Wisps

Death is not what you’d think it would be. When I lived, everyone told me death was nothingness and shadows melted into one…perhaps not in those words, but close enough. Death was peaceful, or so the stories went. The fallen person’s face was always smooth without emotion or expression―because they were dead, right? How can the dead feel pain?
Now that is a lie like a punch to the face.

Starting with an explanation for such a morbid statement would be sufficient. Therefore, I shall tell my story before the accident. My name is Cameo Ivory Azura. Isn’t that the strangest name to ever exist? The child with three first names…although you wouldn’t know it. In English, my name was Shadow White Sky-Blue. Shadow. Though I did like the sound of that, I had to deal with Cameo. So everyone I knew called me Shadow.

I was the top of my class at Hawkwood High in Nowhere, Massachusetts. Nowhere isn’t exactly right, I suppose. Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Beautiful, you might say if you were an outsider, but as a resident of always-fall Longmeadow, tedious is a better fitting word.

I wouldn’t say I was popular in Hawkwood either. It was just another stop in my lifespan. Mostly, I think, others hated me because I was brilliant. A high IQ in a place so old-fashioned, you’d think you were in the 20th century with cell-phones was not looked upon kindly. If you stood out for any reason other than beauty or superficial characteristics without another similar being, you were suddenly placed as different. I’m not saying my class was full of idiots. Just as America isn’t full of idiots. Like that.

I had long, jet-black hair and dark blue eyes, pale skin, thin body. Not slender, like people want. But thin. I’ve heard anorexic jokes thrown at me before, but I didn’t think it was that bad. I just didn’t need food. Or water. I could survive days without a glass.

I had one sister, Violet. Vi had lighter hair than mine, but still, dark brown. Her eyes were lighter too, icy blue. She could hold a tan, the only one in our family who wasn’t true to our Irish ancestry. She was a year younger than me, a freshman in Hawkwood High.

Before the accident, I spent my mornings and evenings riding. I owned one horse, a bay Quarter Horse called Xing, meaning ‘star’. He had one white star on his forehead. But the people tantalized my small horse. Longmeadow breeds consisted of huge Drafts that could pull weight, beautiful Pintos or Arabs for the rich to show, and ponies to breed and sell to uphold land. No Quarter Horses with a little of another breed in its blood. Another reason to ignore me.

The fall colors of scarlet and gold were dyeing the former green leaves by October 1st, 2006. About a year since Hurricane Katrina and five years after the Nine-Eleven tragedy had passed. I walked to school that autumn morning. My mother and father were already out to work in Boston, in city jobs. Another reason for people to look at us as different. Xing was acting up when I took him out into the meadow behind our house to run; he would shuffle around when he’d look at me. When I put him in the corral for him to graze while I sat in Hawkwood’s judgmental jail cell…cough…classroom, he blocked the gate, snorting at me. I found a ripe apple from our trees and tossed it away for Xing to retrieve. That was our game. He was like a regular Labrador. He would pick the apple in his teeth and bring it back to my hands. Then I’d feed it to him. But not today. Xing glanced once at the fresh fruit, and then at me. I’d never seen him so wary. His glittering black eyes were trained on me. I even saw the whites. Xing was afraid, but what of? Foxes hardly ever strayed into the corral, and even when they did, they were scared to death of Xing’s trampling hooves. Deer didn’t spook Xing either. The stallion didn’t fear little animals like some of the townspeople’s breeds did―they called that different, I thought it to be better. Only the other night, one of the neighbor’s Clydesdales had broken the fence and run straight into our yard because of a flock of birds. It was an awkward moment for the Whites and the Azuras when the huge feather-footed stallion was brought home.

But Xing wasn’t spooked of anything in particular. Normally, I’d blame it on the wind, which riled up any horse, but there was hardly a breeze. Still, my pony didn’t fetch. I sighed and climbed the fence to hop out instead of using the gate. Xing whinnied and neighed, splitting the silent air, pacing back and forth, calling me. “I’ll be back tonight,” I promised him. I patted the bay on the nose, but I saw he was still scared.

In History, our wayward teacher got off topic from our lesson again. Just as well, I supposed, because the history of Aztecs brought me to my knees in boredom anyhow. I knew everything there was to know about those people. Fourth grade, on the computer. It disturbed me to think I was smarter than anyone in this town, but bringing that up usually brought me physical or emotional pain, both I didn’t want to rediscover.

The first warning was the storm. It was unusual for there to be such a storm in Longmeadow that time of year. It didn’t rain. Not one drop. But there was a deep, steely gray sky. There was deafening, rolling thunder cries. And there were occasional lightning flashes that stabbed the distant horizon. Though I was intelligent, my well-developed common sense telling me to ignore the storm, I found that my mind kept drifting to the sky’s warpath outside. I waited for the rain. I waited for an hour, but it never fell. I might have been called on once or twice by my teacher, returning me to the educational world, and of course, I answered the questions correctly. Some of my classmates snickered, adding comments about my ‘nerdness’. I wanted to tell their dim-witted selves that nerdness was not a word, but I supposed that would not help. I kept gazing at the storm.

So ominous, I mused, though at the time I was only joking. Once, I thought I saw a trickle of rain, but it was nothing. Just a stray autumn leaf whisking past the window. I dropped my focus from the trees out my window and saw two eyes. My two eyes. They were so dark they were navy blue. I flinched inwardly. They’d never been that dark. It was a little spooky. They appeared lifeless almost. Another omen.

Thunder crashed, hiding the first shot. After that, lightning flashed, a scream. The teacher paused midsentence, holding the piece of chalk still and looking back at us. Some of the stupider girls, like the blonde twins Hollie and Kacy (they weren’t actually sisters), took this as an opportunity to chatter frivolously about shallow things. A red-haired boy shot a paper airplane across the room. Imbeciles. As if we were in the third grade and not the tenth.

My teacher walked across the room, maneuvering around the mayhem that was sprouting in the class. Her eyes darted from side to side, looking under the desks. I watched her, and I understood. God. Even the teacher was dumb as a doornail. She was looking for cell-phones. As if someone had a scream as a ringtone.

Silence took the room as thunder rolled again. Only, this thunder had a different ring. More like the sound of a gun being fired. And it was louder than any thunder out the window. Someone whimpered.

And another scream. Too real to be a ringtone. It was real…too real. Despite the teacher’s orders to remain inside, the high school students flooded out into the hallway. Already, there were four students in the aisle. Seeing them kept everyone at the door. I was right at the front.

Two dark-haired girls lay dead on the granite floor. Crimson blood welled in a pool around their still forms, and the iron-salt stench filled our noses. I covered mine, trying to make sense of what was before my eyes. It took me a few moments to recognize the two girls on the floor but when I did, I cried out in pain. The oh-so-familiar face brought tears to my eyes, after the quick shock melted. It was Violet. My only sister was dead. The other girl was her best friend, Katelyn White. They were both so young, far too young to die. Above their bodies was a boy a year older than me, a junior. Corby Daniels, the kleptomaniac, brandishing a black pistol.

My sister’s friend Katelyn had dated the thief…it hadn’t ended well. This was the impulsive idiot’s revenge. He had shot both his ex-girlfriend and her best friend dead. Corby was glaring forward, shaking and huffing. Their blood smeared across his hands. When I cried out, he had heard me. The junior didn’t know me well, as I didn’t know him well, but he’d been in my house before. When Vi brought him and Katelyn home, he’d seen me. But he only knew me as Shadow, the Nerd. Apparently his memory was not as bad as his intelligence.

“You!” he screamed, pointing a bloodied finger at me, walking over Katelyn’s still form. “You’re the Azura girl’s sister.”

I didn’t deny it. I had always been proud of my sister. And fury blinded my common sense, usually so present. “You idiot!” I screeched, fear letting loose my internal, flaming thoughts. “You killed my sister!” When Corby was standing only two feet away, standing in the hallway, facing me, my classmates moved backward. Someone, out of fear-induced loyalty, pulled at my jacket to pull me back. I was a half-foot behind the doorway now and the teacher was speaking to someone on her phone. I made out the frantic words, “Police.” She had called 911.

“I killed your sister,” Corby echoed me. “And I’ll take you too.”

I growled. It was unusual sound, for humans weren’t meant to growl. It was an animal noise. But it was also an instinctual action. “Go to hell,” I hissed through clenched teeth.

He held the pistol outward in front of his face. “After you, Nerd.” For a second, a silver-black sphere shot at me and the air was split with man-made thunder. A red fury slashed across my eyes and agony shot through my chest. I’d been shot. My brain realized this as it began to fail. A crowd of people screamed. Mine was the loudest. A black haze began to cloud my vision and I was losing feeling in my limbs and my head. Everywhere except around my shoulder. My chest was still burning. It was too quick for mental goodbyes. The last image in my mind was my pony Xing before I collapsed.
So the stories lied. I burned forever and an hour from the angry bullet that pierced my shoulder.

I trailed through the whispering grass, letting my fingers slide through the feathery fronds. They tangled gently around them, caressing my hand, caressing my body dressed in a white dress that flew behind me without wind. My dark hair did the same, slowly wrapping around my neck, billowing in the sweet-smelling air. From the blossoming apple tree, pink-white petals curled as loops in the air, brushing my face kindly.

There was my house to the left, gleaming like a pearl in the sun, and there was the forest to the right. I turned my head slowly in the somewhat abstract meadow to gaze at each part of this place, to burn it in my memory. I did not know when I would return.

Bronze glinting caught my eye. The mist vanished as a spotlight from the sky fell upon the bronze, revealing two ivory-and-gold gates. Light poured out between the bars and a chorus of the angels sang from behind it, calling my name, “Shadow…Shadow…” I could not reach it; I could hardly move. The trance of the meadow caught my legs like a fly in amber. But my gaze never left the golden gates, and I hoped that my hand could grasp the bars.

My fingers fell through the air. My eyes shot open.

A powdery blue ceiling replaced the robin-egg sky without a single soft cloud. Faint sunlight streamed through my window as dawn dissipated and the blood-red sun rose. Heaven’s gates were gone, vanishing with the meadow. Dark blue eyes flickered to my window, but the meadow, my meadow, the field of my dreams, was green as an emerald, not pure gold. Claws of longing once more gripped my heart.

I had dreamt this nightmare for one year now. It was exactly one year the day before, October 1st. The day Violet was gunned to death.

It was also a year yesterday that I died and returned.

For all dreams are based on some form of reality, aren’t they? Though the visions and the daydreams during the day haunt my fevered mind, when I close my eyes to sleep, they become far worse. Many times I’d force myself awake at night, resisting the temptation of sleep, just to keep the dreams away.

Never did I see some terrible monster from a horror movie or a child’s nightmare. There wasn’t a graveyard, no fleshing-eating zombie with their rotten gray-green arms out, no scaly goblins with blood-stained teeth, and there were no wispy wraiths, ghosts and ghouls.

I only witnessed what I’d know for the shortest ten minutes. I had walked through a field of clouds to seek my paradise, my happy place. After a moment, I found my golden forest, with sunlight flooding through the red-leaf maples and the diamond creeks. Always fall and never cold it was, and the wood teemed with life. Snowy owls with topaz beaks perched on the tawny trees’ limbs and dusty-furred deer sprang in the shadows of the willows. A heard of many-colored horses—white, gray, black, chestnut, palomino, dappled, pinto (both piebald and skewbald), dun, and buckskin—lingered at the head of the sunlit wood; in the lead of the herd stood the only true bay. A white star hung stark on his brow, over his big brown eyes. It was my own faithful horse, Xing.

Unseen, a warm, beautiful melody filled the tranquil forest by a chorus of angels and archangels.

It was then when I was I sucked by a torrent into the living world once more. I had been lying on a hospital bed with my mother, tears in her dark blue eyes, and my father, looking horribly distressed, watching over me. And throughout the year, this is when I would wake up.

I lifted myself out of my bed’s wrinkled sheets and avoided the window. I swore if I saw another figment of my horrible nightmares, I would scream to the top of my lungs. Before I left my dreary, sky-colored room, I loosely grabbed my bleached red-and-white bag off my desk.

Trailing silently down the steps was not an issue for my feather-footed feet, for nearly all my life I learned how to remain absolutely silent to hear the rumors that flew about me—for instance, in eighth grade, I lived off rats according to my peers. In fifth grade, I was the airborne girl. Someone had caught me sitting on the roof and figured I was concealing wings. Ten year-olds could be cruelly imaginative back then. And then, one early memory, I was a mole. Yes, a mole. When I tripped one rainy day and fell straight into the mud, kids looked once at the dirt on my face and considered me a dirt-eater. Though I was ninety-nine percent sure, now, that moles didn’t eat mud.

My mother was downstairs in the kitchen with my father, leaning tensely over the counter. Dad’s shoulders were slumped as if he had the weight of the world upon his back and Mother was gripping a slip of paper, and envelope possibly, so securely that her bones pressed against her already white, white skin. They were speaking in hushed tones, their dark eyes boring into each others. The air itself was worrisome, and I strained my ears to pick up anything. Anything. After years of practice, my ears could now pick up even a quiet voice if it included my name. This is what I heard: “She may have to go sooner than I thought, Basil.”

Basil, my dad, furrowed his eyebrows. “Cheryl, there’s still time. We should consider the prices and Shadow’s condition before…”

“We’ve done that for a year!” Mother cried softly. “And it’s only gotten worse. I hear her screaming at night…” I screamed? Dad nodded, and his blue eyes, so like mine, clouded. “I know you’re there, Shadow. You may as well come out.”

A small storm-cloud of frustration burst over my head. Hadn’t I done this enough to be able to sneak around my parents? I didn’t ‘come out’, as Dad had said. I simply leaned over the side of the railing. Outside, the sky darkened.

“What are you talking about?” I asked in a voice that frightened me. It was dull and lifeless.

Mother sighed, and exchanged a look with my father. “Do we tell her?”

“Tell me what?”

“We don’t have a choice,” was Dad’s reply.

“Tell me what?”

Mother and Dad both opened their mouth to speak, and it was my mother’s voice that came out first, so being intelligent enough to know not to cross my mom, Dad backed off. “Your father and I have decided that this…thing has gone on long enough.”

I only waited, not saying a word. For I knew exactly what was coming next. It had already been attempted several times this year. “Have you, er, dreamed at all lately, Shadow?”

Should I have lied? It probably would have made this ‘talk’ better. But in the light of dawn, I didn’t have my senses about me. “Yeah, Mom. Every night.”

Every? Mother mouthed, and her expression went from slightly frazzled to purely terrified. “So we’re calling Dr. Black and setting up an appointment,” Dad finished.
The only Blacks I knew were fictional characters from Harry Potter and Twilight. “I’m not sick. If you’re trying to pass this off as a medical condition….”

“Not a medical condition,” Dad corrected. “A psychological condition.”

“Dr. Black is a therapist for teenagers who have suffered traumatic experiences,” Mother added, clutching Dad’s arm for support.

“A shrink?!” I half-screeched. “You’re sending me off to a shrink?” Eyes burning and face burning, I was fuming and livid. I wrapped my fingers around the bar of the railing as if to hold me back.

“Don’t call them that,” Mother scolded lightly. “Black is going to help you, Shadow. You need this.”

“Need what?” I shrieked. “I don’t need anything!”

“Don’t you want these dreams to stop?”

“What dreams!” What dreams, my internal voice scoffed. Ah wonderful, I have a voice in my head. I’m schizophrenic now too, wonderful.

“Don’t act like you don’t know what you’re talking about!” Mother snapped, tears welling in her eyes. I’m trying to help you…!”

I turned away, glaring at the door. I didn’t know what she was talking about; they were just dreams, right? “There’s nothing to help! There’s nothing wrong with me!”

“It’s alright, Shadow,” Mother pleaded. “We can help you!”

“We!” I yelled, dropping my bag off the shoulder. It landed on the glossy, dark hardwood floor with a soft thud. “Whose ‘we’, Mum, Dad, and this doctor we don’t know and I don’t want inside my head?!”

“Mum?” Dad muttered. I ignored him.

“No one’s getting inside your head…”

I huffed, and was shaking with anger. “When?” I demanded. “When am I going to lose all the privacy I may have in my head?”

My mother didn’t speak; it seemed she had enough of this. My father replied with a wary glance, “Tuesday.” Such a short answer, yet it felt like a tumbling torrent of the world crashing down on me. My world. Diseased, yes, completely surreal, yes, but it was mine. It was Saturday.

“I can’t believe you,” I snarled, and glanced to the door. My mother saw the path of my eyes, and she made one little movement. I flashed down the stairs and nearly made it to the outside world. My hand was on the doorknob but my mother’s was on my shoulder, gripping it, meaning to hold me back. My wrist flickered to a fraction of an inch, a warning. To emphasize my face pale with cold antagonism, lightning flashed out of the door window, lighting the curves of it and shadowing the indents.

“Cameo, we can do this,” Mother whispered. Cameo. She never calls me ‘Cameo’ unless she’s really angry. “Please, for me.”

I admit, for one moment, I would have given in. For this was my mother after all, was it not? But I shrugged off her hand a little harder than I should have and quickly turned the doorknob. I was running into the dark-sky rain before anyone could stop me.

Thunder rolled and crashed overhead. Rain blended with the tears rolling on my face. How dare it rain? This was supposed to remind me of that day, I knew it, Fate was that cruel. She would force me to recall everything? Fine! Well two could play at that game. I hummed, making my mouth buzz. There, I thought. Now I’ll focus on everything else. I looked at the flowers, the fence, my distant horse, past the blinding rain and tears. Fate could laugh and throw its memories at me all she wanted. I won! I laughed maniacally, tipping my head back to the blanketed clouds. Yellow light flooded from my house, and my parents were watching me. Fine. They could watch my victory, my sweet, sweet success.

Oh, God, you’ve gone insane! My inner voice wailed. “I have not!” I murmured aloud, with a frenzy to it. Thunder, then lightning again flashed. Oh, how I wanted to take a flat, sharp silver dagger and pierce those dreadful storms! A dagger, I thought. I had a dagger. A knife to be more clear, a switchblade, but a knife without a doubt. Mother and Father were still in the doorway. That did complicate things. Oh, but wait! I clapped my hands once. There was a backdoor! I scrambled across the lawn towards my horse, Xing, who whinnied at me in greeting.

“Shut up!” I hissed at him, but my old companion ignored my horrible venom tongue. He simply attempted to nose at me, but I was like a wind. A free, free wind. I knew how to stop the dreams.

I launched myself to the white-painted door, and for one moment, noticed Dad comforting Mother. The old, desperate part of me wanted to run to them, hug them, and implore amnesty, but no. No. No. No! I could not, they were my enemies, and they were demons clawing at my feet! I had to escape everything. Anything that reminded me of her would destroy me before I had the chance.

I tiptoed with some frenzied swiftness to my room and burst into it, leaping onto my bed. But before I could look anywhere for the knife, I was sucked away. My imagination leapt before my sight, engulfing me. The field, the angels, the blue sky…and my sister. Violet was so close, so close, I could reach out to her. Perhaps she would take me away. “Violet!” were my soundless words. My wail was silent for I could not find the power to form the noise. “Violet, help me!”

I could hear nothing and feel nothing from her. I watched her, frantically, as she called to me, but the blurry field was a vacuum of all words. And soon, too soon, I was trapped in the real world again. Somehow, the visions were taking my very essence, and I felt like something out of a horror film. The fear of life was gripping me like hot flames of Hell, torturing me for every breath I took. I had to end it. The depression was far too much.

But before I could find the one-second strength to drive the knife into my chest, where my heart was, a gentle, terribly familiar voice said, “Stop.”

“Violet,” I breathed. “You’re here. Help me; I can’t find the strength.”

“Don’t,” she beseeched softly. “You have to stop this now.”

“You don’t understand!” I wailed aloud, so loud the pair downstairs could probably hear me. “I need this. This…agonizing life. I need where you are, real life! Take me with you!”

“This is all in your head,” this wraith-like Violet told me. “You’re talking about death. Suicide.”

“Quick death,” I gasped, clawing at the air where I thought Violet to stand. “To be where I belong. This world is so cruel.”

“I know,” she whispered. “Put down the knife, Shadow.”

“I…”

“Put. Down. The. Knife.” My dead sister commanded me in a soft yet firm tone. I gripped the dagger for another while, but then flicked it back into its socket and it was a harmless chunk of red metal again. I stuffed it into my steely gray jacket pocket and gaped, “Take me with you.”

“Listen to Mum,” Violet asked of me as she vanished from my vision. “Do what our parents told you too.”

I nodded, tears rolling down my face like unstoppable cascades of salty liquid. I made hopeless motions to grasp my already absent sister, which meant my efforts were futile. I turned to the window. Sheets of water did not match my tear-layered face.

My mother met me downstairs, her arms searching to beseech me. “So Tuesday?” said my strangely, eerily tranquil self. She nodded. “Okay, I did it, Violet,” I said to no one that truly existed.

Dr. Black was a tall, lean man with dark hair and intelligent deep brown eyes. He did not wear a white lab coat as I had imagined. He wore a t-shirt and jeans; was that better? “So, Cameo....” he began.

“Shadow,” I hissed from under where my arms were covering my head that slouched over. “It’s Shadow, and I don’t want to talk. But since I promised Violet last weekend I would come here, I’ll listen. But I won’t spill.”

“Now who is Violet, Shadow?” Dr. Black asked me gently, leaning forward. “Your mother?”

“My sister,” I snapped. “My dead sister. She died last year, but I still talk to her!”

“You do, do you?” Black probed. “This is not unusual for someone who faced death and lost someone, both or just one. Let’s talk about your sister.”

“Why!” I screamed. “Why does everyone want to know about my sister? She’s mine! Mine, do you hear me?” The switchblade was still in my pocket.

“It’s alright,” he murmured to me. “I’m not stealing her, Shadow.”

I yanked out the knife from my pocket and flipped out the blade. “Don’t talk to me like that!”

The therapist’s eyes opened wide and he held up his hands in peaceful gesturing. “Shadow, don’t! Put the knife down.”

Put the knife down. That’s what Violet had said. This wasn’t really a therapist, this was really my sister in disguise. She wanted to help me. Right? Right?

You’re insane, my sarcastic inner voice mused.

“I’m insane,” I echoed. “I need help.” I sheathed the knife and stowed it.

“Let’s hear about your sister, for a start,” Black told me gently.

Mist swirled around me, but this time, it was a reassuring, soothing mist, wisps of vapor that would shield me not harm me. It was something I hadn’t known for a long time. It was comfort. “It was in October…I think it was raining…”