Till Next Time | completed | currently under re-edit

38

38
Realism compels me to stay.

I climb into the backseat and lock the doors, all the while coming to terms with the fact that something has got to give and that something will not be too long.

He told me she lost a lot of blood, a bit of which sticks dried to the bottom of my shoes. The thought makes my stomach lurch.

In her last moments of consciousness, she asked for her mother.

No one knows how she was even awake and in her senses, she was too weak to be.

I do not know why no one was watching her.

I kick my shoes off and sit in my socks, feeling stripped and assaulted, but mostly angry.
I try to pry my mind away, anything at all to stop the hammering pain inside my chest like a strangled scream ripping away at my muscles, fighting to claw its way out even if it means flipping me inside out.

I am grateful when a knock on the window interrupts me.
I unlock the door for Mr. Collins. He swings one leg inside and sits half-heartedly.

"How is she?" I ask unwillingly.
How could she really be, with a swollen and unrecognizable face, blue lips and her eyes, rolled over and deadpan?

Mr. Collins takes his glasses off and sets it between us. He heaves a sigh.
My eyes squint as I try to focus on him in the semi-darkness, maybe an attempt to skirt past the exoskeleton and become him, be in his shoes, to know what he feels like.
Does his heartache just like mine? Is he choking too?
Does he want to pick his world up and crush it inside his fist because nothing fucking matters yet everything fucking hurts?

"I named her Anastasia after the lost Duchess of Russia." He laughs at himself. It sounds maniacal. "I was going through a phase."

We both sit, quiet and hands folded in our laps.

I break the silence. "What about her?"
"The Duchess?"
"Yes."

"She was born the fourth girl in the Russian royal family. Her father was severely disappointed, the Tsar." He looks over at me like a teacher at his student.
"She was the bright one, the funny one and spent most of her adolescence under heavy scrutiny and always at the brink of conflict. Until conflict was knocking at her door and she was running for her life and away from the Bolsheviks."

He puts his glasses back on and adjusts it once at the bridge of his nose.

"She was assassinated in a basement when she was 17, crammed in with the rest of her family and fired at until the smoke from the guns made it impossible for the soldiers to see where and what they were shooting."
He finishes.
"When the smoke finally cleared, she was found hugging her sister, still alive. They had carefully packed diamonds inside their clothes, deflecting the bullets. They finally stabbed her with bayonets and burned them with acid so no one could recognize who they were and dumped the bodies in different locations through Siberia and this started one of the biggest mysteries of Europe."

"Some people believed she survived. Because while the skeletons of her father, mother, and two sisters were found, her brother and she herself was missing. Multiple people came forward claiming to be Anastasia. In 2007, they finally found her and her brother in the forests of Siberia. The mystery had come full circle."

Silence picks up after him.

"That's a tragic name to give a child," I say.

He shakes his head. "No. That is a name I will never forget. That name is bigger than the likes of both you and I. The first time I held her and her eyes fluttered open I knew she was something no one could keep. She was bigger than her existence and identity. She was Anastasia, my Anastasia."
He shakes his head again, dismissively at himself. "I can't explain it. No one gets it."

An impulse of pity, or sorrow, or maybe relativity makes me reach for his hand.
He doesn't flinch back, doesn't look at me like I'm crazy. We both just melt into our seats.

"They don't have to get it. You do and she is yours."

I lean further back, to quell the invisible explosion inside my chest. I push back to gain more control over the flying shrapnel impaling my gut, to keep them from flying out of me and onto other things.

We stay there, hand in hand until his phone rings.
All I eavesdrop on is a "Yes".
It is time for Mr. Collins to go back in again.

"You need to come too." He looks back at me. Our eyes exchange an unspoken message. My chest tightens.
"Can I?" I ask. I was pretty sure after getting dragged out I would never be allowed back in. I also half hope he says no.
Mr. Collins nods back.

His gaze falls down to my feet and  I feel him stow his curiosity away when I step out in my socks.