Whimsical Hope

Jun 25, 2008 11:57

Title: Whimsical Hopes

Rating: PG

Prompt: Days

Note: Follows the story line of Virtues of Patience

Summary: She's waiting for the funeral now but she's not so sure her parents can be dead.

Just like the clock counted up the hours, she counted down the days (and she wonders if she’ll lose her sanity in the end because she just can’t stand it anymore). It’s kind of strange because it’s just her and the calendar, counting down days.

There are other people there. Uncles, aunts, her cousins (and the house was still so quiet). And she wonders why it feels like everything will fade away.

Only four days till the funeral.

It’s more eventful the next day, when the police who found her father’s body turn up and ask if there’s nothing they can do. She slams the door in their faces (and is immediately scolded by her aunt as she reopens the door but that just makes something hot run up from her gut all the way up to the back of her raw throat because this lady wasn’t her mother).She does nothing other than brush past the police officer.
The park is noisy and the sun blinded her for a bit (and she wonders if the cloudy, quiet gloom exists only in the movies). For a moment, with the sun perched on top of wispy white clouds and the expanse of the sky starching like cashmere, the nightmares began to recede (they were only nightmares). Her parent’s weren’t gone, couldn’t be gone, not forever. She - they - there was a mistake. Someone just - there has to be a mistake. The swings creaked to a standstill and the giggles were overcome by a shrill scream that she realized was coming from her. The adults look at each other and approach her apprehensively. When she starts crying, they look away embarrassed and usher their children into the car, away from her.

Three days to go.

People trickle in now. Her friends are the first to come and the first to leave. The three of them sit on her bed; the two of them exchanging glances behind her back as she pretends that she never saw. The uncomfortable silence fills the empty nooks in the room as she stares out the window. They try for normalcy after sitting there for half an hour (after all, how do you respond to death?). She responds listlessly as they question about homework and tunes them out as they start exchanging gossip. She doesn’t care anymore.

They leave quickly, with the air of people trying not to show how relieved they are. She’s staring at the white walls again, trying not to lose her mind. Before her brain can register her actions, she’s opening the door to her parents’ bedroom. It’s only open half way before she changes her mind and closes it again.

Only two more days to go.

People come again, but they’re all strangers. Her parents knew them but she doesn’t know them and they don’t know her. So, for that reason, in the washed out kitchen (her mother’s favorite place in the house), she can’t take their apologies to heart. The blond haired man is still talking to her when she walks away and up the stairs, ignoring her aunt’s voice, calling after her as she rounds the corner.
This time around, she knows what she’s doing when her hands are on the doorknob. And she’s terrified because what if they aren’t in there; what if there’s no end to this nightmare. But there is; there has to be (and the cynical part of her chuckles and reminds her that this isn’t a movie). She opens the door, closes it and steps inside between those two motions, her eyes fixated on the wooden floor right in front of her feet.

It’s noiseless, the absolute absence of life is...terrifying and she leaves without looking up. And she goes back downstairs, greeting the strangers again and again until it becomes a numbingly familiar process.
It’s a closed casket funeral (because her mother was in a car crash and she now knows where her father shot himself). She watches the coffins get lowered into the fresh hole in the earth. Her parents are dead.

sakurapetals518:other

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