Was he dead?
The question stayed there, moving with me. I went back to it in my head. His face under me, the way his eyes had locked on mine. The way his hands had stopped fighting properly keptreplaying in my head. Still moving, but empty by the end, his body running on reflex right before everything finally went still.
I pressed my teeth together and breathed out slowly. The thought settled into me with a kind of calm that honestly felt more disturbing than panic would’ve. There was no horror waiting for me on the other side of it, no sudden collapse under everything I’d done. Just acceptance. Like some part of me had already been walking toward this for years, and all I’d done now was finally reach it. I dragged my hand briefly over my mouth, tasting metal that still hadn’t gone away. If he was dead, then that was it. No more voice in my ear, no more being watched, no more being pulled back into whatever he decided I was supposed to be. I let that sit for a second, tested it.
Freedom.
That’s what it should feel like, right?
I frowned, because it didn’t, not really. Lighter, maybe, but not free. Because even if he was gone, everything he put in me wasn’t. That feeling didn’t vanish just because his heart might have stopped. A breath left me through my nose, dry and strange, hovering somewhere uncomfortably close to a laugh.
What if he wasn’t?
What if I’d just left him there, half alive, breathing, coming back. The image flared across my mind, him opening his eyes again, dragging in air, standing up, coming after me. I stopped for half a second, then kept walking. If he was alive, he’d find me. And if he was dead, then it didn’t matter anymore. Either way, it was done. I wasn’t going back.
I kept moving, deeper into the trees, letting the distance grow between me and that house, between me and whatever I’d left behind on that floor. Not running anymore, just walking, like there was nowhere else I needed to be. I didn’t notice the trees thinning out at first. Then suddenly there was more spacebetween the trunks, less fighting from the forest every time I pushed forward.
The ground beneath my feet started leveling out too, the roots slowly giving way to something flatter and easier to move across. I kept walking, didn’t look up, not until the forest finally let go of me. The last line of trees broke behind me and suddenly there was a path under my feet instead of dirt and leaves. Narrow, worn down by footsteps that weren’t mine. It cut forward through open space, bordered by low grass that had been left to grow just enough to feel unkempt. There was something about it, something familiar, so I kept following it.
What else was I going to do?
The air changed with the path, less dense, easier to breathe, even with my ribs still protesting every inhale. My steps grew more even as I moved along the path, the rhythm settling into something automatic again. And then, it started to click. My eyes lifted a little more now, scanning without really thinking about it, until the shapes ahead of me shifted into something else. Stone, rows of it. Some worn down, some newer. All standing there in lines that stretched further than I could see from where I stood. I stopped, for real this time. A graveyard, of course it was. I let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh if there had been anything in me to carry it.
“... Right.”My voice sounded strange in the open air.
I stepped forward again, onto it. Gravel crunched faintly under my boots now as I moved between the first few stones, my eyes dragging over names I didn’t recognize, dates that didn’t mean anything to me. But I already knew, before I saw it, before I even started looking properly. This wasn’t just any place, it couldn’t be. I dragged a hand down over my face, smearing whatever was left there across my skin without caring. I remember thinking to myself, whether it was some kind of fucked up coincidence orif something decided to drag me there on purpose. Didn’t really matter though.
I glanced out over the rows again. She was somewhere in there. I exhaled slowly, tension pulling through my jaw as I forced myself to take another step forward. I’m already here, I thought, so I might as well see if I can find her. I moved through the cemetery without any real direction at first, just walking between the graves, letting my eyes drift over them as I passed. Some of them were clean, recently tended, fresh flowers laid out carefully, small candles placed in neat rows, melted wax still clinging to the glass from nights that hadn’t been that long ago.
Others were older.
Names worn down by time, letters half erased where the stone had given up before the memory had. The ground shifted under my feet. Gravel in some places, soft earth in others where the grass had started to reclaim what used to be paths. It wasn’t silent here, not completely. There was wind moving through the trees at the edge of the cemetery, leaves brushing together, a low, constant sound that filled the space without breaking it.
You would’ve liked it there, little Ghost. The peace and quiet of it.
I kept moving deeper. Rows blending into each other, names meaning nothing to me, dates that stretched back further than I cared to think about. People who had lived entire lives and ended up reduced to a slab of stone and whatever someone decided to leave behind for them. Some were remembered, some clearly weren’t, it didn’t take long before I started noticing the difference. The ones that still mattered had color around them. Signs that someone had stood there recently, straightened something, replaced something.
The others, they were left to fade. Grass growing unevenly around the edges, moss creeping in where no one had bothered to clean it away. I felt it before I fully saw it. Something inme shifted the closer I got, a low, unpleasant pull deep in my stomach that made my steps slow without me meaning them to. Then my eyes finally caught up with the rest of me, and I found myself standing in front of her grave.
The stone was worn, darker than the others around it where moisture had settled in and never really left. Moss had claimed most of it, spreading across the surface in uneven patches, softening the edges of the name carved into it. I had to look properly to read it. There were no flowers, not even the kind that had been left long enough to die, just a stone. I just stood there, looking at it.
There was something there when I looked at it, something heavy and cold that settled into me almost instantly. I couldn’t fully explain it, only that the feeling fit too well. Like I was standing in front of something that belonged beside me in ways I didn’t want to examine too closely.
You would probably try to romanticize it, wouldn’t you, little Ghost?
Call it a bond. Something invisible tying me back to her, something that survived everything that happened after. But no, it didn’t feel like that.
What I felt was uglier than that.
That grave, the way it had been left to grow over, untouched, forgotten, it looked exactly how I felt inside. Empty but overgrown, abandoned. No one coming back to check if anything was still alive under it. And standing there, looking at it, I didn’t feel connected to her. I just felt seen. I stood there and stared at her name until it stopped meaning anything. Just lines carved into stone, half eaten by moss, barely there and then my head, of course, went straight back to her.
To what she did, towhyshe did it, because that’s the part no one ever really answers, right?
People always find prettier ways to say things when the truth makes them uncomfortable. They bury it under diagnoses and careful language until it sounds distant enough to tolerate. But standing there in front of that grave, with dead leaves gathered around the stone and years of neglect built into every crack of it, I couldn’t make myself fully buy into it anymore.
Because what if she hadn’t been imagining things at all?
What if she had looked at me and seen something nobody else wanted to admit was there?
