Forever questioning reality; it seems my only purpose in this grey wasteland, devoid of colour, light, and...
But my memory nags me. Feelings nag me, so within reach, but locked away, safe, in the place I bury all things of meaning.
I remember, still.
What it was, to dream.
How it was, to live, and see colour, and dance in the rain.
What it meant, to have hope.
But I can only unlock such memories in my safe-haven of complete and utter aloneness.
For when I remember such things, sometimes, I cry.
I remember... her face.
I was always so trapped, like a bird in a cage, both behind my own mask and that forced upon me by society, gender, age, colour, religion. White trash. Slut. Girl next door. Lesbian. Tomboy. Devout aethiest.
Never more so, however, than when they slammed the gates of my mind behind me, each and every morning I set foot inside that school yard. An Orwellian landscape of cloned faces and bodies, other girls, girls I could not reach, girls I would not reach for even were I drowning, uniformed in that same dull grey which now permeates my five senses.
I expected that I would die, in a place such as this. Attacked or ignored, understood by none, I drifted, lost, alone, dreaming up new and more elegant methods of self-disposal, ending the endless cycle, creating meaning, getting my revenge, my pointless, soulless, uncared-for vengeance upon those who had never bothered to see, and would never care.
Learning their lessons, administered with the cold perfection and pure apathy of those who were well-versed in teaching them, breaking in a silent corner of my mind, my despair the only blanket to keep me safe.
I had always denied it, at that time. But in reality, their reality, I knew already. I was shattered, like glass.
This was neither the time nor place in which I would have expected to come upon her.
The morning she stepped into my prison cell, my class, was the first time I ever truly saw colour. And the dream...breathed.
I tried my hardest not to stare, tried my best to hide, to pull the broken shards up around my body, wishing I might bleed to death, wishing to disappear.
Useless, it was useless. Panicked, somehow I knew, she saw truth regardless.
She saw truth... because she was truth.
Hair of pale spun gold and blue, eyes almost as dark and as deep as the night itself, and a tiny porcelain frame, a smile of innocence, purity, light...
Her entire self; just watching her, guarded, I could feel such warmth...
Her name, she told us, was Ophelia, which I promptly scribbled on a page in my notebook, for some reason unknown.
I still have it now, in perfect lettering, the script of the insane, adorned with three tiny roses, hanging upon the wall of my cell.
I think I knew, the moment I met her, I would lose her.
I think I always knew, that someone like her, could not stay in a place like this.
And the glass cut through my hands with a bloody, dreadful clarity as I realized they would take her from me.
"Dreams," she said to me, "your dreams are so beautiful. I wish you would take me there, one day."
It was the first thing she ever said to me, as we stood in line together at the library, the sanctuary of those with no friends, those who preferred lies engraved on a page to those handed out in person in the name of friendship. Her voice, so hushed and reverential. For a moment, I found myself still within a dream, safe, and warm, and cared for. That was her gift. Such a gift, I wasn't worthy of it. If I turned, if I looked into her eyes right then and there, I knew she would be laughing at me, just like the others, or she would be speaking to someone else, entirely. So afraid, I held my ground, kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, trying to determine whether or not I should attempt to flee, if there would be any other place to go.
Her sigh in my ear fell on my heart like gentle rain. "Perhaps not," she whispered, and something in that voice, that sigh, such loss, cut through any remaining barriers, and I knew, I knew...
I didn't know I'd run so far, trying to escape her, until I came upon a hill; overlooking a field, and fell to my knees, panting, lying as still as I could and hiding my eyes from the sudden glaring sunlight. I lay there until I could smell flowers, feel butterflies brushing my face, and deny my racing pulse. I was uncertain, then, of where I was, and even more unsure of why I had been so afraid. This place was so warm, after all.
After a while, as the clouds grew darker, thicker overhead, realization dawned, and I sat up with a start, staring into those eyes that begged me not to leave her again.
I didn't understand, why she would want me here. I didn't understand why she would take me back to this place of my childhood, a dream within a dream. I started to feel vaguely ill, questioning my sanity so...
The world shimmered and spun before me, slightly, as she opened her palm and handed me a shining silver star, glittering with colours found only in a perfect rainbow, watching her smile.
"Please don't be afraid," she whispered.
And the clouds broke open, and it began to rain. The first time I had cried... in so long a stretch I could not remember the last time. And she held me, wanting nothing as she gave me everything, and the music of her soul entered my heart...
She sat beside me in class, every day after that. I never asked her exactly what had happened, and, for her part, she never told me. We didn't always talk. We rarely spoke, in fact. But we forever communicated — me drawing her pictures, little gifts, things that would make her smile, anything to make her smile. And she would put words to my pictures, in a script no one else seemed to be able to make head nor tail of. Including myself, until she taught me, and then it seemed so obvious, adding a new dash of colour to my vision. She played me piano in music class, and we both, arrogantly, ignored the murderous stares of the jealous harpies who encircled us both.
I think... I think I was happy, then. My one mistake, to keep it hidden from no one. My own cursed naivety, to believe they would let us simply exist, as we let them.
I waited for her, one day after a meaningless class we did not share together, waited inside the gates, against my will, but forever a sign of my loyalty, waited forever for her to come.
I waited there until it grew dark, and the statues by the gate became taunting guardians of my fear, the shallow concrete on which I stood alive with the hissings of a hundred serpents unseen. The greyness returned, blanketing my mind; all the while I just stood, denying the coldness, recognizing exactly where I was. Some place that she was not.
"Kill me now," I begged of the serpents finally, and the hissing dispersed. Silence was restored, and the door of the great prison before me swung open.
At first I did not recognize her, blanketed so perfectly in grey. Her hair and eyes held no light for me, and her frail body was barely enough to carry her soul. She fell into my arms, briefly, and then right through, pushing me away.
The only colour illuminating such greyness: blood running down her thighs, over her hands, scars and scratches marring her neck and arms. She would not speak to me, not communicate with me. For the second time, my eyes filled with tears, though as she continued to push me away I vowed it would be the last time I would ever cry.
Such a fool, I was. I did not understand. She left me, with tears and blood staining my hands.
I determined I would follow her, to a place she had never allowed me to go.
I kept track of her by the shadow fragmenting in the distance, the drops of blood sprayed with a perverse randomness upon the ground, and the sound of her tears, the whispering of my name in shattered fragments. "Tessa." A name I had always despised, until it fell from her lips.
That night, hearing it spoken in such a way, broke my heart... Little dreams flew away in front of my eyes, appearing and disappearing again too fast for me to catch them as they fled, forever gone, leaving me only with an empty pain.
Her pain...
I came upon an ocean of it eventually, caught her vision there, kneeling upon the shoreline, her hair drowning in the waves. She looked to me... she was praying. She was preparing to leave. I could not understand, but when she looked at me, her eyes held me paralysed, trapped, silent. I was the only one who could hear, who was allowed to hear this prayer, even as I hated myself for my cowardice, wished myself to become nothing to her, I was the only one, and I was everything to her.
And as she took all the colour from this world back into her soul, I saw only her descriptions of what they had done, felt it, witnessed it again first hand, made myself sick, let the wind tear away who I was from the flesh, longed to hold her, longed to run away, longed to make it stop...
I could only shed a single tear...
And as that tear fell, washing away from my cheek, she cast aside all the layers, washing away from the shoreline. Leaving me emptiness, blood-stained clothing, an ache and an apology, for love.
Her love...
Her love, for me.
Her love, for me, and how she had betrayed that, by partaking in something they had given her no choice in from the very beginning.
I stared after her a while, still helpless, until I felt her leave me completely, then I fell, like a puppet cut loose of its strings, to the ground, not crying, not seeing, not dreaming... and trying so hard...
To forget how to feel.
To forget that I always knew, that someone like her, could not stay in a place like this.
Today I am sitting, upon that same shoreline, eyes closed so I can imagine colour, imagine colour the way it was when she existed within my dream, and try to forget that final night.
I don't think I ever dreamed again since she went away. It was as though... as though she took that part of me away with her.
As though I gave it to her, some gift I never knew I had.
Last night, however, I did have a dream. She came to me, just as she did that very first day, all golden light and promises of hope, glimpses of a rainbow behind her smiling eyes.
"I have something for you," she whispered, her voice eternal, as though it had never grown hoarse from screaming my name while they tortured her so, her eyes full of... things I did not dare to recognize, until the morning stole them from me yet again, and I found myself sitting here.
Love. And loneliness. And a solitary smile.
"It's waiting in my heart. Your heart."
My heart. My heart is not here, however.
I know what I must do. I know where I must be. I know, the moment has finally arrived, where I can wake from the dream, and be here again.
So I am preparing myself, by remembering everything: her face, her smile, and how to feel, all such things I had somehow lost, the day they made her go away.
I sit here for now, legs crossed, palms open to the sky, and wait for the rain.
Cleansing, silent, eternal.
I close my eyes, simply feeling, and, when I open them again, I know there will be colours.
I know she will be standing before me, in real life, just as she did within the dream.
I remember... her face.
~ fin ~