Free At Last

Found

Not for the first time, I find myself struggling to breathe. The darkness is heavy, pushing in from all directions and I know that I have to get out of this place. Mustering all my strength, I take a raspy inhalation of breath and start walking. Where? I have no idea. Anywhere I guess. Away at least. As I walk, I become aware of the butterfly fragments stuck to the bottom of my foot: greasy and feathery. I try not to linger on those thoughts. Instead, I focus on the pounding of my heart; the pumping of my blood, and take each step in synchronous rhythm. 

“Hey! Need some directions?” 

The voice shatters the silence and I feel my heart flutter in an uncomfortable arrhythmia. 

“Directions?” I inquire slowly. 

“Yes. That is what I offered,” the voice replies with a raised intonation that isn’t quite distinct enough to disguise itself as a question. No, the voice is taunting me. Beckoning me. Begging me to engage in conversation.

“Directions to where?” I ask more confidently.

“Out of here,” comes the reply. 

“Who are you? How do I know I can trust you?” 

“You can’t trust anybody.” Suddenly she is a few feet in front of me: a dark silhouette. Something glimmers, reflecting light. But light from what source? I take a step forward and the silhouette turns into a girl with long hair, brown eyes, and a white dress. The glinting comes from something she is holding in her hand. 

“Coming or not?” She asks impatiently. 

“Fine,” I reply. We walk in silence for what feels like hours. Finally, the girl speaks again. 

“Here.”

I strain my eyes, searching for something remarkable in this otherwise barren landscape when my gaze lands on an old mirror. There is a crack running jaggedly down its length, and as I approach it, I see my face eerily split into two. The girl gestures for me to get closer. I do. It isn’t until I am gripping the sides of the mirror, staring intently at the crack in the glass when something shifts and I am assaulted by color. 

Fighting

Green. Everything is green. Children are playing and laughing in a park. Dogs are chasing each other through the lush grass. Birds are chirping heartily and dancing within the dense foliage of mature trees and shrubs. A young man stands with binoculars plastered to his face, intently tracking a female warbler. Couples walk hand-in-hand along a cobbled path outlining a serene pond filled with ducks and fish. Flower gardens spill over picket fences. A rabbit hops toward me and rubs its nose against my leg. Awestruck, I bend down and carefully stroke its head. 

I look up and see her smirking at me. I notice that she is clutching a knife. My brow furls. She watches me watching her. 

“Oh that reminds me,” she says. She takes off running to a cluster of birch trees and dips behind them. When she emerges, she is carrying something in addition to her knife. Her gait looks strained and I can tell the object is heavy. 

It’s a sledgehammer. When she reaches me she holds it out in an offering. 

“I don’t want that,” I assert.

“It’s yours,” she responds.

“Why do you have a knife?” I can’t help myself from asking.

“Safety. Security. None of your business.” 

“Why would I need a sledgehammer?”

“I don’t know. Defense?” And that’s when she comes at me with her knife. In a single jabbing motion, she sinks the knife into the top of my forearm and yanks it back out. I yell in pain and stare at her with wounded eyes. She swiftly advances again, the knife directed at my other arm, but I dodge this attempt. She turns to face me, my blood dripping from the blade of the knife onto her clenched fist. 

“Fine. Do it your way,” she whispers. And then she turns and runs away, cradling both her knife and my sledgehammer close to her chest.

Before I have time to register what just happened, I am propelled from my confused thoughts by a sharp pain on my toe. Looking down, I see that the rabbit bit me. Hard. Or at least hard enough to draw blood. I make eye contact with it. I think I register fear in its eyes. Then it keels over, dead. A shot rings through the air. Then another. The birder is shooting at the birds, a mirthless smirk on his face. I am a bird and I am in danger. A shot tears through my chest. All my remaining strength is quickly dissipating. I am weak. Powerless. Worthless. Again, I can’t breathe. I am thrashing around in a way that feels strangely reminiscent of that long-gone butterfly. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to imagine that I am somewhere else. Anywhere else. Except I can’t imagine anymore. Instead I pray to die. I’m too scared to move so I don’t. Not until I start sinking.

Falling

Fetal position. I can’t get comfortable. I don’t fit in my own skin anymore. I’m an object in a world that doesn’t need me. I don’t belong. The ground starts to give way, and I feel myself sinking into the earth. I roll onto all fours, my hands and knees pressing against the cold, wet ground. I gasp. Inches below my hands are bones. Human bones. Human remains. My ground is their ceiling, but my ground is no longer supporting me. I am sucked down into the mud and I begin to crawl. I watch as the dirt fills the spaces underneath my fingernails and then as the skin on my hands turns gray and begins to peel away, exposing tendons and muscle and bone. 

This world is a graveyard. 

We aren’t living, we’re dying. 

How do I make it better? 

It doesn’t go away. Ever. 

I am no longer in my body. I am floating like space debris, searching for something to anchor me. The darkness is disorienting. 

Help me. 

I have lost control of my body and mind. I don’t recognize myself. 

Save me. 

The frustration is growing inside of me, my head about to burst open. A scream crashes against my ribs trying to escape, but it can’t.

Take away the pain. 

Help. 

But nobody does. So I have to find her again. No matter how long it takes.

Flying

It has been weeks of wandering. And tonight, she walks through a meadow filled with wildflowers, along a golden highway of the sun’s rays. Before the sun dips below the horizon, the world turns red and then everything fades into a soft, deep purple. Good. She’s tired of following the sun. She used to think that she was her only enemy. Now she knows that’s not true. As she walks, the flowers wilt and the crumpled petals fall to the cold ground soundlessly. The wind starts to whistle through the dying field and the grasses turn into thorns that lash against her legs until they bleed. As the clouds roll in, she finally lifts her head only to be greeted by a silhouette. A familiar shadow watching with its arms crossed and head slightly tilted.

I stop. My heart pounds so hard that I wouldn’t be surprised if it exploded out of my chest. I stare at her and can see the soft gleam of her eyes. Her dark, cold eyes. She lifts a finger to her lips. No, not her finger, her knife. It winks at me. She’s trying to tell me to be quiet, that everything is okay. I’ve been searching for her, but she doesn’t know it. She likes a chase though, so I turn and start running. The thorns rip into my skin, but I can hardly feel it. Keep going, keep going. Only I can’t. Gusts of wind knock me down to the ground and dirt stings my eyes.I don’t cry. 

“Miss me?” She whispers.

“No,” I respond.

“Really?”

“Yes,” I lie. “Go away.”

“Oh, come on. You know you need me.”

“I don’t.”

“Look at me!”

I look intently toward the ground. “No. Please go. I mean it.”

She circles quietly around me. “You look horrible.”

“You look worse,” I retort. She grabs my wrist and I wrench it away from her cold, skeleton-like hands. The wind howls and the dead petals swirl around us like a tornado. I look at her. Her face is dirty. So is her tattered, white dress. She has bruises that turn her skin purple and her eyes look dead. Her brown hair is long and it dangles limply around her face. I scowl at her and she smiles back.

“You forgot something. Just thought I would return it.”

She turns and starts running. I smile, but only for a moment, and then I run after her. We’re running through a forest of dark, twisted trees. The soft glow of the moon illuminates the path and I jump over a long, gnarled root. We run for a long time. She knows exactly where we are going, but I follow the glint of her knife.

Suddenly she stops and so do I. We’re at the end. And by the end, I mean a steep cliffside. All around us is an obscuring, thick haze.

“There.” She points to a place on the ground. It’s a sledgehammer. My sledgehammer.

I walk over to it and pick it up. It’s too heavy. When I turn around, she’s sitting on the ledge with her legs dangling over the side. I drag the sledgehammer behind me and sit down next to her. We sit in silence for a long time. Then finally, she talks.

“Do you see that?” 

“What?”

“That.”

I squint until I see a small, white bird flying in big, effortless circles through the fog. It whistles and I smile.

“Yeah, it’s beautiful.” It flies toward us and I watch her watching it. She starts to stand up and I react instantly, grabbing her arm. She smacks me and I taste blood, and then she snatches the bird right out of the sky. I watch her break its neck before she tosses it to me. I catch it and feel it twitch. My hands tremble. I watch as its white feathers turn black, and its eyes, wide open and fearful, turn red. I drop the bird.

“Not everything is as it seems,” she murmurs.

“I already know that.”

“No you don’t.”

We sit in silence until she breaks it again. “Do you feel worthless?”

“No,” I lie. Sometimes you have to lie to her.

“Liar.” Sometimes she already knows exactly how you feel. “Come on, the world doesn’t want you. It doesn’t need you. It doesn’t need me. Some of us, we’re just not meant to be here. We don’t belong. We’re just going through the motions of what it means to be living, but we don’t have life. We’re already dead.”

I stand up and tackle her. She grabs my head and smashes her knee into my nose. I wince and punch her in the side and hear something crack. My hand throbs. She comes at me with her knife, but I kick her and she drops it. Grabbing the knife, I throw it into the bottomless abyss below. She screams and grabs the sledgehammer. She beats me with it. Every bone in my body is broken. And then I can’t feel anything anymore. I’m completely numb.

She stops. I stop. We stand up, bleeding and breathless and look at each other. We both shake so violently that a gust of wind would sweep us off the edge.

“We are a lot more alike than I first thought. I didn’t give you enough credit.” I walk over to her and stop inches from her face. I stare into her eyes and then I push her, hard, off of the cliff. I turn away so I can try to forget. The wind picks up and dark clouds intrude the already gloomy sky. A flash of lightning penetrates the darkness, followed by a clap of thunder.

“And then comes the rain.” And in perfect synchrony with the falling rain, a tear falls down my cheek. I turn to leave this place when a cold hand touches my shoulder. She’s even more tattered and bruised than before, but she’s still here. She’s still here.

“I know, I know, I know,” I sigh. “You’re right.” She nods and holds out a hand.

“Didn’t I tell you that if one of us goes, the other goes with her?”

This time, I’m the one to nod. She’s right. At least I have her. I’m not alone, not really. I take her hand. It’s still cold, but I think mine’s colder.

“Wait!” I shout. She stops. I walk over to the dead bird and pick it up. Cradling it with one hand, I grab hers in the other. She looks at me, expecting me to say something. I shake my head. I don’t have anything to say anymore. I close my eyes and when we step off, I feel like I’m flying. I open my eyes, but she doesn’t. We’re still falling. The bird in my other hand moves. Its feathers change from black back to white and its eyes turn a light blue. I open my hand and it starts to fly upward. I watch it until I can’t tell what I’m looking at anymore.

Quietly I say to it, “I will miss you, but don’t miss me. Keep flying and don’t let anyone or anything break your wings to try and stop you.” And although I didn’t expect it, I smile. Because now I don’t feel pain or sadness. It’s all gone. The only thing I feel is free. Free at last.