A Romani mother’s promise, to chase away your bad dreams.
Tears fell freely, her song sinking into my pain and grief, knowing that she would never sing that song for me again.
Letting go of my strength, I fell over, fingers clawing at the ground as I sobbed. My mom was my everything, and even though I know it's part of the process of grieving, I couldn't help the crushing feeling of being lost in this world. No one was at my side. No one will catch me if I fall.
Her face flashed in my mind, reaching me with a sad smile.I love you, Kazia. I’ll never fully leave you. I’ll always be here.Her hand went to my heart, and I mentally held onto that picture for as long as possible.
She shifted, taking her hand off me, and I gazed up at her, noticing her mouth pinched, and looked over my shoulder. There was nothing there, but when I turned back around, the world I had built in my head dropped away, and darkness covered the space she had taken.
Desperation hit hard as my eyes searched for her in the darkness. Her face came forward again, but this time she was clutching at her face, trying to smile at me but not able to hide the wince when she dropped her hand. One side of her ghostly face turned black and blue, her lip busted, crimson liquid running down her neck. She crumbled to the floor, tears streamed down her face as she told me not to worry, that everything would be alright. She would take care of it.
I remembered this. I remembered this look on her face from long ago. I was a kid, and she told me to forget about it. A time never to be spoken of again.
Squeezing my eyes shut, a pounding came from my chest, hurting as my heart pumped too hard, too fast. A cool sweat dripped down the back of my neck, and my limbs grew numb. My mind felt like it was cracking.No. No. I was not thinking about this. I was not going to remember her like this right now.
“What was that song?”
The odd accent broke through my internal despair. My eyes flew open as I flung myself up to see a man crouching before me, his tattooed fingers playing in the flames as he stared at me. You would think that would be what I focused on, but no, the piercing emerald green eyes with flecks of gold called to the depths of my soul. Something in those eyes screamed at me to look at them, to see them.
When I didn’t respond, he lifted a hand and wiped the tears off my cheek. “That song is soothing. The voices like it.”
His accent was thick, but his words were clear like he had been in America for a while. Just as his words registered, my brows pinched. Giving myself a little shake back to reality, I responded, “What voices?”
Taking his hand away, he smiled at me, those golden flecks in his eyes circling as he bounced on his toes, leaning further into the flames. His dirty blonde hair fell into his eyes, even with the sides of his hair cut short. It was the first time I noticed anything else about him.
My eyes followed the light of the flames, seeing he was dressed in all black, his neck and hands covered in tattoos, and his ears had medium-sized black gauges in them. The sharp angles of his face played peekaboo with the firelight, making the lit-up side of his face look almost angelic, while the shadowed hidden side left more of a sinister mystery.
He pointed to his head, smiling wide. “The voices in here. I hear them a lot. Telling me what to do, gabbing away at my choices…,” he drifted off, looking to the side with a frown.
I don't know if it was because of my heightened emotional state or if I was truly going insane, but I poked at the side of his mouth, lifting it as I whispered, “Don’t frown.”
His eyes flew wide, and I realized I didn't know this person. He was a stranger, and I touched his face without permission. A stranger told me about the voices in his head in the middle of the night. In a graveyard.Fucking hell, Kazia.
Heat rushed up my neck and face, and I went to pull my finger away, but his head twisted, and before I knew it, my finger was caught between his teeth. My whole body froze, not knowing what to do. A crazy person had my finger in his mouth! Do I yank it away? Do I politely ask him to remove his teeth from my finger when I was the one who instigated it?
He licked at the tip of my finger, and I gasped, jerking back so hard as I tried to tug my hand away from this stranger. I yelled, “Wha-,” but his hand circled my wrist, feeling more like shackles than the gentle touch it was. I winced when pain ricocheted up my arm, his teeth biting down hard enough to make a mark. Before I could scream, he snatched my hand and rubbed the bitten finger with his thumb, soothing the pain.
“I bite, it's mine, right? That's how the saying here goes?” His smile took on a deadly edge, and warning bells went off in my head.
I tried to snatch my hand back, pain be damned, but his grip tightened. He kept smiling, but his eyes narrowed, asking me, “Who is this woman to you?”
“My mother.” I grimaced.Idiot! Why the hell did you tell him that? You don't know him!Eyeing him again, I didn’t think he was with the police, and he didn't look like a cemetery worker. Did he come and visit someone? I looked around for maybe some sane person looking for their psycho brother or family member.
Gearing up to ask him if he needed help finding who he came with, he beat me to it. Tilting his head, his expression soft, almost childlike, he asked, “Then why do you have a different last name than this woman?”
Now, those warning bells were like sirens.How the fuck did he know my last name?This was bad. This was very, very bad.
Looking down at the iron pan with my mom's items, I noticed they had turned ashen. My duty for her soul was done, and I needed to get out of here and out fast. Thinking back to what I learned from my psych undergraduate classes, I knew that when talking to someone delusional, you needed to stay calm, non-confrontational, and empathetic to their feelings.
Taking a breath, I smiled back at him, trying to keep my body from trembling and my voice calm and even. “She said she wanted to keep me safe,” his eyes focused on mine, and I took advantage. “You said you hear voices… do they bother you?”
“Oh, all the time!” He scowled, sticking out his bottom lip before he nuzzled my wrist, still not letting go. He threw some leaves into the pot to keep the flames from dying.
“What do they tell you?” Leaning in further, I nodded like I understood. If I could learn some of his motives, maybe I could find a moment when he was caught off guard, and I could get away.
He threw his head back at my mother's headstone, still not taking his eyes off me. “Was she all you had? Your only family?”
I nodded slowly, trying to build trust so he would let my wrist go. Maybe he would feel bad for me since I was now an orphan.
