stay well away from the kitchen and our arguments. She often waited in the living room, reading a book or watching the T.V. until Dylan called: “It’s ready!” Mum had drifted out of the habit of cooking, and Dylan, worried at how thin she’d been getting, immediately took over.
Our dinner sat steaming on the kitchen table. Three bowls of an unidentifiable brown substance.
I took a sip of my water and stared at my dinner. Was that brown lump meat? Or a strange potato? This dinner looked … interesting…
“Um, Dylan,” I said. “Er… What is it?”
“Stew,” he replied between spoonfuls.
“Ah.” I was not a fan of stew. I was not a fan of anything which looked like dog diarrhoea, but maybe mentioning that to my brother wasn’t such a good idea.
I moved my spoon through my dinner, trying to see what was in it. Something green swam past the gleaming stainless steel.
Oh God.
“What’s the green stuff?” I asked.
“Kale.”
I glanced at Mum, who was also trailing her spoon through it. She didn’t look disgusted, more like distracted.
“Mum?”
She looked up at me.
“Do you want a glass of water?” Anything to prolong the horror of putting that vile stuff in my mouth.
“No, thank you, Sweetie.”
Damn.
A moment of silence passed as Dylan chewed away and I stared down into my bowl, trying to be brave. Might I stress the ‘trying’.
“Er, Dylan? What meat is it?”
He leaned back and threw his spoon down. “For God’s sake, Ames! Just eat it! It’s not poison!”
I wasn’t too convinced.
“I’m just asking!” I protested, a little angry over his overreaction. Jeez, I thought I was being nice.
“If it’s so horrible why didn’t you make dinner? For once, why don’t you cook? I’m fed up of cooking all the time and only getting criticism!”
“I offered to make Carbonara!”
“Oh, very challenging,” he snorted. “Well, you’ve got this. Now eat it.”
It was a silly argument, but I was angry that he thought he could just throw orders at me and expect me to follow them unquestioningly.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” I ground out.
“I can tell you to do whatever I like!” he retorted, also getting wound up.
“No you can’t! You’re not Dad!”
The words were out before I could stop them.
I saw the hurt flicker in Dylan’s eyes. Mum flinched and I instantly wished I could take those words back. It was horrible of me to talk about Dad. He was the wound in our family. The black hole. Dad was a subject you went nowhere near. Ever.
“Let’s stop arguing, hmmm?” Mum said, desperate to avoid conflict over the one subject she couldn’t handle. She dipped her spoon in her meal and I noticed her trembling hand. The spoon clattered against the bottom of the bowl, reminding me of tremors before an earthquake. A warning for an approaching disaster.
I felt a mixture of anger and pity. Anger that she couldn’t tell me to stop being such a brat. Anger that she wouldn’t upbraid me, tell me off. C’mon, Mum, tell me to shut up and eat my dinner. But she was no longer capable of anger. The loss of Dad had drained her of all emotions, save for sorrow. Dad was the black hole in her universe; unable to be ignored, the darkness growing larger and larger, threatening to engulf her.
I lifted the spoon to my mouth, but I couldn’t taste what it contained. It was a thick, horrible lump that lodged in my throat.
I shouldn’t have said that…
Dylan forced down spoonfuls as though his life depended on it. He chewed ferociously. Too angry to look at me.
I grasped my water with a trembling hand and took a shaky sip, trying to dislodge that lump in my throat. The water felt cool in my mouth, but it hurt to swallow.
I really shouldn’t have said that…
My hand trembled violently as I set the glass down. So violently that the glass tipped to the side and pitched the water across the table.
Dylan jumped up. His chair scraped noisily across the floor. When he stood I saw the water stains on his lap. At any other time I would have teased him and then wet myself laughing, but this was not a time for laughter.
“Amelia!” he exploded.
I jumped up too. “Oh Dylan! I’m so sorry!”
“I bet you are! What the hell is wrong with you!”
Why, now you ask, a dead woman called Alonsa has been coming to me; but, aside from that, I’m fine. Thank you for asking.
It was safer to just apologise again.
“I-I’m sorry.” Tears started to prickle in my eyes. My cheeks burned. I make a mess of everything. Especially lately. Lately I had turned into a cry-baby.
“Just get out of my sight!”
So I did; but not before I saw Mum still sitting at the table, dutifully eating her meal. Her eyes were glassy, unseeing, as she stared at a patch of the wall. Oblivious to what had just happened. Oblivious to the water that dripped from the table and onto her soaked lap.
٭ ٭ ٭
Alonsa sat under the shade of the trees, at the edge of the cornfield. She looked relaxed as she fiddled with the blades of grass that poked out from the ground, with her legs stretched out in front of her.
I stood above her, watching her silently.
Cobwebs of shade threw patterns on the lush grass. Patches of light, where the sunlight broke through the canopy of leaves, showed the true colours; bright green here, and dull brown there. The dull brown being Alonsa’s clothing. It didn’t look like it had been originally brown, maybe a white? But countless layers of mud and other grime took care of that. Once again I found myself wondering at how she had died, who she had been before she became this lost spectre. Had she been rich? Poor? Married? Single? Loved? Alone? Had she ever had children? Or was that a possibility that could never be discussed? Who had she been?
I supposed I would soon find out.
She patted the ground next to her without looking up or speaking. Taking the hint, I sat down on the cool grass. I faced the cornfield, looking out at the patterns the wind ran through it.
“How old are you?” I asked, breaking the blissful silence.
“When I died I was twenty-one,” she replied serenely, as though we were talking of the weather or the cornfield.
“That’s young,” I stated, shocked.
“Mmm, I suppose.”
“How did you die?”
There was a pause. She looked up at the vivid blue sky, the pain in her eyes easily seen.
“I died of a broken-heart when I was nineteen.”
I frowned, confused. “But how? You said you were twenty-one.”
“My heart died, not my body.”
I was even more confused, but I decided not to question her further on that matter. It was obviously painful to her.
“Where did you come from?”
“Darvia.”
“Which country’s that in?” I asked with a frown. I had never heard of it before, although I never knew of most places. I wasn’t that good at Geography.
“It’s a land, bordered by the Milran Sea, Charlington, and Rouinkle.”
“Right.” Because I knew where the hell that was.
She smiled at my confusion. “It’s in another world.”
“An-another world?” I echoed in disbelief.
“Yes. I wandered that world for many, many years. Then I somehow ended up in this one about forty, fifty years ago.”
It was better if I didn’t try to understand. My mind wasn’t that open that I could accept she came from another world.
“So… what happened to you?”
She looked at the cornfield and then the blue sky, her expression unreadable. I wondered what she was thinking, if she was scared.
She turned and looked at me for the first time since I had found myself there.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes,” I replied eagerly. I placed my hands on hers and a shock ran through me. I had touched her for the first time. It felt… strange. She was as solid as anyone, but her hands were cold, wet.
Dead.
“I want to hear,” I said, swallowing my unease.
She looked at me for the longest moment before she glanced back out at the field of corn. She watched it for a second before she began to speak. Before she began to tell the tale she had waited too long to tell.
i do tend to go off on one sometimes...Anyway, please PM me when you post another chapter; im looking forward to it! Oh, one nitpick...forgot it again. im so sorry. another habit 
i'm sorry, i thought i'd already reviewed this! guess not...
