Faded Away

That day had destroyed them, ripped them in two. It was sudden, perhaps not deliberate, but scorching.

It had been a Sunday morning, an innocent errand. In the cold of December, they had walked linked arm-in-arm. They had both resigned to the nearest coffee shop after much fretting, laughing at each-other’s cherry-red noses and puffed cheeks as they did.

Alisia felt that he smiled, genuinely, so little in her company. The warmth in her heart overwhelmed the icy nip of the winter morning, so much that she felt as if she hadn’t needed a jacket at all. Daily, the Scotsman was gruff, devoid of many affections, and self-centered. It was days like this, like this blissful icy morning, that Alisia really came alive. His smile was like a drug.

With their warm drinks they’d trotted along a sidewalk, crunching ice and sweeping sleet aside with the toes of their boots. Iain didn’t seem to mind it as much, for in his native land he was quite used to such moist weather. Alisia, from the Armenian dryness, was not.

His red hair burned as an eternal candle in her brown eyes, his eyes of emerald green more piercing than the sun trying to pry its golden fingers through dark heavy clouds. He was a beacon, a symbol of everything she had given up her old life for, and lived for now.

Perhaps they had simply not been paying attention, crossing the street with seemingly no worries. Their eyes had locked as he made a snarky joke about the appearance of her rear in the cold, in which she playfully slapped his arm.

It was a ruse of happiness. There was a screech of rubber, struggling with vain fingers to hold its grip on the ice. It slid still, their only warning being a flash of excruciatingly white light. Perhaps Alisia’s limbs were already numbed from the cold, or perhaps it was the fear that iced her veins. Iain was not iced. With a deafening shout, and a strong sweep of arms, her petite body crashed onto the other side of the street. She was dazed, her vision fuzzy, and as soon as it cleared all she had time to do was watch as his body was crumpled underneath rubber.

In that moment, brown eyes locked with emerald, first filled with concern, then filled with nothing. Dull, lifeless, nothing.

The rest of her memories felt a nightmare, and she wished them to not be real. She had screamed, reddened fingers clawing through the ice, soon soaking in his warm blood. Screams of terror and agony ripped through her throat, and she could not stop, not even as the ambulance came. Not even as his body was loaded into the compartment, heavy doors shutting him away. She had to bite on her tongue, letting her tears scream for her.

-

It had been a week.

Where was he? Was this heaven? Was this hell? All he saw, all he touched, grasped, tasted, heard, was nothing. It was as if he’d been swallowed up, like Jonah in the whale’s belly. He thought, with confusion, that he should have been digested long ago, and the divines should have decided his fate in whatever afterlife awaited him.

But there was nothing.

Iain could not accept this. What was he to do, lie around in a black nothing for eternity? He could not, and would not stand for it. If it was possible to scream in rage, bodiless as he was, he would have. His fingers that no longer were his clawed at the black emptiness, his teeth ripped at it, he kicked, punched, fought.

And eventually, he broke free.

Color exploded into his vision, like the rays of the sun parting dense clouds after a storm. He could see everything: snow, trees, dirt under his feet. His feet were bare, and as the snow sifted through his toes, he felt no discomfort in the cold.

He turned, for he knew he had to, and he saw the tombstone.

‘Here lies Iain Kirkland, beloved brother, and friend.’

The ruby-haired man did not feel as shocked as he should have. Somewhere, deep in his heart that no longer would beat, he knew.

He did not feel grief for himself. He could not bring himself to. He flexed his hands, but felt nothing. This air felt meaningless to him now, for he had no skin to enjoy it.

The empty hole in his, where his heart throbbed, now did feel grief. He remembered.

Alisia.

Where was she? Was she alive? If she was, was she at home?

It faintly occurred to him that the home was no longer ‘our’, but ‘hers’. He pushed the feelings aside, his ethereal form dancing along the winds, or the currents of time perhaps, to their once-shared home.

-

It was becoming unbearable.

"What do you want from me?" She whispered to the open air, distraught and distressed. She looked as if a pale skeleton, skin clinging to her bone and her usually-tan skin becoming a hollow white.

At first his absence, his death alone, was killing her from the inside out. But now she knew something was with her, something she did not understand. Things began to move by themselves at night. Lights would flicker on and off, then suddenly cease when she came near to investigate.

Why was this happening to her? Why her? Why? She wanted to shout, to scream these questions herself, wishing that whatever entity that was playing with her sensitive consciousness and torturing her would answer.

"Please! What do you want from me?!"

Again she yelled it down the hallway from which the most recent happening had occurred. This time, she had been in the bathroom, attempting to read and swallow the awful emotions that threatened to consume her, when suddenly a door in the hall had swung open violently.

Now she stared down at the door, quivering in fear like a shaken lamb. She knew she could not simply walk away from this. She knew it was down there, and she had to confront it, or else the sovereignty of her conscious would be at stake.

With slow steps she crept down the corridor, her heart hammering within the small cavity of her chest harder and harder, louder and louder. She felt as if she was a mere jukebox, being winded up until her springs were so scrunched together that she would shatter the entire box.

But the brunette girl stepped inside the room, and it was then that she finally realized the significance.
It was Iain's room.

"Oh my God..." she breathed, feeling a great chill wrap about her, like a blanket of ice. She stared at the door, and slowly, it clicked itself shut.

"I-Iain?"

For a long moment, nothing but silence hung in the air, heavy and thick. It would drive her mad. Her teeth grazed her bottom lip, before she sucked in a breath, sitting on the bed's edge.

She would take this risk.

"Iain...if this is you, and you can hear me, please...open the door again."

And it did. What she thought would be an explosion of springs and gears was an explosion of hot
tears down her cheeks.

-

Iain vowed to make her know, and in time, he did. As days of the hauntings passed, Alisia began to realize that he was not lingering with her to scare her, nor bring her harm.

The main things that caused her to realize where the soft brushes of air against her cheek as she awoke each morning, tender and slow. Like a 'good morning' kiss. In the kitchen she would find notes (whether they be scribbled or scrawled in blood), of teasing phrases or loving gestures. And in the times when she would cry, her heart aching for her lost love, she would feel that blanket of ice envelop her again, as if he was embracing her.

He haunted her because he could not bring himself to be apart from her. And she knew it now.

Perhaps she was crazy, or a fool, but she was content with being either, as long as this was real.
And for years, he stayed with her, by her side as a being ethereal. They could never touch, never kiss, never enjoy each-other's warmth, but it did not matter. The thought of never being truly alone motivated Alisia to keep going, where before, her motivation was as vast as a grain of sand.
_

So he haunted her throughout the years. She never left that house, their house, and he never left her side. She never again found a man, never having children nor falling in love.

Eventually, Alisia grew grey, and she died. The moment Iain knew life had left her beautiful chocolate eyes he felt heartbroken, that was, until he saw her even more beautiful spirit climb out of its shell of a body.

She was free, and for the first time in a lifetime, they embraced once again.