dear violet ➳ andy biersack (currently editing)

28

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chapter
twenty seven
andy
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Maybe I was cursed.

Because she was there.

Head beneath the milky water, eyes open wide, while the tap continued to run and water continued to cascade out of the tub.

Jacqueline was there.

Skin pale as bone, eyes flat and empty. She was so, so still.

Had she ever left?

Even after she'd taken her own life, drowned the air from her fragile lungs? Had she followed me around? A ghost?

Had she simply stood over me with a frown on her face while I tore myself apart?

Watched as I sobbed, screamed, threw up, watched as I cried her name into the dark at night as if she would suddenly appear next to me again?

She'd been there. Watching as I broke every rule I'd ever made up for myself, watching as I shattered mirrors, tore up old pages of lyrics, kissed Violet, lied to Ashley's face.

Jacqueline was there.

I was kneeling on the cold tiled floor, my face just inches from her's, my knuckles white as I gripped the edge of the bath tub. I was looking into her hollow, bleak eyes - the eyes of the first girl I'd ever fallen in love with.

Jacqueline was dead, but Jacqueline was there.

The water had gone cold, but beneath it her body was colder.

She was a shell, a corpse, a manequin; just a reflection of the woman I loved.

Jacqueline was dead, but Jacqueline was there.

And beneath the cold bath water, she blinked.

I awoke with a sudden jolt, as if I were breaking through the surface of a swimming pool.

I stared up at the grey ceiling, my heart hammering painfully in my chest. My breaths were coming hard and fast, and I could feel the beginings of a panic attack coming on. The kind that made me sure I was about to die.

I blinked, and saw Jacqueline's ashen face behind my eyelids, her dead eyes, her dark hair a halo around her head in the water. I imagined her lungs filled with water, her still face, her unblinking eyes.

I felt something inside me just break. Violently, painfully.

It was too much. Violet's letters telling me how she planned on killing herself, Violet trying to jump off the edge of the Macombs bridge and into the steely grey water below, Violet's bleeding wrists and wet cheeks, Violet's father and his cruel harsh face, Violet pitching back up at the apartment, Violet asking for a ciggarette, Jacqueline's white corpse, still as stone beneath the water.

I leapt out of bed, dragging the blankets with me, and collapsed to my hands and knees.

The ground was tilting beneath me, my throat was burning as if I'd inhaled too much smoke, somebody was sobbing and screaming and gasping frantically for air.

Me. It was me.

It felt like I was drowning.

I staggered to my feet, breaths coming in sharp bursts. I could barely feel my legs.