Red Blooded

Red Blooded - Epilogue

Darkness.

When the sun descends behind the clouds, the only thing left is darkness. A darkness darker than perpetual night. A darkness that consumed the mind, even when the light shone at sunrise. A darkness that plunged you to the depths of despair, drowning you in the ocean of black and holding you prisoner until you could breathe no more.

That's what darkness was. 

It was the feeling that crept into your soul, grabbed the pieces of heart that lay broken on the floor and refused to let the pieces fit back together. Even when the Sun shone so brightly, even when the sky remained cloudless, the darkness remained in my soul. 

Darkness had settled into my shell my heart, and I would hold onto it with the fervent hope that it remained there. With nothing else filling the void in my heart, no emotions or feelings to go along with the memories that became painful, Darkness fit snugly into my body - from the tips of my toes to the ends of my hair. 

It would be a sad state of affairs if Darkness were to ever leave me. Because if Darkness ever decided to leave me...I'd have nothing to hold on to. If Darkness decided to abandon my body, abandon my heart, I would be left with just emptiness.

Emptiness was a feeling that scared me even greater than feeling nothing at all.

I thought I knew what grief felt like. I thought I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved - someone so close to you that they were a part of your soul. I thought that I had exhausted every possible emotion that linked itself with grief a year and a half ago; that I had grieved and felt emotions that I had wanted to distance myself from.

But I was wrong.

I didn't realise that grief came in different disguises. I didn't realise that grief was dangerous. Like a silent mugger, Grief attacked me from all angles. It assaulted me with memories and sounds and feelings. It pelted me with thoughts of him and wrapped its hands around my throats whenever I felt like I couldn't breathe. Grief tortured me with my own memories. Grief was all I could think about.

It consumed me.

I wanted to be angry with him. I wanted to scream at him, shout at him and even get a few swings at him. But I never got the chance. I was already late - late by three months. He had known for three months that time was slipping away from him and he hadn't said anything. Not a word. But he didn't have to. I should have realised. I should have known that he was worried. I should have seen the sadness in his eyes whenever he wasn't paying attention. I should have felt that he was scared, because every time he had held me in the last three months, it felt like he had been holding me for the last time. I should have listened to my heart every time I felt like there was something wrong. But I didn't. I had turned a blind eye, like the fool that I was, to all the signs that now felt like neon flashing lights in my head.

I wanted to hate him for making me feel like this.

But I couldn't.

Because even after death, I was falling even deeper in love with him.

"Are you okay, Aunt Em?" The dulcet tone pulled me away from the streaking river that ran through the clearing. My eyes found her sitting next to me on the damp log that I had claimed as my seat a few hours ago. 

No. I'm not.

"I'm fine." I whispered to her, knowing that my voice was as unstable as the heaviness of my heart. Kate inched closer, sliding across the log slowly, as if testing my boundaries, until her legs touched mine briefly.  She had gotten closer to me than any other person in the last week.The little blonde haired girl, the girl that reminded me so much of myself as a child, had made the first puncture to the little bubble I had cocooned myself inside of.