One-Shot Short Stories

Only the Blind See

The body lying before me is not the girl I knew in life. It's not that I don't believe she's dead, but they must have made a mistake and placed another girl's body in her casket. No, this girl is much too happy to have been my best friend. Ashayla Antledone, the girl I knew, had long black hair and eyes with no light in them. She smiled at strangers and friends alike, but the crows feet around her eyes came from stress not joy. In her final months alive her childlike essence was shunned from the world, even me. Now she lays with her uneven bob cut, cut minutes before her death in the frenzy of a breakdown. Her eyes and face, perfectly relaxed with a beautiful grin placed upon her artificial pink lips. She's been painted perfect to the dot, not a single imperfection, not a single story to be told. No, she is too peaceful to be my Ash.
    I take my seat besides my mother in the front row just as the ceremony begins. There stands a tall preacher in front of her casket giving praise to the lord. If she was alive she'd be rolling her eyes and laughing at every word to come out of this man's mouth. Her parents raised her to be strictly Catholic, Sunday school and all, but she lost her faith. Coming from a churchgoing family myself I asked her why? She told me when she was a young girl around 7 or 8 she would pray to god to strike her father dead because of the things he did to her and her mother. When he didn't respond after 5 years she couldn't believe there was any above power to let her live in such torment. I never asked her about faith again.
    When the ceremony is over I am bombarded by school girls, blurry eyed crying over the girl they met once, soaking up any attention they can get their hands on. Her foster parents wish me their condolences and reminisce about her life, but their feet point towards the door and their eyes train on their watches waiting for the acceptable time to remove this child from their memories as if 20 minutes of grief could match her 17 years of misery. They hug me and walk off, slumped shoulders and tissues to their mouths hiding smiles. Strangers hug me and commend me for how strong I've been, I say nothing. I don't cry either. I simply nod and accept their show of grief talking about the tragedy, the loss of young life in a terrible accident. Accident, that's what they call it but I know better. She didn't "accidentally" drive full speed into a curb, but she didn't do it on purpose either. She simply had her eyes closed.
***
    "Hey Lins, do you want to hear a secret," Ash glances over from the steering wheel with a mischievous smile. Technically she can't drive me legally, but if anyone asks we've decided we'd tell them we were sisters, and our mom's faked to note to prove it. It's not entirely a lie, our mothers met in college, roommates. It took a whole two weeks for them to become attached at the hip. Clubbing together, double dates, and the final kicker, two unexpected pregnancies at 23. Ash's dad settled down and bought the couple a house. I never met my father, and my mother couldn't support us alone so Auntie Lacey rented out the shed in the backyard to my mom. It wasn't much, one room, no heating, no kitchen, but together the two of them refurbished it into a cozy little home. We were practically raised as sisters under the same roof every night for a family dinner. Until mom got her fancy job and we moved to another part of the neighborhood. Then we became more like sisters of divorced parents.
"Hey, Earth to Lindsey. You still with me girl," Ash's voice pulls me from my thoughts redirecting my attention to the building anticipation of her secret to be.
"Always," I smile. Her grin widens even further and it reminds me of the old Ash. The one who would steal extra cookies when our moms weren't looking and run away giggling. The one who dragged me into wild adventures in the hills of her backyard screaming with laughter as pirates invaded our treehouse. The one who would wipe away my tears when I fell from the branches one too many times. She told me the bruises and cuts weren't anything to cry about, they were art, a story to be told. She must have had the best story.
    "Did you know there's another world beyond our sight," she says, and I laugh. Ash always had the most fantastical imagination. Yet my laughter seems to disturb her, the bags return to her eyes, eyebrows lower and her mouth frowns "Why are you laughing? You don't believe me?" she accuses. Something about her tone makes me think she's being serious.
    "I'm sorry, go on" I let my face fall to give the impression I was serious. A pause of silence as she debates the sincerity in my voice. When she decides she can trust me once more she begins to tell me of this other world. She's only been a couple times she explains. The way she talks about it, it feels like she's telling me the plot to the Matrix minus the cool new abilities found in the so-called reality. She said it happened first by accident. She felt a deep set of exhaustion for days if not weeks, she would sleep 8 hours, 10 hours, 12 hours and still wake physically and mentally exhausted. Then, one night, for 21 hours straight she lay unmoving in her bed. Her foster parents shook her, foster siblings splashed water on her face but nothing could wake her from this death like trance. To Ashayla it wasn't just 21 hours, and it wasn't just some dream. She was pulled into another dimension where she and her mother, her real mother not Alice, her "foster for the money" mom, spent a year of bliss. They picked flowers, read books, told jokes, laughed, and best of all it was just the two of them.
    "She was calling me. That's why I felt so exhausted. Instead of sleeping I was caught between two worlds," she says with a dramatic flare of her hand and a starry look in her eyes. She must have had quite the vivid dream to confuse it with reality, but I keep my thoughts to myself as she pulls into the driveway and shuts off the car.
***
    Mom had to go back to work after the funeral. "Ain't no rest for the wicked," she told me before kissing me on the cheek and walking out the door. I have a license now, and my own car. I squeeze through the door and start the engine. Seated at a perfect 90 degrees, my two hands gripping the steering wheel, and my head hunched over the wheel, squinting to the road ahead. This is how I make my way to school. Such a different driver than Ash. Ash always had a relaxed air about her, leaned back with one hand on the wheel and one hanging out the window. To her, driving meant freedom. I think of driving as yet another responsibility I'm not ready for. To be responsible for my life, those who I drive, and the other drivers on the road. It's all too much.
    Isn't it crazy how even a funeral doesn't exempt a student from attending class. At school the teachers all tip toe around me. Too afraid to reprimand me for not turning in my assignments. They talk to me like I'm a child, cooing to me the same lines practiced a hundred times over. Encouraging me to see the school counselor, that's their polite way of saying "Hi. I have a class to teach, bring your problems to someone else," the whole sympathy act leaves me feeling drained. So instead I put in my earbuds and sleep through class, it's not like anyone's going to tell me not to. Seven periods a day I sleep, eight hours every night, and yet the exhaustion stays. I wonder if this was how she felt. I can understand why she thought dreams of her mother were another world. It's easier to believe our dead loved ones are alive somewhere else, somewhere we can go. I dream of her, we're the heroes in some child's story slaying the evil witch riding dragon back. The dreams are so vivid they could be mistaken for reality, if dragons were real that is.
***
    "It's happening more often now, though I haven't gained full control yet," Ash gleems, "I'm seeing her almost every night, and even sometimes when I blink. There are other majestic creatures there too. Mom says that the other world is where we get our myths of fairies, unicorns, sirens, and all the other creatures people have witnessed and come back to write about. But they got it all wrong."
    "Wow," I wonder, "have you met any of them yourself?" I enthusiastically question giving her my most genuine smile but in truth I'm becoming a little worried. Ash dives into another of her passionate stories but her words drown out in my ears. It's been weeks now, and the longer this goes on the more convinced she becomes that her mothers out there, but she's not. She died three years ago at the hands of her abusive husband. Ash saw it happen, she watched her mother's tears falling, her kicking, fighting, choking. Her father's liquor licked lips curling into a sick smile as his fingers flexed around the soft tender meat of her mother's throat. She watched as her mother stopped fighting, still conscious she closed her eyes, smiled, before falling limp and cold. Her father was sentenced for life but it was too late, the damage had been done. Another story painted onto Ash and her mother. I think that's where she gets this idea. Her mother used to tell us stories of the wonderful creatures hidden from our sight just before bed. Ash tells me her mother went to this other reality just before she died.
    A hand on my shoulder focuses me back to the Ash. "You see it's different there. We can come and go as we please, the dangerous part is if we neglect our physical bodies. If our physical bodies die while we are there, we don't die, we just can't return." Her logic makes my head spin, and my heart aches for her, but we all have our skeletons we must face. Who am I to tell her she can't grieve for her mother this way.
***
    It's strange. It's been months since Ash died. I haven't had real conversations with anyone but my mother, if you could consider clipped dinner remarks a conversation. For a week she stayed with me, cried with me, comforted me. For a week we grieved together for our lost family, for only a week. "Life goes on" she told me as she walked out the door back to work full time, back to lecturing me about my grades, as if none of it had never happened and expected me to do the same. In time I found myself distancing from her, resenting her for brushing Ash aside, or perhaps I was simply being distanced from reality itself.
I float through school, I don't remember getting there, I don't remember walking from class to class, I don't remember the notes I took, or the homework I did, but it's all there. Time has managed to elude me as I look into my body. It's hard to explain, I can feel the physical touch of things, but I don't feel my own body. It's like my soul has been ripped from my body and is trailing behind on a leash. At least that's how Ash used to describe it. For years I listened to her say this, for years I nodded like I understood, and yet only now that she's gone can I truly understand her. I used to think she was crazy, I feared she had gone off the deep end, and now here I am 8 feet under the water next to her corpse.
    Perhaps she wasn't wrong. Maybe, just maybe, she was right. Reality doesn't feel real, so maybe there is somewhere else. Somewhere real.
***
    Ash sits in the driver's seat speeding down the streets. The movie ended at eleven, an hour past curfew, but that's not why we're speeding, Ash doesn't care if we're an hour past curfew or ten. "I've learned the secret to enter the world," she vaguely says. "There needs to be a kick. You know a little something to get your heart beating," her eyes seem unfocused, as though she were staring in close detail on the moon rather than the road. "Can I show you?" she turns to me, a hint of a smile curling her lip. Something about the way she speaks, or maybe the way she looks at me, makes me uneasy. Before I can protest she continues, "All you have to do is close your eyes." As I process what she is saying, her eyes close. One. Two. Three. Three seconds, that's how long it takes for the panic to set in as the car swerves lane to lane and I leap into her lap grabbing the wheel to keep us from crashing. I shout for Ash to knock it off but her eyes and face remain flat, as if unaware of the present danger. Tears cloud my vision to the point of near blindness, out of fear I take one hand off the steering wheel and use it to slap Ash across her face.
    "Wake up," I scream with a shaking voice. "What is wrong with you, are you crazy? Are you trying to get us killed?" I yell, enraged and afraid. I feel her push me off the wheel and out of her lap. With my now free hands I wipe away the tears, and when I can see, I turn to Ash, ready to rip into her. The look in her eyes is wild. Written across her face was shock, hurt, and worst of all betrayal. Immediately regret wells in me for ever laying hands on her "I'm sorry," I choke on the words, but she faces the road. Sitting straight two hands on the wheel she drops me off at my house without another word. She never speaks to me of the other world again. She rarely speaks to me or anyone else after that night. After a week I get a picture of her in a bathroom mirror, scissors and handfuls of long black hair lay in the sink, the text below reads:
            Mom says she likes my hair short.
An hour later I hear there was an accident.
***
    Images of Ashayla flood my mind everytime I blink. Every night I dream she's under the covers with me filling my mind with silly little secrets, or pointless drama. Just before I wake she always gives me some variation of her ominous message. "I miss you," she whines "join me," she entices "and you called me crazy," she scolds "careful, if you leave your body for too long, you'll end up like me," she laughs. It's become unbearable. She's been dead for over a year, and somehow she's never left. She haunts my dreams, my every blinking eye, always there and yet just out of reach. In my darkest hour I lay in my bed willing myself into this other world. I picture the mermaids and fairies, Ash and Auntie Lacey, but they never come.
She is punishing me for our fight, and there's only one way to end this torture. I have to face the root of our problems. My hands shake as I write my mom a letter and leave it on the table. They continue to shake as I leave my phone beside the letter and as I get into my car turning the key to the engine. I don't have anywhere I need to be, I just know I have to be driving, and I can't have anyone trying to talk me out of it. Lucky for me there's not much traffic  so I'm able to glide down the streets full speed. I must be crazy, I think hysterically, crazy like she was, a softer voice whispers, seducing my foot to press the gas pedal further. Doubts of what I was about to do creep into my mind, but I don't give them the time of day. As I reach about 70 miles per hour my heart pounds against my chest begging for me to spare it from its fate, but I don't listen, I simply close my eyes.
    Golden rays of sunlight filter through my eyelashes as I flutter them open. The day is warm with a cool autumn breeze. I know this place. It's the meadow in front of Auntie Lacey's house. The window is open, and there she is. Lacey Antledone, Ash's mom. She's just as pretty as I remember, if not prettier. She looks younger, her skin is free from the constant marks of art her husband gifted her. When she sees me she smiles, "Long time no see pumpkin," the smell of fresh cookies rush my nose. As she turns to wash her hands I greedily stuff one into my mouth and hide two more in my pocket careful not to get caught. She turns to me once more with a knowing grin, "Ash-baby is in the hills out back sweetheart, go right on in." A giddy child wonder sneaks into my soul and I bound through the house up the hill. There she is, the Ash I knew all those years ago, dancing in a tree, her feet masters of the branches, surrounded by beautiful flower Nymphs. Pure joy spills out of her every pore shining brighter than the sun. I finally see. Perhaps it is finally my turn to become a work of art, one no one could ever forget. I never want to open my eyes again.