Shorty Tails

The Girl In The Chair

She stepped through the kitchen, steeping a cup of tea. Hoping it would make her feel less sleepless. Some shadows whispered to the corner of her eye from the dining room chair. 
"I missed you," The girl in the chair murmured with a bright child's smile. She was in plain sight, draping her lanky arms across her lap. In a deep awareness, eyes plain as a cloudless sky. With a few blinks, she was gone. Her beloved friend's image flickering on and off like the strobe lights in her nightmares.

"You're not real," The girl with the tea was sure she was just tired. Smoothly through a croaking throat, she mumbled without much more to say than "Me too."
With a mug in hand, she turned around to lean on a cheap faux granite counter and with a wasted prayer in her heart. That the sweet girl with ocean-like eyes would be there the time she got the nerve to look back again.

"What's eating at you, Soph?"

Her head fell into her hand as she worked uphill against the urge to look back. If she did look back the girl would be gone, and even if she wasn't, it'd be another poignant reminder of how far downhill she's gone. 

"You're not around like you used to be, Ashley."

She shrugged, "Just circumstance, I suppose."

"You know I don't just mean that. You're growing older, and I'm so proud, yet so terrified."

She sighed heavily as if struggling to break through the wall Sophia was becoming. "I'm not the only one. I'm proud of you too."

With a clank on the counter, Sophia set her cup down. "Why would you be?" A stoic expression started to melt into tears. "You haven't seen it all. You haven't. And if you knew..."

"I've seen you try. That's what you say, trying is what counts."  Ashley paused, patiently hoping for a response "Right?" The soft voice of the pale imitation begs for Sophia's honest words.

But she's not real. She's here like the last person who sat in that empty chair is. Everyone else in the house is asleep in their beds. Sophia could say it because she's away and not found.

"Im sick. Sick and tired of trying,  Ashley." She whimpers through her chest, feeling entirely heavy and empty. Ashley is not here and not now. "I know you're not really real, but can you stay?"

"Don't lose your grip, please."

"How do I hold it together?" Her voiced raised from a barely audible mumble to a distressed cry. "When I can't shake the fear that I'll be just another part of your past soon."

Ashley looks into Sophia's bloodshot eyes, a melancholic smile lifting her cheeks. "When you're older you'll understand it. Hold on, for now. I know you can."

It was months before Sophia heard that voice again. Luckily, it was over an Instagram call this time. Words couldn't describe Sophia's relief when the girl in the chair was here and found.