No Happy Endings

Take the Pills

 They didn't look much different than headache medicine, she told herself. They were small and white and from a little container. They were so very different. She'd been sitting there for hours, shivering on the cold ground, while the pills sat on the cheap wooden table beside her. Every once in a while, she'd look at them before returning to stare at the faded wall. It helped her think. She didn't want to think. Not about this. It was too painful.

The door rattled for a second before opening with one final push. It was falling apart just like the cheap table and would soon become trash just like the chair that had once stood where she now sat, but that was in happier days. It was the chair her father had crafted with love for her mother before she was born. Her father was walking in now. Glancing at the pills, the man's eyes had a sorrowful look, as though remembering something too near to the heart to say.

"Take the pills," Her father whispered with a strangled voice that struggled to speak, overcome with the same sorrow in the man's eyes. "Take the pills and be done with it."

She'd only seen her father this sad once before, many years ago. Her father always stayed strong on the outside. She was strong too, but not as strong as her father, she told herself. Neither was she as strong as her mother before her. Her mother would have known what to do with the pills immediately. Her father looked so empty to her. It was more than any father could bear. The large strong man turned, feet just unsteady enough to show their weakness and shoulders slouched forwards, and walked out of the room, closing the door as best it could. She heard the footsteps going down the hall and heard a soft breathing noise. There was a small misty droplet of water on the floor, near the door, but she didn't see it. She'd never seen him cry. She didn't know he could.

It was her fault, really. She knew better. She wasn't strong enough. But she had gotten carried away. She didn't think about the consequences. She didn't realize she was being used. Now she couldn't make the choice she had to. There was no chance for her life to be redeemed. She was forever gone.

There sat the pills. She looked at them and loathed them. She had to make a choice. She steadied her quivering hand and prayed to God to steady her quivering heart, although she had never prayed before. Her mother had prayed for her many years ago. Her strong mother. She reached her now calm hand out and towards the pills. Was there any other choice?

It was Deja Vu. It had to be. He knew he'd done the exact same thing before. He knew the shovel. He knew the graveyard. He knew the heartbreaking emptiness that tore him in two all inside. But it was all new. It was a new grave he was digging. It was a new coffin he'd crafted. It was a new level of aloneness. His daughter wasn't there. He looked up from the dirt. In the coffin, skin white as snow, lay the little baby. She'd been helpless. She had always been doomed.

The grave was deep enough and he didn't have the strength to lift the shovel again. He wasn't strong anymore. He didn't have anyone to be strong for. He dragged the coffin across the ground and eased it into the hole with his last bit of strength. Tears kissed the child's cheek as he slid the lid over. He covered the hole back up.

Looking up, he saw the tombstone. Only a daughter, it said. The grave and tombstone had been provided for him since he couldn't afford them on his own. They didn't consider the fetus to have lived, or there would have been two graves. They wouldn't let the tombstone name his daughter as a mother. It had all been for nothing.

Under the soil and in the coffin, a fetus lay in a girl's arms. And the girl's father dropped the pills onto the grass beside.