I'm new on the Smogon scene, but hey, I figured I oughta get involved, so here's my entry. It's based off of an anxiety dream I had. c:
Word count: 1201
I Killed Her.
I killed her, even though she loved me.
Her unabashed affection towards me was obvious from the start. Day after day she plagued me, and though I never spoke to her or looked her in the eye, I always felt her gaze follow me even when we were miles apart. I always felt her presence, and I hated it, and I hated her, and I could not figure out why.
Her head came off so cleanly. As if I were not decapitating a human but rather just cutting a piece of paper. She bled not a drop—not one drop—as I bagged her head and locked it away and buried the box out in the middle of nowhere. Her body, I burned, and the burning was as quick as the killing.
When I returned home after that night, I still felt her there. Her bloodless death had already left me unnerved; the very notion of her still clinging to the earth even after what I had done gave me nausea.
I showered with the water as hot as it could be, and scrubbed my skin raw to rid myself of her contamination. But even after I cleansed every inch of myself and stepped out into the steamy, open air, I could still smell the smoke from her pyre on my hands. At this realization, I gagged, fell to my knees, and promptly vomited into the toilet.
But it did not end there.
Her voice followed me everywhere for months after her murder. I had hallucinations, visions of her head emerging from the earth and finding its way to my doorstep. Sometimes I saw her headless body rise from the ashes and shadow me like a steadfast dog. I could not even find solace in cigarettes anymore, for the smoke reminded me of the horrific crime I’d committed.
I did not know why I had not been apprehended by police yet. Hell, nobody had even reported her missing. I found myself obsessing over her life—or lack thereof. Nobody knew her name when I asked of her, not even those I saw her with the most. She had no house, no life insurance, no family, nothing. It was as if by killing her I had erased her entire existence.
At one point I found myself with the cleaver in my hand again. But this time it was pressed to my own throat, ready to lop off my own head.
Only, I hesitated. Because though I could not live with the guilt anymore, it did not mean my life had to end.
It meant that I had to make amends.
So I recreated her body, reconnected marrow to marrow, bone to bone, flesh to flesh again. My hands shook all throughout the process, leaving her with crooked stiches around her neck. By making her alive again, I thought I would be absolved of all my sin.
She was groggy when she awoke, so I let her hunker down in my bed. As the days passed, our roles were reversed—she was the one avoiding my gaze, and I was the one who would not stop staring. I watched as she ate ravenously, devouring everything in sight as if she were a growing child. She ate anything you set in front of her, even if it was raw, even if it wasn’t food.
Not once did she mention the fact that I had killed her. Nor did she thank me for resurrecting her. We ate at the same table and slept under the same roof, but we rarely spoke or touched each other. In fact, unlike in her other life, she was incredibly fearful of touch—even the slightest brush up against me startled her to the point of panic.
On the seventh day after her rebirth, I awoke in the middle of the night to find white strewn all over my home. At first I thought it had snowed outside and she had tracked some of the stuff inside, but when I put on my glasses I saw that it was not snow on my carpet, but rather pure white feathers.
The feathers lead up to my room—now more hers than mine—and when I opened the door I found her stark naked, the curtains pulled back. And glowing in light of the moon was her delicate skin and the wings that had somehow sprouted from her back. When they unfurled, they spanned from one side of my room to the other. I could not believe something as large as them could be folded up, compacted so small.
For the first time since her rebirth, her eyes met mine. That wretched nausea that I had managed to escape began to edge its way back into my stomach.
I asked her where the wings came from.
She said she did not know.
I opened my mouth to ask her more, but then she put her lips to mine to hush me, and took my hand in her own.
And for the next few weeks, we flew.
She took me to faraway lands, ones I had only seen photos of, ones I had never thought I would ever be fortunate enough to see for myself. Together we watched the stars from the highest mountain and the lowest valley, the driest desert and the deepest ocean. Eventually I found myself staring more at the stars in her eyes than the ones in the sky, but if I stared too long I saw her headless, wingless, and dead again.
I never reached for her, nor tried to articulate to her why I brought her back to life. She, too, never touched me unless she wanted to fly us somewhere else. And she never asked for the reasons behind my actions.
If my past hatred for her had been unjustified then, my strange attachment to her now was just as reasonless. With her hideous stitches and silken wings, she became more interesting of a creature in after-death than she had been in life. Perhaps there lay the true root of my fixation on her—the fact that I was now constantly in the company of an otherworldly being, one I had fashioned out of desperation.
Eventually she and I circled back home. Even though I had suddenly abandoned the poor thing, my home managed to appear welcoming, like a puppy that cannot detach itself from its neglectful owner.
As soon as we touched down, I instantly sensed a distance between me and her, a distance far greater than the divide between the living and the dead. At this, my heart stuttered, and panic began to rise up in my chest as if a balloon were expanding inside of me.
Her eyes fastened to the sunset before us. Like a statue she stood unwavering, but I could not read her posture, for my vision tunneled so that I could see nothing but her wings and clumsy stitches.
Without turning to look at me, she told me goodbye. She told me that I had already hung on for far too long.
I cried when she flew away.
The cleaver found its way through my throat the night after.