Untitled Life

She sat on that park bench for what seemed like hours. Not knowing what had happened or why. She was still trying to figure out how she had got there. The things she knew for certain were: she was on a park bench, it was dark, she was alone and her hands and dress were covered in blood.

She was numbed, why couldn’t she remember what happened? Obviously it was something horrible, where’d all the blood come from. She had no wounds... She decided that just sitting there was not the best course of action and got up. She walked slowly, trying to take in the weight of her surroundings. A turned-over trashcan, an overgrown lawn, a deserted swing set with rusted and broken chains, a concrete path littered with take-away papers and sweet-wrappers, a flickering streetlight creating a mocking strobe at the edge of the park.

She walked on the path, the concrete feeling alien in contrast to the dew-soaked grass. She walked out of the park-gates and into the deserted street. She crossed the street and continued at the same pace, trying to recognize any familiar buildings, keeping to the sidewalk. Walking had a hypnotic effect on her, lulling her into a sense of security. She became entranced by the sound of her strides on the sidewalk, the rhythmic tapping of her bare feet sounding like the thumping of her heart.

It started raining. She didn’t notice until her vision became obscured by the drops falling in front of her face. She kept walking, experiencing the rain as a ritual cleansing. She could smell the rain, hear the pitter-patter of the drops falling on various surfaces. She loved the way the drops seemed to fall in time with her stride and her heart-beat. She loved the way she couldn’t see where her strides fell, the rain forming a veil before her eyes. The unknown acting as an enticing surprise experience.

She could see the glaring neon shop-lights in the distance. Forming a stark contrast that frightened her, the jolly boldness of the neon, versus the comforting dark grey droplets of her distorted vision. She pushed her matted hair away from her face and noticed her hands no longer had blood on them, except for her nails. The cuticles still had the traces of blood. Her dress was also still stained, the blood dried into the innocent floral pattern.

She continued to walk, but her vision was so distorted that she tripped and fell, grazing her knees on the concrete. She realized then that the distortion was caused by tears. She was crying. Then the memories came flooding back to her. The masked man, the gun, the shot that killed him.

She crawled into an alley and lay her head on an abandoned purse, suddenly overcome with the lethargic feeling that the release of this reality brought to her. She gazed up at the sky, the rain subsiding. She kept looking at the sky, so black, the black seemed to close in on her before every blink. A comforting suffocation, one that seemed would envelop her and free her from herself. She wanted the darkness to take her. She didn’t want to deal with reality, the reality that she had no reality.

The loneliness overcame her like a blanket, like the finality of the zipper being drawn on a body bag. She took a jagged piece of glass that was lying nearby. Piercing the flesh of her wrist brought the familiar pain she so adored, the pain of her thoughts materializing in her reality. She hummed a verse of her favourite song, Iris - by the Goo Goo Dolls, “yeah, you bleed just to know you’re alive”. The cherished sensation that she controlled her life and so controlled her death, that she caused her own reality. The gushing of her own blood flowing into the already blood-stained material of her patterned dress. Creating a sickening ironic marriage with that man’s blood. The warmth comforting to her as she created an oblong gash in her other wrist, this one not as neat as the first. She lay her head onto the purse again, gazing at that comforting blackness that threatened to enclose her once more, waiting for the darkness to permanently enclose her. She welcomed it and she realized that the saying was true, it is darkest before dawn.