Nostalgia

Fallen Angels

I'm trapped inside a heart-shaped locket, resting against the chest of a fallen angel. She sits weeping in an abandoned graveyard. It's such an ancient place, most of the headstones are weathered away, the names and dates no longer visible.

She cries silently into the night. Her eyes, dewy and glistening, are fixated on the moon. She doesn't know I'm stuck here. She can't hear me shouting.

I wonder why she's so melancholic. I wonder how I got in here. I wonder why I can't remember anything at all...

"What did I do?" the angel whimpers. "Was I bad? Why did he hurt me?" She sobs into her hands, tears leaking through her fingers and painting the slab of granite she's sitting upon with little dark dots.

There's a sudden flash, almost like lightning, and then, memory.

A large, hot hand clamped over my mouth. Putrid odor wafting across my face, a foul mix of beer, cigarettes and venom. I hear him lick his lips. His other hand gathers both my wrists together above me. I squirm and wriggle to try and free myself but I'm not strong enough, how could I possibly be stronger than him?

"Fighting will only make it hurt more," he hisses. "And don't you dare fucking scream." His hand slowly leaves my mouth, and I do briefly consider screaming at the top of my lungs. But who would come for me? My younger sisters can't possible get involved, I won't allow it. And Mother...it'd be like trying to raise the dead. She probably won't even hear my cries.

The hand he removed from my mouth slides down my body, my once innocent, childish body. My brain feels like it's splintering, it hurts so much. How could a person do this? How...

My lower half explodes in pain. Swift, rough waves of agony, a steady rhythm that builds to an awful crescendo. It's too much, I can't hold all this pain in. One little body, one little mind to try to comprehend this atrocious act. Can't do it.

And now we're here. In this graveyard. She's still streaming rivers from her eyes, holding her knees against her chest, folding herself in. "I just want to disappear," she whispers shakily.

So I'm trapped in her locket, holding these memories so she won't lose her mind? She seems broken already, but still coherent, still here. Not like me. I'm only in this locket because it's hers, and close to her. If I were to be destroyed, or lost, who knows what would happen to her?

I halfway know that she is me, and that I am also me, but not. It's a really crazy thing to try to wrap your head around. I'm her shadow. But she doesn't even realize that she's the light.

"You didn't deserve it." The words are spoken, and she has a shocked expression. Obviously the words weren't hers, judging by her surprise. Probably because they were mine.

"You didn't do anything wrong, you weren't bad. You're still pure." She's full-fledged sobbing again, and shaking her head vigorously.

"I'm not, I'm not!" she cries into the empty cemetery. "I'm not pure, he stole that from me!"

How can I respond to that?