The moon's light seeped through the gap of the half-opened curtain, shining on whatever it reached within the darkness of the room. [Name] shied away from it, lying against the comfort of her bed. The room she was in no longer looked like the one she had grown up in for years, the faded color of pale blue that her grandfather painted for her now looked like a shade of gray, resembling soft specks of dust in the darkness.
She felt too tired. So goddamn tired.
She only wished she did a lot to blame it on something else. But as her eyes landed on the digital clock where the numbers blinked in red, it was already the end of the day. Midnight, even. Just a few hours until dawn.
Earlier that day had been mostly spent talking to police officers and their fruitless investigation on the disappearance of her beloved grandfather. However, they all suddenly came to the conclusion that he had already passed away. Leaving behind everything but his corpse.
There was nothing to bury, nothing to put underneath six feet for the earth to consume. No courage to gather everything he'd left behind and hope to create a stone that would serve as some sort of proof of his existence.
But when she did, it had become a mistake too big for her to recover from. The heavy and daunting realization that she had been living a lie all along weighed on her heart, vines of grief slowly creeping into the cracks until it reached her core.
Gramps had been a conservative man. She thought she was the only person in the world who knew him. As it turns out, he had been trapping himself in the past, like she did. He had created a world for himself behind the doors of what she thought to be a normal closet, littered with photos full of lost memories. Ones she thought had already been swept away by the storm, soiled by salty water and washed away in a place invisible to them.
After that, she felt lost. She didn't know what to do left but let herself sink into the duvets of her bed. Suddenly feeling like a trespasser to her own home. The domestic warmth she once felt was gone in an instant, replaced by the bitter cold brought to her from the past. Old photos of landscapes she's never even seen in real life, books that had been worn and yellowed over time, her late grandmother's old china that Gramps had been keeping around ever since her timely death.
The way the floors creaked with her every move, reminding her that the house had grown old alongside her grandfather, that it had watched him grow just as it had watched her and her late mother, all of it made her feel sick to her stomach. She wanted to run. She wanted to drop everything and run. Run somewhere far away, somewhere unfamiliar, somewhere that wasn't here.
Somewhere she would feel lost enough to make her forget everything.Just as she wallowed in the deep silence of her room, hearing only the whispers of labored breathing after a long session of billow tears, she heard footfalls gently creeping up to her door. She didn't tear her gaze away from the ceiling. Instead, she hoped that it would have been an intruder, a robber, a murderer of any sort, armed with a knife or a gun, and a tainted heart that would be corrupted enough to kill her without hesitation.
A knock falls on her door, and another one. She doesn't reply. It slowly creaks open, the figure peeking in to look at her broken figure. Her salted cheeks dried with tears shed not too long ago, puffy hands, and red, exhausted eyes. The door creaks once again as it opens wider, letting the figure enter as the door shuts with a click behind it. A bag drops to the floor. The tall figure approaches her.
"[Name]?" Her best friend's unusually soft voice called out to her as she finally tears her eyes away from the ceiling. His amazingly innocent blue eyes gleaming in the dimness of the room, gazing at her with genuine concern and sympathy. He had probably heard about the news by now, and the rest of it was just unknown history to him.
