The Second Stage

Times Past

In her unconscious state, Meredith's memories came not as a timeline but as flashes.

It's October 21st, 2008 and Meredith is losing her child, or as it so happens, her child is being taken from her. The crashes and dings of hammers and bells and ping-pong balls bombard her. Amongst the dozens of children jabbering, she picks out Kyle's voice, though she could have done so atop a skyscraper in New York City. Under the joyous crescendo, a melody plays from a twirling Merry-Go-Round, while its white and gold stallions canter endlessly. Somewhere, a new tune joins. It should have been a wonderful day.

January 15th, 2006 is the first of many days in the hospital, only weeks after Meredith had been cleared for discharge. She thought her own pain would be the worst of it. The doctors, the endless parade of doctors, they don't get it. Kyle is sick; he's pale, losing weight, and hasn't acted himself. Mind racing to leukemia, to all things auto-immune, to combinations of Latin and Greek that may not exist, Meredith panics in slow motion for months at a time. Weary of words and names, Meredith only seeks relief for her boy.

A September breeze brushes over Meredith's beloved locale, the boardwalk, on what should have been a wonderful day. The Beach Boys echo over the speakers. Her favorite band. Her favorite song. Mist rolls in, but the lights flash between the stands, working to their own rhythm and, on a grand scale, together as one. Shades of the entire color wheel paint every surface as they swirl through movement real and perceived. Stuffed animals hang from hooks, waiting to find a home. Pans sizzle and steam with seafood thrown atop open flames. Alarms ring, skee balls clack, and applause breaks out from the arcade, yet it's getting harder to drown out the new sound encroaching.

It is December 25th, 2005, when Meredith is offering Kyle the gift of a journal and a green utility box to hold it. He can write whatever crosses his mind between its dark leather covers: his darkest secrets, his brightest moments. Despite his loosening bond with his mother and her fading vision of everything she has, Kyle fills its pages with stories of a ghost.

There's a new sound encroaching on that foggy September day, but Meredith can't hear it yet. All she can sense is the single black horse bobbing on the carousel in front of her. Of course, Kyle chooses it. His golden hair gleams in the sunlight, bouncing over his eyes as they glimmer atop his beaming smile. A pair of khaki shorts and a plain, gray tee shirt flutter over his frail body as his heels dig into the flanks of his steed. The LEDs on his sneakers flicker with the soul of the boardwalk itself. He laughs, and the shrill chattering echoes into the walls of Meredith's heart to reverberate there for eternity. A wail cuts through the fair.

A bang from the gavel blows through Meredith's gut like a .38 caliber round. Few cheers break through the surface of gasps and everything drowns under the blood rushing to Meredith's ears. The monster rises from the grave that the attorney's had dug for him. He shakes hands, he waves, he smiles; he even applauds. Kyle is gone, and there is no more justice in the courtroom.

Kyle is gone and there was no more laughter at the boardwalk. 2:14 pm on September 21st, 2008, a time Meredith replays too often in the coming months, she scans the entrance and exit of the Merry-Go-Round. There's no sign of her boy. She only looked at the sailboat for a second. How long can a second be? The flashes and dings blend into a humming blur as Meredith sprints past the horses, still prancing as the jingle churns to a rattling, off-key moan. The chatter and whistles are so dense that they feel like molasses covering her entire body. Her chest tightens, her throat constricts on itself, and her senses dull. Movies, she thinks, he always wanders to the movies. But that thought is interrupted. The screeching is audible to her and only now does she recognize it: sirens.

June 15th, 2012: another foggy day, this one long after Kyle disappeared from her life. Meredith strolls to the end of her favorite pier at the boardwalk, the one with a single sailboat docked, carrying a rope and a cinderblock. She throws the cinderblock in, and her toes chase after it. Two men on the shoreline spot Meredith, and dive in after her.

On June 19th, 2015, after running anesthesia on a young boy, Meredith cracked her eyes open as tubes and wires stabbed and grabbed at every limb. The steady beep of her own pulse reached her consciousness. As the room drew into focus, so did the figure before her. It was all white, and all wrong. Dark, hollow circles stared at her from an impossible pallor. A black maw opened as a drawling wheeze rattled out, cracking as if through a crushed windpipe. And at the collar, a slash of red cut across the neckline and oozed down the front of the shirt. Meredith woke up screaming.