Missing: Presumed Dead
Missing: Presumed Dead
Missing
I awake in a panic, the shirt I fell into an uneasy sleep with over my face, plastered to my skin. It has filled my unconscious mind with a deep, gripping terror, the sweet scent of your perfume lingering on it’s black material. I am trembling all over, my eyes tight shut in an attempt to escape the atmosphere in your house. Everything has become a weapon in the war to discover what has happened to you. The television, humming quietly in the corner of your ordinary living room, is a constant reminded of how everything has changed. We’ve sat through countless appeals broadcast on every channel, your family squashed onto the sofa I have adopted as my bed. I have given up everything, left behind any trace of normality and become a permanent fixture in a house where nobody smiles anymore.
I am still breathing heavily, images from my nightmares imprinted in my mind as catch a glimpse of your photo. It’s dark, though a light is on upstairs as a member of your family fumbles in the confusion that surrounds us. I’m staring at your smiling face and my heart is filled with a sudden empty ache. I’m longing to step into the picture, hold you tight and promise never to let anything hurt you again.
My mind is engulfed in a wave of unanswered questions. There are so many things I need to know.
Are you alive? Are you happy?
Do you remember me, miss me?
I’ve muddled through questioning, pleaded on camera for someone to tell us where you are and slept with your shirt clutched to my chest for months. But now my surroundings are blurred, words have little meaning and nightmare has taken hold. I am seized nightly by images of you, lying cold and still in a morgue somewhere, eyes closed and helpless as they begin their post mortem.
Your birthday is fast approaching and I know it will be as dark an affair as the terror of the night. I can hardly bear the idea of your presents laying unopened, being handed a slice of sickly, sticky cake and my eyes falling on your empty chair.
More than once I’ve reached into the kitchen drawer, covered with scratches where your brother has crashed his scooter in the house. I’ve feel cool steel slide beneath my fingers, felt my heart thump with rare excitement which penetrates my zombie-like confusion. My mouth dry, I had the blade resting on the soft flesh of my neck. I have been moments away from ending everything with a sharp movement of my trembling hand. But something held me back. The idea that the next phone call could restore our happiness, that you could walk through the door and discover me dead filled me with such a knowing pain that that I threw the knife into the drawer in a panic. I’m lifting your picture from the fireplace now and wondering if there will ever be another. I can’t stand the thought of filling countless albums with my future photos and knowing that you wont appear in any of them.
“What are we going to do?” someone whispers suddenly.
I turn around sharply to find your Mum, glass of vodka in her hand and ghostly pale in her white nightdress. I croak something barely audible, wishing I knew the answer. At least for the moment there is the ritual of questioning, interviews, campaigns to find you to stagger through. If all of it leads to nothing, if you are labelled like so may others “Missing: Presumed Dead”, there will only be an all consuming loneliness starching into the distance. Worse still is the possibility of your death, and of knowing that we will never be together again because I stopped believing in heaven a long time ago.
Your Mum, through her drunkenness hauls herself onto the sofa beside me. I am still clutching your picture, certain I have been tranquilised in some way because I can barely think. I am almost forgetting to breathe as I watch her gulp furiously, swallowing the vile liquid as fast as possible.
“How can she have...gone.” she slurs.
I understand. If there are six billion people in the world, three million in this city, how is it possible for no one to have seen you. We’ve appealed on television, radio, spread the word across the internet. Someone, somewhere must know where you are. And of all the people in the world, why did you have to disappear. You mum snatches your photo from me, tracing her fingers clumsily over your face.
“So beautiful.” She whimpers.
Her voice is strangely off key, like an instrument out of tune. It has an odd twang, as though something inside her is going to snap under the strain. She reaches out to me suddenly, her arms fumbling as she attempts to bring me closer. I stay still, eyes averted.
“You know what they asked me?” she says, “If she appeared to be normal.”
She snorts in my ear, a peculiar merge of tears she has held back for months and laughter at the ridiculousness of the questioning we’ve all endured. I’m thinking back now to an overweight officer showing me lists of the Missing.
“A large percentage could have been described as odd,” he barked, moustache twitching, “Many have turned up dead or at the scenes of murders.”
I can’t bear the idea of it, news reports associating the picture I’ve kissed before collapsing onto the sofa every night, with a murder. Despite everything that’s happened I know you are not capable of such an atrocity. Just as I know in my heart you are not coming home.
I feel as though I am being smothered in sweetness. People i have never met before have approached me in the street. Expressing sympathy, crying openly, saying how much the case has touched them. But I know it will soon be someone else, the medias focus will shift to another case and we will be abandoned in the darkness. Our search for answers is so often discussed that it has almost become engrained in the area’s culture. It has become customary for people to sit down to dinner and turn on the news and murmur about terrible tragedies.
But I cannot label you a “case” or a “tragedy”
You are my best friend and all I want is to hold you again.
I awake in a panic, the shirt I fell into an uneasy sleep with over my face, plastered to my skin. It has filled my unconscious mind with a deep, gripping terror, the sweet scent of your perfume lingering on it’s black material. I am trembling all over, my eyes tight shut in an attempt to escape the atmosphere in your house. Everything has become a weapon in the war to discover what has happened to you. The television, humming quietly in the corner of your ordinary living room, is a constant reminded of how everything has changed. We’ve sat through countless appeals broadcast on every channel, your family squashed onto the sofa I have adopted as my bed. I have given up everything, left behind any trace of normality and become a permanent fixture in a house where nobody smiles anymore.
I am still breathing heavily, images from my nightmares imprinted in my mind as catch a glimpse of your photo. It’s dark, though a light is on upstairs as a member of your family fumbles in the confusion that surrounds us. I’m staring at your smiling face and my heart is filled with a sudden empty ache. I’m longing to step into the picture, hold you tight and promise never to let anything hurt you again.
My mind is engulfed in a wave of unanswered questions. There are so many things I need to know.
Are you alive? Are you happy?
Do you remember me, miss me?
I’ve muddled through questioning, pleaded on camera for someone to tell us where you are and slept with your shirt clutched to my chest for months. But now my surroundings are blurred, words have little meaning and nightmare has taken hold. I am seized nightly by images of you, lying cold and still in a morgue somewhere, eyes closed and helpless as they begin their post mortem.
Your birthday is fast approaching and I know it will be as dark an affair as the terror of the night. I can hardly bear the idea of your presents laying unopened, being handed a slice of sickly, sticky cake and my eyes falling on your empty chair.
More than once I’ve reached into the kitchen drawer, covered with scratches where your brother has crashed his scooter in the house. I’ve feel cool steel slide beneath my fingers, felt my heart thump with rare excitement which penetrates my zombie-like confusion. My mouth dry, I had the blade resting on the soft flesh of my neck. I have been moments away from ending everything with a sharp movement of my trembling hand. But something held me back. The idea that the next phone call could restore our happiness, that you could walk through the door and discover me dead filled me with such a knowing pain that that I threw the knife into the drawer in a panic. I’m lifting your picture from the fireplace now and wondering if there will ever be another. I can’t stand the thought of filling countless albums with my future photos and knowing that you wont appear in any of them.
“What are we going to do?” someone whispers suddenly.
I turn around sharply to find your Mum, glass of vodka in her hand and ghostly pale in her white nightdress. I croak something barely audible, wishing I knew the answer. At least for the moment there is the ritual of questioning, interviews, campaigns to find you to stagger through. If all of it leads to nothing, if you are labelled like so may others “Missing: Presumed Dead”, there will only be an all consuming loneliness starching into the distance. Worse still is the possibility of your death, and of knowing that we will never be together again because I stopped believing in heaven a long time ago.
Your Mum, through her drunkenness hauls herself onto the sofa beside me. I am still clutching your picture, certain I have been tranquilised in some way because I can barely think. I am almost forgetting to breathe as I watch her gulp furiously, swallowing the vile liquid as fast as possible.
“How can she have...gone.” she slurs.
I understand. If there are six billion people in the world, three million in this city, how is it possible for no one to have seen you. We’ve appealed on television, radio, spread the word across the internet. Someone, somewhere must know where you are. And of all the people in the world, why did you have to disappear. You mum snatches your photo from me, tracing her fingers clumsily over your face.
“So beautiful.” She whimpers.
Her voice is strangely off key, like an instrument out of tune. It has an odd twang, as though something inside her is going to snap under the strain. She reaches out to me suddenly, her arms fumbling as she attempts to bring me closer. I stay still, eyes averted.
“You know what they asked me?” she says, “If she appeared to be normal.”
She snorts in my ear, a peculiar merge of tears she has held back for months and laughter at the ridiculousness of the questioning we’ve all endured. I’m thinking back now to an overweight officer showing me lists of the Missing.
“A large percentage could have been described as odd,” he barked, moustache twitching, “Many have turned up dead or at the scenes of murders.”
I can’t bear the idea of it, news reports associating the picture I’ve kissed before collapsing onto the sofa every night, with a murder. Despite everything that’s happened I know you are not capable of such an atrocity. Just as I know in my heart you are not coming home.
I feel as though I am being smothered in sweetness. People i have never met before have approached me in the street. Expressing sympathy, crying openly, saying how much the case has touched them. But I know it will soon be someone else, the medias focus will shift to another case and we will be abandoned in the darkness. Our search for answers is so often discussed that it has almost become engrained in the area’s culture. It has become customary for people to sit down to dinner and turn on the news and murmur about terrible tragedies.
But I cannot label you a “case” or a “tragedy”
You are my best friend and all I want is to hold you again.