Life is an unfair mess. An unfair maze of torture that you’re desperately trying to travel through, expecting there to be some sort of bliss in the end. But there never is any bliss. Just an ending, nothing more and nothing less. You wander into the fate of eternal emptiness. You become nothing more than a shell, a lost soul watching from afar as the ones whom you loved deposit you in a box and conceal you six feet underground.
My eyes rested upon her shell, dressed in a floral pink gown and pink ballet flats. Her strawberry blonde hair rested in perfect curls, framing her pale face. Just her face made me feel sick. She had her make up on as if her dainty heart was still beating. It wasn't. She wasn't there. Melanie L. Forbes was dead.
Just three days ago we were hanging out. Sitting side by side in a booth at McDonalds. I had that sick feeling in my stomach that day. Something about Melanie wasn’t right.
My eyes drifted to her neck. The marks from the belt were still present. I could make out the indent of where the buckle had been pressed against the soft skin of her throat, even though her parents attempted to cover it up with a white silk scarf.
I was taking to long. I was holding up the line of grief stricken relatives. I carefully placed a bouquet of baby’s breath flowers in her casket. Then a picture of us on my sixteenth birthday. Finally I glanced down at her one last time “Goodbye...Melanie.”
With my final goodbyes spoken I turned and I stepped away, allowing the line to move forward. There truly wasn't anything left for me to do but move on.
To travel deeper into this terrifying maze of life but only this time .. without someone by my side.
