I stare at my screen one last time. The livestream of a home that holds so many of my precious memories begins to blur through the wave of tears.
My thumb trembles as I close down the app and delete it for good.
8
Indie
I Need You - LeAnn Rimes
Myfeetpoundhardagainst the frozen ground. I’m not sure if it’s to get out of the cold quicker or stamp at the emotion threatening to rear its head.
Running near the winter months is for psychopaths.
I’ll say that with my whole chest—or my partially failing one.
The crisp morning air is burning through my lungs, my breaths coming in short, quick bursts. Eventually I slow as I approach the familiar crunch of gravel path.
It’s been two days since I removed myself from the livestream, asking Regina to work out how to block it for me entirely.
I haven’t cried so much in years until then; I felt like I was grieving the loss of him all over again.
I didn’t even shed a tear at the two-year mark, kept at bay by the underlying delusion that he’d appear one day. But now I’m at the stage where I’m having conversations with myself in my head.
I need to stop selfishly hoping that he can read my mind, can hear my tattered heart calling out for its other half to rejoin it.
To just come back to me.
He’ll have moved on, as he should have.
I need to work on doing the same and mean it this time.
When I reach the familiar headstone, I crouch down, my black gloves brushing the light dusting of snow off Dad’s headstone.
My head was foggy, and my eyes hurt from the silent tears that came when I closed my eyes for sleep. Running helps clear my mind, and before I knew it, I’d run halfway between our home and my parents’, the graveyard the closest place I could allow myself to stop and just think.
“Hey, Dad,” I whisper, my hand dragging across his name engraved in the whitewash stone, the indents of letters dipping beneath the pads of my fingers.
I was so close to him growing up; I fortunately was with both my parents. He left a massive hole in my chest when he left our lives.
Every time he’d leave for deployment, it always felt like we were saying our final goodbyes. I’d been so lucky, having him for twenty-one years, remembering the last time I saw him with a smile on his face as he shouted,see you later.
Doesn’t matter how many of them felt like they could have been the last; it never prepares you for the real one.
I’m not sure if I believe in Heaven. I’m not religious. I like to think that the good ones go somewhere else from here, just waiting on their loved ones.
A world like this, but without the pain and hatred. Each of us living in an age we’d considered our best years, happy and safe.
But I do believe in Hell. I think the world we live in can be a glimpse of it, and I hope those that belong there go further down the abyss.
I don’t know where I’ll end up if any of it’s true. Maybe a higher power will see I’ve only tried to do good when I turned my life around, rid the world of evil, and let me rest in peace.
My ears pin back as I rise to my feet, aware of footsteps crunching in the snow, and I tilt my head to see under my cap.
Regina walks towards me.
“Hey,” she says. A burst of icy cloud surrounds her, along with two steaming brown cups in her hand.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, taking the one from her outstretched hand.
