HAUNTED

26

“And then Jem sang a pretty song,” she stopped talking, “Mommy! Daddy!” they swerved to avoid the little boy in the road. She recognised the hair… tree huggers to the end, their mangled bodies dripping from the tree they had just crashed into… it’s meant to be gruesome but after so much has happened to a person sarcasm and a sick sense of humour is all she has… broken and scattered pieces like red stained popcorn left to pop without a lid. She screamed, the last she remembered screaming, agony as very vividly her heart was ripped out of her and added to the pile of red scattered popcorn… it blurred out in tears / A Gash wide open, right through her making her soul cold, she sobbed from an aching emptiness. And there he stood just as scared as she was, tears rolling down his plump cheeks, lower lip trembling with his hand in hers still by the road sitting on the torn edge of the tar.

He looked at her, let go of her hand and vanished…

A tear stained her cheek, he wiped it away with his thumb as he pulled away, “Jacob,” she murmured… he didn’t think it just happened.

“I am so sorry,” I didn’t know or how, he didn’t move. She stayed between him and the wall, “I have been meaning to tell you… I was actually hoping you would never know.”

Silence… it’s his fault… she remembered screeching for freedom locked up in a room on her own ten years old, the countless times she had been harassed by the ground from a thunder slap… she remembered her aunts dreadful words, she literary shat through her mouth all the time… walking on eggshells her whole life…WHEN she could have been loved by the parents who tucked her in, who made her laugh, who lifted her up… she could have… he looked so scared and confused… he only saved me… RED… she looked up at him. Sad fear the same look in the child’s eyes in him. Silence…

A tear broke his gaze, the ground held his eyes. Too afraid to face her and more afraid to lose her… he wasn’t good with loss. You’re enough… his arms fell to his sides, loosely where they belonged powerless. Cupping his cheek, her hand absorbed the Judas tear, “the past can’t be helped,” caught in her teary gaze as words gracefully spilt out of her mouth, “we just have to fix the present and hope for the future.”

With new found strength his arms wrapped themselves around her and wouldn’t loosen for a few good moments. He kissed the crown of her head, “it can.” He reached for her pocket.

She pulled away from him to face him. He pulled away from her with the gismo in hand.

“No,” she said hurt by what she thought and by the words that spilt out of her mouth, “don’t… …we can’t afford to be stupid.”

He worped.

“Damn it! Jacob!” she yelled mindlessly in his absense, “it will change everything… make things worse,” she mumbled too late for him to hear, as the memory of her mangled parents glued to her mind. Tears running her soul ached for his embrace.

He worped back and pulled her close, “aerial view report, clear just the fog I can’t see through it.” It was painfully quiet for a barely a moment, “I need to fix it,” he took a breath, “everything.”

“Just…” she felt a teary tremble in her chest, “don’t let me go.”