. . .
تعال يا حبيبي ، تسقط معنا
لأن ما سقط قد يرتفع من جديد
“Come, child, fall with us too.
For what has fallen may rise anew.”
–Bea Blessing
. . .
THE MIDDLE
In times whenever Leigh Anne Song feels her mind was about to shatter into millions of pieces, she tries to think of the sun, of its warmth and the fresh breeze passing over her skin so gently. She thinks of the quiet fishing trips she and her parents used to go to on not-so-quiet summers… no thanks to a child as loud and as carefree as she once was.
Leigh Anne tries to think of her mom–or at least, the woman that she remembers to be her mother from her childhood, the pretty, happy one, not the dying husk the thing so liked to show her in dreams more often than not–laughing and smiling with rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes of brown that looked too much like her’s, of her dad’s light scolding, teasing her whenever she would end up tangling or losing her fishing line to a particularly stubborn catch but would still let her try again and again, would patiently bring out another for her.
Or that one time her parents bursted out laughing with her childish antics because Leigh Anne, so young, so impatient and so excited to catch the fish suddenly dove in straight to the water and grabbed the fish, trapping it in her little arms... until it gives her multiple slaps on the face with its tail before swimming away.
Then the laughter that the Leigh Anne from the age of 10 hears–and the one that the present her was relishing in–suddenly turns murky until it drifts and becomes painful, deafening.
And she watches as her father fades like ashes on the wind while her mom stays, only mom’s mouth falls wider and wider as she continues to laugh, face twisting like an awful caricature, and then there was that unholy sound that makes Leigh Anne’s ears ring slipping past her mother’s lips until the edges of her lips tears apart as though her skin was made of paper, until blood oozes and falls like a waterfall from her mother’s mangled mouth.
Then, Leigh Anne doesn’t see her mother’s face anymore and suddenly found herself face to face with herself instead.
…Or rather, a bastardization of herself with too-wide, too-blue eyes and a grotesque, bloody smile literally stretching from ear to ear, standing tall, taller and taller the longer Leigh Anne looks at it and it was roaring with a laughter so loud that makes the waves go berserk while Leigh Anne desperately tries to keep herself afloat.
She was pulled underwater, anyway.
Somewhere in the distance, someone sings.
* * * * *
The moon was still way up high somewhere within the starry, night sky and yet, a little of its silvery light still manages to pour and gleam through Leigh Anne’s room when she came to.
Still hazy from the dredges of a restless sleep, Leigh Anne sluggishly disentangles herself from the blanket that had somehow pooled around her legs before she rises from the warmth of her bed with a satisfying stretch and a quiet yawn escaping her lips before clumsily heading straight to the bathroom, her bare feet padding soundlessly across the floors.
When her hand finally hits the switch, a glaring brightness flickers all around her at once. And Leigh Anne’s still-rumpled appearance greets her a few seconds after her eyes have completely adjusted to the sudden light.
She freezes, hand still flat on the switch.
…Because the eyes gazing back at her are not her’s.
They are too wide, too blue and they were so blue, like the sky and the sea, like the rivers the old stories they say you have to cross in the afterlife to be put to rest–
…Her reflection smiles.
She screams.
* * * * *
THE BEGINNING
Sometimes, when Leigh Anne wakes from nightmares she didn’t want to think back on, she feels lost and still restrained even after seeing and finding herself to be truly in the safety of her room.
Sometimes, she can’t shake of the suffocating feeling that she’s still somewhere in that vision, drowning in the bottom of the ocean.
…But never dying.
Because when Leigh Anne Song woke up from a never-ending memory, she found herself in the hospital and a year had somehow passed her by without her knowing.
She didn’t know who or what had taken her, she couldn’t–didn’t want to–remember what she had seen, what had been done to the sanctity of her mind that she couldn’t possibly recover, could never ever come back from. She didn’t even know how or where she had been taken in the first place since according to the authorities, she’d been found near her aunt’s property, left for dead on the shore.
And Leigh Anne learns quickly that she’s not alone, will never be alone, especially when the sun goes down. It’s as if the nightmare that somehow burrows itself within her thrives in the dark.
Like the Devil’s hour.
And she can’t.
Leigh Anne can’t get used to this.
There is no way she can possibly get used to having something else inside her, living through her, seeing and watching her live her life as she tries to gather up the pieces of what she had left behind when it stole her over a year ago.
For a while, it didn’t make itself known.
For a while, Leigh Anne was able to pretend that everything’s fine, that whatever happened–whatever she had seen was some sort of fever dream brought about by something painful and traumatic. But just as she feels safe, that it’s over, everything will be fine now just as her Dad promised–it gleefully pulls the rug underneath her feet.
At first, it could be overlooked.
At first, it was tolerable.
But the too-sharp glance she sees in her own reflection, a flash of blue within her eyes, a thought or a feeling that couldn’t possibly be her’s. Hearing a voice that was a touch deeper, lower than her own that was usually humming or worse–speaking in a long-gone language that makes her ears ring with the promise of bleeding.
But now…
Now, even her father knows.
* * * * *
You should be grateful, it sneers, a hissing, hateful sort of noise. And Leigh Anne clenches her eyes shut, desperately trying not to pay attention, praying it will go away, I allowed you to live.
…Yes, but at what cost?
* * * * *
Leigh Anne often dreams of pain and the cold.
She feels water, cold water everywhere around her, inside her and she was suffocating, drowning as she sinks and sinks to the darkened depths where light and salvation couldn’t possibly find nor reach her.
In these dreams, Leigh Anne knows nothing but the fear, with a panic so intense and a pain so awful and vivid that she fears it might drive her mad soon enough should she dare to look back on it and dwell on it in her waking hours. Her head feels like it was spinning as it blackens with spots and her mind was running with a million thoughts but she couldn’t think.
She couldn’t think straight at all.
Her lungs were screaming, practically begging for air as she frantically moves her arms and legs in a vain attempt to return to the surface.
She was desperately swimming away from something she couldn’t see but she’s sinking instead of going up and she can’t feel her legs now, wasn’t even sure if she still has them but the pressure was so intense, so crushing that it feels like her very being was slowly being pureed into a pulp.
But the pain never lets up, never grows numb and remains fierce as fire, just as powerful in the beginning and white-hot, blinding.
And Leigh Anne feels more than sees something thick and slimy wrapping around her neck, like a chain or a noose and freezes–doesn’t even dares to try for breath despite the way her vision blurs and alarmingly becomes out of focus with the lack of air–as it grows tighter and tighter around her neck.
For a moment, her entire vision mercifully fades into nothingness just as she hears that familiar laugh again, everywhere and nowhere.
Then, the pressure comes.
Slowly, slowly, horrifyingly painful and she couldn’t move, couldn’t think of anything but the pain, as though it was trying to drag the torture out, was making it longer, was reveling in it.
Leigh Anne can feel the way her windpipe was shattering piece by piece within her throat, can feel the way her neck was slowly cracking, and a gurgling scream was ripped free from her mouth, blood and bubbles lifting from her lips, painting the waters around her with a dull red.
Then, it drags her all the way down.
* * * * *
This life she’s living… it’s not…
It’s not sustainable.
* * * * *
Because the first time Leigh Anne opens her eyes at the sight of her darkened room with the smell of smoke, of a frightfully familiar incense lingering even within the safety of her home, she was at home now so why does it still smells like the sea?–everything feels so cold. Like she had been submerged from head to toe in ice-cold water–and she can’t quite move in her bed.
Something ripples and rises from the corner of her eyes, but she can’t even shift to turn her head, to look or to bury her face and hide in the covers.
It moves with the shadows, swaying, gliding, growing impossibly larger and larger, with long, gangly limbs that encompass the entire room, nails scrabbling and scraping loudly all over the floor as it turns to loom over her frozen form.
Strips of dried, tattered cloth that must have been white once upon a time trailed behind it and pooled all over on the floor, haphazardly covering an elongated face that peered down at her.
A grotesque figure is what it was, like the creation of man gone horribly wrong, the face of her worst nightmares. It hurts just looking at it but Leigh Anne found herself unable to look away even as her vision dots with tiny, pinpricks of black and strange colors that she cannot name as tears streamed down her eyes.
Here, in the midst between waking and dreaming, in its presence Leigh Anne Song has never felt so small or insignificant.
She is not just alive.
She is not just dead.
…She is damned.
. . .
AN END
Leigh Anne hasn’t stepped foot in the ocean for years.
Because the mere sight of it (or even just the thought of it) used to make her want to weep, want to scream and laugh and cry and never stop.
And during times like this–staring at a reflection that was supposedly hers but not and could never be hers alone ever again–and not for the first time, Leigh Anne Song wonders if killing herself would rid her of this… this awful thing for good.
. . .
Oh, my little song…
You don’t mean that.
Leigh Anne grits her teeth, lips pursed in a thin line, eyes not leaving the road just ahead… never mind the way her eyes shines blue from the mirror.
Her blood boils.
…Her reflection smiles.
This feels like being close to the edge of disaster.
Because you and I…
Out of nowhere, a truck suddenly swerves right into her direction it was all that she can see. And Leigh Anne instinctively raises her arms, feels more than sees the glass raining down upon her.
Her car was tossed in the air like a toy.
Like a cat batting at its prey.
And as Leigh Anne lies haphazardly across her broken car, she could have sworn she saw the truck driver grinning at her past the haze of a dull red falling down from her temple.
Her ears are ringing now.
A shuddering breath escapes her lips, the sound raw and painful. And Leigh Anne swears she tastes seawater in her mouth but dares to tell herself that it was blood.
The humming has never sounded so loud before.
She thinks of Chunky, her old cat.
She thinks of her son, her only son.
Her ears are bleeding, and it hurts so much now, everything hurts but she tries to think of his smile, his laugh that looks so much like his father’s, his first walk, his first words.
And her dad…
Will he… know that…?
…We will be together for a very long time.
And not even hour later, Leigh Anne Song-Fall’s broken body had been rushed to the nearest hospital, declared dead on arrival due to a car accident and everyone was none the wiser.