day underwood | district four

Death howled through the house and with its ominous gust of ice, came the rain and thunder that shook a fragile body riddled with agony. The final heartbeat was a blast of a cannon; the final breath was a blaring siren signaling the end.

The image of her eyes is still etched into your mind by the knife of horror. You kept searching, searching, searching endlessly for the light dancing around and around the iris, but it had been snuffed out by the black cloak of Death. You come up empty handed, palms burning for something. A heartbeat. A rise of the chest. A twitch of the finger. Anything that could indicate life.

They covered her body in a blanket of snow from the end of the bed. (It was like sealing a grave.) They dragged you away from her body, kicking and screaming, writhing in agony and pouring grief down your cheeks.

Alari.

Her ghost had reached out and skillfully eased your heart out of your chest, for thievery was always what she did best. You did not know it was locked in her casket until you tried to feel again. But every kiss is empty and every touch is colder than a corpse riddled with deadly drugs.

You barely recognize yourself.

You remember a girl with a quiet tongue laced with outrageous streams of swearing in the midst of turmoil or anger. But this is not her, for her tongue was not heavy with silence and there was nothing that had ever broken her. She was happy. You don't want to believe that the shattered girl in the mirror is you.

You remember a girl with neatly groomed mahogany and honey hair, bathed in sun. You remember eyes like the sea, color and sparkle and all, as if the pair of irises had captured the beauty of the ocean itself. Your face remains the same, all smooth planes and soft edges. But it is like staring at a stranger, for there is no rose to warm your cheeks. There is a mask plastered over your skin, and it leers with desolation.

You wonder if the mirror lies to you, shows you the ghost of you to thrust you back into a spiral of chaos that you can't seem to pull yourself out of. It sticks to your body like hot tar, searing, but there is no one to hear your screams, for you now keep your lips sewn tightly in silence.

The girl in the mirror has a thinning body and gradually paling skin, fading from its former golden glory and prominent freckles bestowed by the sun - for you she cut the sun out of her own sky the day Alari was cut out of her life. The girl in the mirror condemned herself to this - this darkness.

Your reflection meets your eyes, but you hardly register that she is you. Her - your eyes are dulled by the constant sullenness that washes out every spark of joy that dares light within you.

It is as if you do not have any control anymore. You have never had much to start with, always seen as a push over - too gentle, too kind to speak out against a rasp of rudeness. But that was just the mask over the girl who loved to say bad words, for she was ridiculed for such unladylike behavior within her home.

And you are kind and deeply compassionate, a beams of sunlight dancing in your heart - only they are suppressed by a black shell of hardened tar that has stretched over the surface. It is gradually decaying with Alari's body. But it is only the inevitable, you tell yourself. Deep down, you always feared this would happen, ever since you found the pills and powders in her backpack. You always feared she would take it too far.

(You were right, and since then you've learned to trust yourself.)

But she promised you she would end it. Alari could convince you of anything, for you always wanted to believe her. Your mind has always been so hard with steel, but everything, your troubles, your shield, melted away with the sight of her alone. Alari once told you she wanted to feel powerful, that she felt weak. (I couldn't understand why, why power was so important to her or anyone.)

What she didn't know was that she had everything over you.

She became the foundation you stood upon, and when the drugs yanked her out from under you, everything came tumbling and crumbling down. You were smothered, and in the clouds of debri, you're surprised you didn't suffocate.

You are tearing into two. Half of you is pulled to your demise, to death, to wherever Alari is if she still continues to be. And the other half pulls you to the sea, to your home nestled in the white beaches and soft tides of blue-green. The other half of you pulls you to the seashells buried in the sand with your childhood memories of collecting them.

You still have the bracelet of rope, seashells of all different shapes and sizes and colors strung all the way around. Alari made it for you the day before she died, left it in a box on your dresser, with a note. Cursive words were scrawled onto the paper in her neat handwriting.

The sea.

But you have never understood why she would write those two words and nothing more.

The sea. Perhaps it was just a reminder of the place they loved, the place they met.

Your gut says there is something more, but you can't seem to comprehend what. Or maybe, you just don't want to know.