The other day I was browsing through old ‘unfinished’ files, seeking inspiration, and found one that contained a line that had come to me in a dream a couple of years ago. With time to fill and a laptop with a full battery charge, I wrote the following short story / vignette from that line.

I deliberately kept the protagonist’s cause for grief vague. The important thing was the grief, not the story behind it.

The Woman in the Mirror

Using the palm of her hand, she wiped away the tears which had been flowing. Her heart felt blistered and hot, an unrelenting agony she had never believed in before it happened to her. She reached for her breast, pressing hard, but the pain continued unabated. More sobbing escaped her tight throat, though she tried to hold back. How long could a person cry before something snapped, before she wound up locked in a rubber-lined room? In her mind’s eye, a nightmare vision loomed: a huge hypodermic needle zooming in to stab her into oblivion. She blinked it away with a fierce sharp shake of the head.

“No!” she rasped a raw, voiceless whisper. “It’s only grief. This is normal!”

But deep down, she knew nothing was normal, nothing could ever be normal again. She felt certain this loss would break her, that it had already broken her. She expected to see shards of herself lying on the floor, and glancing down, she felt mildly surprised to find her flesh still intact.

After another lengthy bout of weeping, she pulled herself weakly to a sitting position. Her head pounded urgently. She needed something, she needed someone. Who could she call? There was nobody left. It was all gone. She was alone, would be alone forever, oh God, oh Jesus help…

“Stop that!”

She cringed at the shocking loudness of her own voice. “I can’t help it,” she cried, bursting into tears again. “It’s gone, everything is gone! I can’t stand it, I want to be dead!”

Surely she was going mad. She must do something to escape the ever-building pressure of this inescapable grief. She could feel the hole in her heart, a raw, bloody hole full of black death, and all her tears could not wash it from her.

“All right, Samantha,” she muttered, feeling giddy. “Let’s take you out for a nice walk. That’ll do you some good, I think!”

As she dressed, she focused on breathing, inhale following by exhale, feeling the sensations of her muscles moving, her weight shifting around her centre of gravity. Amazing how complicated the simple processes of locomotion and breathing were, she mused, once you really paid attention.

That’s it.

The ‘Be Here Now’ people were right, those new-age loonies her sister used to drag her to. They had the answer to freedom from pain.

Just pay attention to what’s happening in the moment, ignore everything else. Maybe I can do this.

The sudden grating shriek that escaped her lips caught her by surprise, knocked her off her feet into a huddled ball on the floor, half-pulled-up pants at her knees, arms wrapped protectively around the raw wound in her heart.

How do people recover from this kind of heartbreak? Is it even possible?

Maybe it’s time to pull the plug, slice my wrists and bleed real blood into a nice hot bath.

It wasn’t the first time the thought had occurred to her, and she pushed it away with a little less vigour each time.

Why not? Who is there to miss me? Who would even notice?

She stumbled into the bathroom to splash her puffy skin with cold water. As she toweled her face dry, she caught a glimpse of her own face in the mirror. In that fleeting instant, she saw herself as she might see a beloved friend who was suffering terribly. The towel slipped from her hands. “Oh, my poor dear,” she whispered, reaching to stroke the trembling cheek, but touched only the cold hardness of the mirror. Her hand pressed against the glass as she gazed helplessly into the eyes of her despairing reflection.

“I so wish I could help you,” she heard herself saying. “There’s nobody else but me, is there? If I could do anything for you at all, I would do it. You don’t deserve this fate. You should be loved, surrounded by living people, not by this empty death. It’s not fair. You shouldn’t have to suffer this way.”

The woman in the mirror stared at her, eyes widening in shock, face slackening as she heard. Samantha looked her deliberately in the eyes, projecting love, strength, faith and understanding as strongly as she could. Her heart melted, opened, and softly ached with empathy for the woman in the mirror, a pain so different to the hard, wrenching agony of a few moments ago.

“I’m here for you, my precious darling,” she said, meaning every word. “I’m here for you, and I always will be. I will never leave you or abandon you. I am here for the long haul. There’s to be no bathtub full of blood for you, and no medicating into oblivion either. We’ll get through this together, even if it’s just you and me. It’ll take time, but we’ll recover. I know we will.”

She spoke with firm, quiet authority, while the woman in the mirror sobbed gratefully, her hands touching Sam’s where they rested on the mirror. For a moment she imagined their soft palms meeting, flesh pressing.

She would get through. She would survive.

This month’s exercise for my writer’s group:

Word: Journalize
Question: Do you know where your kids are?

I’ve never been one to journalize (I’m more the stream-of-consciousness sort) but this crisis should be documented, and I’m the only one who can do it.

You see, I’m the only one left. Everyone is gone–my friends, my family, my husband, the police, the mayor, and worst of all, a loss I cannot contemplate without tears (they flow from my eyes as I write) my kids.

It began innocently enough, I suppose; at least, I had no suspicions that life as I knew it was about to end. As for why I remain, I have no guesses. It’s a mystery to me, and there is no one to ask.

The day had dawned bright, one of those glorious, burgeoning May days that make you believe in immortality. I was in the kitchen trying to do too many things at once, talking on the phone with my mother, cooking dinner and mediating a life-and-death dispute between Sherry, five, and Teddy, who was three.

“So, what do you think I should do?” I asked Mom. I was telling her about an issue I had with my oldest son’s second-grade teacher, Mr. Eberts. He had been unfairly picking on poor Samuel, who was a sensitive boy. I was really angry but was too shy and intimidated by his air of authority to say anything directly to him. Instead, I bitched to Mom.

“You should make him stop!” Sherry shrieked, slapping at Teddy, who began to cry.

“I wasn’t talking to you, sweetie, I was talking to Grandma,” I said. “And don’t hit your brother! That’s no way to settle a quarrel.”

“I think you should march right up to him and give him a piece of your mind,” Mom stated firmly. Of course I knew she would say that. I didn’t really expect her to solve my problem. It was an old habit of mine, asking for her opinion, then ignoring it. She appreciated being asked, and I felt it was good for our relationship.

“I can’t do that,” I said. “He’s just so tall. And he looks down at me like I’m some kind of a bug.”

“Mommiiee!!” Teddy whined. “She gots my twain. Make her give it me!”

“I had it first, you little baby!” Sherry quickly interjected. “And it’s not yours, it’s ours! Santa gave it to the whole family!” (I had known that was a bad idea, but Glen, aka Santa, had insisted.)

“Mine! Miiine!!” Now he was full-out shrieking. I sighed.

Reaching down, I lifted him to my left hip and rocked him while I propped the phone against my other shoulder. “It’s ok, Teddy. Sherry’s right, the train set is hers too. And she did have it first. But you can help Mommy talk to Grandma, okay?” He sobbed inconsolably, and Mom said, “Heavens, Susan, you do baby that child. You’re going to turn him into a Mama’s boy.”

I chose to ignore that, bringing the conversation back to Mr. Eberts. “Okay, I know I should stand up to him, Mom, but I think he takes unfair advantage of his height and his big deep voice. He treats me like I’m just another child, not a parent. I should lodge a complaint with the administration, I think.”

Talking with Mom helped me to get clear in my own mind what to do. I breathed a sigh of relief. Teddy’s sobs trailed away and he began to fall asleep against my shoulder, and Sherry contentedly took the train back into the playroom to join the rest of the train set so she could continue with her game… a working woman commuting to the office.

That’s my girl, I thought.

Just then I noticed smoke curling around the edge of the oven door.

“Shit! I mean, shoot! I have to go, Mom, something’s burning.”

I opened the oven door to see what was happening in there. Immediately smoke billowed out, making me cough. I reached through the vapors to shut the oven off. Then the smoke alarm came on, hideously loud, waking Teddy, who shrieked.

“Dammit!” I cursed. The wail of the smoke alarm sliced into my brain like a serrated knife. I plopped Teddy onto the floor and looked for a towel to flap at the smoke alarm to dissipate the smoke and make it stop screeching.

That’s when it happened. I’ve gone through this story in detail, hoping I might find some previously unnoticed clue. But I still don’t understand. In the blink of an eye, all the people vanished into thin air. I wasn’t looking…I was busy…but I could feel it happen. My mom went first. I felt her go, like a soap bubble popping in my mind. Then Glen, my husband, went, along with his boss and co-workers, and Mr. Eberts, and all the teachers and grown-ups in the town. They blinked out of existence, whole blocks of them at once.

Last of all, my kids went. I had begun to realize what was going on and was turning toward Teddy to snatch him into my arms, but just before I could face him he vanished too. And then Sherry and Samuel went. One at a time, their bright little flames disappeared from the world.

I knew I would be the one to stay. I could feel it. Whatever it was, it didn’t want me. I was left here all alone in my smoky house, smoke alarm screeching. I started to howl like a madwoman and didn’t stop until my throat was raw. On the streets, suddenly-empty vehicles smashed into buildings, trees, telephone poles and each other. All the world came to a crashing, thudding, screaming halt.

That was a week ago. And I still don’t know where my kids are.

“I don’t care! Goddammit!” The heavy glass mug sailed through the air, crashed against the wall and rolled unbroken across the carpeted floor. “Why are you doing this, Stephen?” she demanded.

“Maggie, please don’t take it that way,” her husband begged. “It’s just…” he paused helplessly. “I didn’t mean to sound like–” he trailed off again.

“To sound like you are leaving me, you mean? What else would you call it?”

“I don’t want to leave you! I love you. But I love her too. I can’t help it!”

His last word was punctuated by the slamming of the door.

——————-
(more…)

Nadia walked swiftly down the echoing corridor, wincing at the clatter of her heels. Now, where … ah. Fishing in her pocket for the key, she glanced to either side before trying it in the lock. A satisfying click signaled the door’s opening. She slipped inside, closing it behind her, then turned to face the dark room.

From the dim interior, a hard voice spoke. “You took long enough.”

“I got lost,” she replied defensively. “Your directions suck.”

“Did you bring it?”

“It’s right here.”

“Well, give!”

“Why do you keep it so damn dark in here?”

“I said, give!” (more…)