The Catharsis

Chapter 23 - Why Can't This Be Love?

Box

By Amethyst Turner

There's a box in the closet upstairs

And it's filled with things I don't understand

Baby blankets and bows for hair

Tiny toys for tiny hands

Baby wipes for baby care

And flimsy books for flimsy plans

Looking in it makes me sad

It's all the things I could've had

XXX

There was no moving on, really.

Minka felt as though she'd been robbed of everything that made her alive. All she felt like these days was a walking corpse. No joy was to be found in performing anymore, no excitement in the touch of her lover. She felt gray, worn, faded.

Rubin did his best to comfort her, but even he couldn't pull her out of this depression. After falling from the tightrope in California, she stopped performing.

Now, she laid in bed, miles away from Little Rock, Amethyst's stuffed bear sitting on her belly. Scrubbles, that was his name.

Rubin said she should get over it. Besides, she'd only known Amethyst for a month or so, right? To this, she responded, "Is that what you would say to a grieving mother whose baby died in its crib at four weeks old?"

He'd said that was different, but it wasn't, for Minka. A mother who has lost her infant to a crib death would indefinitely blame herself, even if there was nothing she could have done. Minka felt that guilt, ten times over. She'd sent her into the forest, hadn't she?

Minka untied the bow around Scrubbles' neck. She'd done this many times since Amethyst's disappearance. The first time, she had been horrified to find something waiting behind the ribbon: a bloody shard of glass, sharp and coated with dried blood. It perplexed her; what was this doing in the collar of a little girl's teddy bear? But she left it there, tucked it back in each time she retied the bow.

Rubin and the others were performing tonight. She could not watch anymore. It triggered her nightmares.

There were several of them that cycled through her head from night to night.

The first and most common began in the orphanage. She was sitting on her bed with Rubin, the afternoon of their first kiss. He leaned toward her, biting her lip gently at first, and then harder and harder until she bled. He morphed into someone else -- this part varied. Sometimes it was one of the older boys from the orphanage, sometimes a man she'd only seen once before or didn't know of at all. Her blood covered the bed, the walls, the entire room until it become someplace else. Now, she and the man stood on the tightrope, drenched in Minka's blood, and he'd push her down -- this part varied too. Some nights, they only pushed her and pulled her hair or slapped her face. Others it was much worse. Either way, she went spiraling off the tightrope, into the net below. The moment she hit it, she heard a crunch. Rolling over, she would be met by the sight of Amethyst's broken body, dissolving into a tangle of leaves and branches that swallowed up the circus tent.

She hated that dream, because each time it was fresh. She wasn't expecting it, didn't know what was going to happen. Every time without fail, she would wake up sobbing.