Author: Ally S. (SickCycleCarousel)

Disclaimer: Contains an account of life after suicide, and the lives affected.

Summary: A ghost walkslonely shores, searching for what she took away from herself.

So Transparent

Her feet sunk into the dull, warm mud by the water with each step she took. Her sobs escaped her each and everytime, but still, like every other night she cried, no one would hear. Her eyes were always bloodshot, tear-rimmed and stinging. Triggered by haunting memories that plagued her of her lost love.

She felt alone, so transparent. There were so many people around her, laughing, playing, swimming nude in the darkest of night, and yet none heard her cries for help. Even the hottest of summer days, she walked across the scalding hot sands of this beach, oblivious and immune to the heat. She no longer knew what she was, and no longer wished to. She knew aching, she knew rage, she knew depression and endless angst. Each emotion replayed through her mind, and perhaps her features if they ever once were visible.

This day was different, a heavy, thick aura floated above the land, as if rain had frozen still in the midst of falling. No other person could see, however, because her beach was empty, exempt of all life. Except for this one, little boy. He looked very lost, it made her want to reach out and embrace him, whispering something calm and reassuring to him. But again, like everything else, she could not.

So she kept walking. She heard the boy cry out in pain, as if some invisible creature had slapped him to the ground. He wailed, and sobbed, crying out for his mother. She turned to him, her white, opaque eyes focusing on his shaking body. He looked so familiar to her, and yet something so different separated him from the memory.

David...? She whispered, the silence of it being carried across the air as if by a small gust of wind.

The boy turned to her, and blinked. His blue, cloudy eyes blinked once, twice, then filled with tears.

Mother? His face scrunched up into a frowning sob. He began to run towards her, his feet desperately trying to find stability in the shifting sand.

A weight lifted from her shoulders and she knelt, holding her arms open to catch him in an embrace. She had found him, and now she would no longer have to walk. He reached her, falling forward into her pale arms. He continued to fall. He lay on his stomach on the sand, sobbing and heaving.

She stood, staring sadly down at the living boy on the sand. Her left hand raised to her lips, shaking. The right moving to grasp the back of her neck, where tight ligature marks indented her skin and bruised her neck.

She thought hard, she remembered now why she had so walk these cold sands, alone for eternity. She remembered the note she left them, her husband and son, she remembered the knot she tied in the rope. She remembered the sound of a loud snap, followed by her vision fading to black, as though her pupils a sun, setting over the horizon, allowing night to paint itself across the sky.

She remembered nothing more right then as the boy stopped his loud sobbing, laying still in the sand. She knelt down once more and wrapped her secure arms around the boy, lifting him up and cradling him, whispering a gentle lullaby in his ear. The world faded again and her mind eased, spreading across the sea and floating away, each wave cascading over her eyes, washing away her tears.