“You’re overreacting Paul! You need to understand, I am coming back, and I’m still recovering!” A young black haired boy yelled as he stepped into his apartment.
“You’ve been ‘recovering’ for the past month now Abel! It’s time to move on, she’s gone there’s nothing more to it! You are running Abel; you can’t keep running from this!” The other man yelled on the line.
The young boy slumped down at the musty love seat and ran his sweaty fingers through his hair taking a deep sigh of frustration, “I’m not running Paul! Don’t pester me about it!”
“Abel you’re going into denial-”
There was no response but a slam. Abel slammed his phone into the table smashing it to bits and pieces onto the rickety table. Nothing left but a cracked screen with its battery half way hanging out. “I’m not going into denial,” he muttered “He doesn’t know what she meant to me…”
A deep silence fell over the 18 year old, pressing against his worn shoulders, crashing leaving a heavy awkwardness in the air. All you could hear was the rain, knocking on his window like a stranger, lost and afraid. He had gotten used to the silence now, the heavy silence that hung over his head like a rain cloud not leaving or breaking for a pinch of sun, just leaving a constant dour rain that just kept going.
A month of pure, detestable silence.
Yes a month now, since her frail body turned away to ashes in the ground. Since she disappeared from this earth and remained nothing more but a gravestone head. Not knowing what caused her to fade, it left Abel in constant angst. When angst hit, Abel didn’t sleep, he had spent countless nights staring up at the dark ceiling, or waking up from disastrous nightmares leaving him screaming hopelessly into the dark only to be heard by no one but himself.
No comfort.
Then, he felt a presence, something staring, observing and looking. Not a human, nor an animal but something other. He looked to his side table jumbled with papers paraded with scraggily handwriting. There stood it, it alabaster eyes looking onward towards him, wisdom and memories all fill the pages at the seams, it all-knowing eyes holding secrets with thin.
The photo-album.
Yes, something he refused to look at since that faithful day, not wanting to explore those haunting memories again, not wanting to see the awaiting memories knocking in his mind. He reached over a slipped his hand and brought the book over. Dust clung to its cover like wet clothing, wiping it off he on looked it. Finally mustering up his courage, he opened it.
As he flipped through the pages he saw each and every picture, crumpled at the seams, old musty and dust filled with rips and tears on the sides, all old and worn of his old self, a smiling bright boy with no stress. Those were the days. Finally coming to the end, he came across one. A fairly new one, a bit of crumpled but not ancient it held a picture of a frail girl with a look of dour spread across her pale face.
Oh god not again…



“I don’t want to be here… I’ve been here too many times before…” She said staring down at the white bed sheets, reeking of horrid smelling chemicals.
“I know but it’s only a few more days… Then you can go home…” a boy next to her said comfortingly to her putting a hand on thin shoulder.
She sighed deeply, anger building up a wall with frustration as its concrete, “I know I won’t ever be home now… I’ll always have that wheelchair to remind me I’m forever chained to this place…” She said staring at the chair in the corner, her eyes narrowing downward in greater frustration, “God I HATE it!” she yelled almost suddenly slamming her fist into her bed.
The boy stared gingerly and squeezed her shoulder attempting to calm her, “It’s not like it’s forever… their only using it until-”
“Oh its forever,” she intercepted her anger building, “I’m a paraplegic remember? I’m stuck in this wheelchair for the rest of my life!”
“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t realize-”
She turned her head angrily, “You don’t need to realize anything… You don’t understand!”
“I do!” he intercepted defensively, “You don’t need to get so mad at me for it!”
She didn’t reply that time, instead turning her head away from him in a silent hatred. A twig inside her was bending far too much about to break in half into bits in pieces, snap and break her down.
“I’m sorry…” he said gingerly, “I didn’t mean-”
“It’s best you leave now…”
“I-I don’t understand-“
“Do you have cotton stuffed into your ears, I said GO!” She yelled, “LEAVE!”



The next day, she was gone.
“God…” he muttered his voice strained, “Why?”

Chills ran up his spine rushing over his skin, Goosebumps ravished his body as he shook. Hot blinding tears ran down his cheeks. The worst feeling filled those hot tears, anger, sorrow, and worst of all

Regret

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand like a small child with a case of the flu. He closed the book shut and tossed it away, not wanting to look anymore at those pictures. What fell out of it, landed next to him, a lavender envelope unmarked and untouched. Right… Paul gave this to me after the funeral… he said it was a letter of some sort addressed to me. He grabbed it, curiosity and anxiousness filling his mind as to what it might be. He tore it open to find a small note, crumpled and worn. The writing on the letter was small and hastily written, squinting at it he began to read in his mind:

Abel; as you are reading this I am gone and now bones in a coffin-
Oh, who I am kidding, and that is a horrible way to start!
Anyway, I bet you are sitting on that rotten couch of yours slumping over feeling sorry for yourself, that it’s all your fault I’m gone, but I tell you now you’re wrong to be doing that! I want you to get up again and move. Stop standing in the muck and feeling sorry, move! You need to get off this straight path of dour and sadness and learn to curve in the other direction, you need to move on and take my place. Not sit on your butt and mourn the loss of another.
Learn to curve Abel, learn to curve.