Forgive Me Too

He sat with his head in his hands, leaning against the white concrete wall. The location was desolate, almost resembling a ghost town. It was broad daylight, no later than twelve noon. There wasn’t a car in motion, or parked on the street, for that matter. His clothes were ripped and torn from his collar to his ankles, which confused him. He couldn’t remember much of the night before, despite not tasting any residual alcohol on his breath. His head was ringing like the liberty bell, and his phone soon matched.

Digging in his pocket, he pulled it out and pressed the green answer button with his index finger, putting it against his tight beard. Before he could answer the call, he felt a stinging go up his arm, preventing him from doing so. The phone dropped to the pavement below, shattering the screen. As he bent down to pick it up, the pain now gone, he took in the sounds of what could only be described as a busy street. Car horns and mixed conversations flooded his senses, causing him to take a step back to the wall he had just risen from.

Looking around left to right, now shaking his head as if he was a dog fresh out of a lake, everything began to come into focus. The first thought in his mind was that maybe he was day dreaming, or something like it. Stuck in a fog of just waking up here, not fully coherent. It wouldn’t have been the first time his mind had pulled the wool over his eyes and told him it was night. Trying to knock the cobwebs loose once more, he sat back down and observed.

As he looked down and around him, he noticed a spread pile of green rocks beside him. He picked one up and held it towards the sunlight, inspecting it as if he’d be tested it on it later. Grabbing another, he compared the two, and it gave him a sharp squeezing pain in the middle of his arm. In his mind he was hearing voices in the distance but paid them no mind. He knew these rocks held a deeper meaning and was determined to dig it out of the recesses of his brain. All he could muster up was a feeling of regret, a deep sense of losing something or someone he loved.

He felt like a seaman trying to see the land beyond the fog, doing everything he possibly could to reach his destination. As memories came and went, clouded with the voices and everything in between, he conceded that he wasn’t in the best mindset to deduce anything but the feeling. He rose up and put a handful in his pockets. As soon as they hit the bottom of his blue jean pockets, he felt a sharp pain at the bottom of his legs that damn near dropped him to his knees.

Trying his best to put the pain behind him, he rose up and began walking towards the intersection, people walking forth and back like he didn’t exist. He was beginning to get frustrated and stopped at a parked white Cadillac Sedan and looked at the passenger window. He wasn’t a vampire, he saw himself in the reflection. Ripping off his black and white flannel overcoat and tossing it to the ground, he shouted and kicked his legs around like a toddler in the supermarket.

Nobody paid him any mind, which only fueled his rage more. In a way, it was like he was living a personal nightmare that he had already lived a dozen times over. Being ignored by those he gave the most to, thrown away like he didn’t matter, stepped on like a piece of dog shit in the hot sun, and his time wasted like a drunk on a Saturday night. Familiar territory, indeed.

He began to make a scene with pedestrians, screaming at them as they walked by, but to no avail. They just kept walking, as if he was nothing more than a gentle breeze. Confused and feeling completely alone, he walked over to a gorgeous blond girl sitting outside a café with a notepad, sketching away.

“Can I help you?”

He was taken aback by the fact that she not only spoke to him first, breaking contact with her art, but that she had noticed him.

“You can see me? I’m not losing my shit?”

She chuckled to herself and put her pencil back to the pad, “where is that voice coming from?” She began to look around and once more chuckled, pencil back to paper. “Of course, I can see you. They can’t. You hurt them.”

“Wh.. what the fuck does that mean? I hurt everybody in the world? I don’t even know these people.”

“Not everybody in the world. Everybody in your world.”

He pulled a chair beside her and asked, “do you mind?” In which she nodded that she would, in fact mind if he sat next to her.

“But, it’s not like I can stop you. Come on.” She cleared the area for him to sit comfortably as she explained his reality a bit further.

“So… you don’t know me? What you did to me? How you hurt me? Broke my heart?”

He sat back in the chair, eventually putting his head back in his hands, just as he had woken up. She patted his head, scratching his scalp.

“Hey, hey. Are you okay? I didn’t mean to…”

“Yes, I’m fine. I was just thinking back and trying to remember you or even how I hurt you. I’m sorry I just… I have no recollection of it. I know I could be asking a lot here, but can you help me along?”

He couldn’t exactly place why he felt the need to be understanding to her so much versus everybody else in his world who he had wronged, if she was to be believed.

“I can’t do that. You know why.”

“I don’t.”

“You do,” she said as she turned the sketchpad towards him, brandishing a picture of them both laying under a tree, the leaves dark green, the sky a fiery pink, the grass looking freshly cut. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the green stones he had dumped inside earlier and handed her one.

He reached for her hand and she pulled away gently, wrapping her soft arms around his neck, and whispered into his ear that he had to ‘do this alone.’ They walked across the street together, and she stood back as he approached an oak wood door. He pushed forward on the handle, took a deep breath and a step back toward her. She approached once more. They embraced for a minute, maybe even a minute and a half before she stood back once again, waiting for him to accept his fate.

He opened the door, and a bright light overcame him.

He yawned.

Feeling groggy eyed, he looked up at the ceiling. As he tried to raise his arms up to his face to wipe the cold out of his eyes, he realized he was strapped down to a gurney. The blond girl was behind a glass window pane with tears in her eyes. He couldn’t hear what she was saying but she was all he could focus on. She was mouthing the words, “I forgive you.”

His vision eventually pulled back, and he seen that he had more than a solo audience watching him.

The lady who owned the white Cadillac who didn’t acknowledge him was there. The old man who owned the café. The kid from down the street.

The warden stepped in and handed the leather pouch to a man who must have been the executioner. He put the kit on a metal tray beside him, his breathing picking up a bit more.

Everybody from his world, from his dream, that he had hurt was here to witness him take his final breath.

The only thing that came to mind was to look directly at the blond girl and mouth the words back to her.

“I forgive you too.”

A Butterfly In The Rain

When she rolled out of bed on this mid-June day, she knew something was off. Not in a bad, dreading what comes next kind of way, but in a ‘today is just different’ kind of way. It was half past noon and nothing too out of the ordinary had happened as of yet, but she kept her awareness at a ten.

Stepping out of her home, painted yellow and white equally, spoke more to who she was on the inside than how her house looked on the outside. The paint job was something that would fade over time, but what was in her was evergreen; forever lasting. Every thing in her life had meaning, whether unintentionally or force prescribed. It was just the way she was wired, and she never really questioned it. Rolling with the punches was one of the few things she was willing to give herself credit for.

If you were to ask her what the colors represented, the words would come gushing out like a waterfall that had just broken through an ice cold winter and gave way to spring. Yellow was the color of life, and she embodied it well. Doing what she loved on her terms and when she wanted to do it was her idea of living life to the fullest, and in the deep country side, who could tell her she was wrong? As the sunlight began to beam on her house, reflecting off the white, making it almost blinding to gaze at, her dog Alice trailed out behind her and into the colorful garden she had planted earlier this spring.

As a lover of all animals, outside of the mischievous raccoon's that would send her harvest to an early grave, she respected all living things. Alice, her coat as blonde as a pure German girl’s hair, rustled around the garden and open grass that was her very own fun park. As the dog roamed around, she reached for a note in her back pocket, kicked her white flip flops off and sat in the grass, spreading her feet through the cool, wet blades.

Unfolding the note that she’d read a dozen times before, but not for months since, a cloud overtook the sunlight, but passed through swiftly. Her dark hair became more gorgeous in the shade, truly accentuating the rest of her features. She always felt as if she wasn’t as pretty without makeup, no matter how many people would reassure her otherwise. One of the few women who possessed natural beauty, but refused to accept it. The breeze picked up, and so did Alice’s speed. Running back and forth, as if she was playing tag with herself from tree to tree.

Mackenzie chuckled to herself as she looked down at the note. This was the only thing she had left of Jackson’s, and she carried it with her every day. She had almost lost her job when she snapped on a kid for intentionally spilling water in her seat, causing her to dampen the note. The kid, who wasn’t really a kid at all, had apologized profusely for the act, and conceded he didn’t know of her keepsake. In turn, she admitted it could have been placed in a better spot than her back pocket, but it was what she felt comfortable with and was the only way she knew she’d never lose it.

Jackson was her world, and for him to have left the way he did brought her down every day. It was part of the reason she cherished Alice the way she did. Just as she got through the first line, which only bared her name, a butterfly landed on the top right corner of the outstretched, wrinkled paper. Holding the note steady in her left hand, she moved her right towards the butterfly, surrendering her index finger for it to balance on. The butterfly gave in, and slightly jumped from the page and on to her finger.

The butterfly lay still, allowing her to examine it’s colorful print. Like a scientist with a microscope, she etched out every detail in her mind, perhaps to draw it later on. She wasn’t much of an artist these days, but she was feeling inspired. Something she hadn’t felt since Jackson left. Getting lost in her mind and thoughts was something of a pastime for her, as she was ascribing meaning to each color and pattern. The blue signified her sadness of the day, the orange represented the brighter days to come, and the white was the eternal feeling of hopefulness.

She thought back to the day she painted this whole house, all by herself. How happy she was to do that, to feel like she accomplished something on her own, something meaningful. Alice was a puppy at the time, doing puppy things, getting her nose in the paint can and running wild through the grass and brush ahead of her. She tried to leave by the old adage that ‘hard times create hard people,’ but while you’re in the midst of it, it’s not as easy as you’re lead to believe.

Remarkably, the butterfly remained on her finger as she got lost in her thoughts. As soon as she snapped back to reality, it began to downpour. She let out a frustrated, “fuck!,” as the rain drenched her letter and made it unreadable, at least for now. Mackenzie scurried onto the porch to avoid the rain as Alice did the opposite, and relished in all of it for as long as she could. Mackenzie shook her head once on the enclosed porch, both in due to the fact that Jackson’s last remaining memory was destroyed by mother nature, and the fact that she’d have to dry off Alice whenever she decided she had her fill.

Twisting the door knob open, she stepped through her doorway once more, turning back to see the butterfly clinging to her wooden porch rail, right by her white azalea patch. She stopped dead in her tracks for a second, thinking back. Those were the flowers that Jackson had planted.

She let out a deep sigh, and slammed her back against her sponge painted tan wall, and slid down like a limp towel, eventually into a crouching position. Note still in hand, she unfolded it once more, tears rolling down her face, knowing that this was the last thing she’d ever own of his. She couldn’t believe what was running through her mind, if she were to vocalize it to another living person, they’d most certainly have her committed.

They were thoughts of being with Jackson once more, but not in the way that she’d harm herself. She never would, no matter how bad things got. She never once believed, or even thought about reincarnation in her life, but she genuinely believed that if this butterfly was not Jackson, it was a messenger for him.

With the door still open, the butterfly pranced by her, everntually stopping and landing on her stove only one room away. She dried her eyes and sniffled briefly before raising up to her feet, and awalked gently towards it. She let out a whimpering, “If this is you, please show me,” before tearing up some more. The butterfly remained on the turn dial of the stove.

She thought to herself that maybe it was telling her to try to dry the letter out, so she placed it a foot or so above the flame, as not to burn it. The ink was faded outside of a few words, and as fate would have it, they were meaningful ones. She wondered if he had pressed hard with the pen when he wrote these words. As she read them aloud, the formed a coherent sentence.

As she read left to right, top to bottom, the sentence became clear.

“You. Found me. There. I left you. Forever,

- Jackson”

Stepping outside once more, Alice finally on the porch, having had enough of the rain storm, the words washed over her like the water itself. She pieced together his final puzzle, which was his trademark. He’d love to play games, joke around and give her riddles. She was disappointed that it took her two fucking years to solve the last one he’d ever leave.

She stepped forward, to the garage, sliding the door open where she had indeed found him, breathless so many years ago. She’d been alone since, trying to fix herself. As she looked upwards, to the beam in which she had found him, she saw not only the butterfly, but three white roses, and two teddy bears.

Surprisingly enough, the roses looked as fresh as could be, as if they were picked today. She scooped up both the teddy bears and the roses and retreated inside and up the stairs into a room with a view of her sprawling land outside of the window. Mackenzie dug into a closet and pulled out an easel and a canvas, tears in her eyes, pulling a chair up as well after setting up the art stand.

She began painting the butterfly whom she believed to be Jason, as Alice came in beside her and nuzzled her leg.

For the first time in years, she was whole again.

A Life In Pictures

The gloomy fall day was a perfect indicator for how she felt on the inside. Some saw beauty in the falling leaves, the ever changing scenery, a soft breeze that felt like a cold kiss on the cheek. Others couldn’t understand why anyone would consider it to be their favorite season. As it turned out, autumn and Evangeline had more in common than she thought.

She stepped inside the old Victorian house that she called home, and gently closed the door behind her. The door latched closed behind her, placing her white leather purse on the oak dining room table. The marble floors screamed success, and the walls brandished dozens of self made portraits. She never believed she was talented enough to sell them, so she created her own personal art gallery.

She was a gorgeous girl, mid-twenties standing five foot even with flowing blonde hair that danced on her shoulders with the slightest burst of wind. A friend of hers would always say she was a handful, making a joke about her small stature. Once, she hinted at him being correct, remarking that it depended whose palm was holding her.

Perhaps it was more about her wanting to open up about every horrible thing she’d been through, and by the same token, what she had put herself through. Undoubtedly rough on herself, like a tour through boot camp, except the drill instructor was none other than Evangeline. All she wanted in this life was to feel safe, and she was unsure why she wasn’t happy with what she had now.

If she had to describe herself, she’d liken herself to someone who colored outside the lines. She knew she was talented, special and destined for something bigger than whatever this was, but it was hard not to dwell on the past at times. It was for this reason that she kept a shoe box of photographs that she’d dig into for whenever she felt like the gray sky she glanced at through the window.

As she strolled through the living room and towards a door off to the left, next to her entertainment stand, she pushed the door open and quickly closed it behind her. The walls were decorated with all kinds of flowers. Art made from roses, tulips, violets. It was her own personal space away from everything that could possibly bring her down. Part of the reason she chose to put flowers all over the walls was because she felt that it was the one thing she could never draw as she wanted. It bothered her, but she was beginning to understand that she loved her imperfections.

They were important.

For everybody treats the girl who seems perfect as exactly that, and nobody took the time to get to know the real her. She was more than just a pretty girl, she was layered, with hidden depths that ran as deep as the vacation coves you see on television. The ones that would be exclusively explored with a film crew and a million dollar budget. There were only a handful of people who cared enough to actually know that.

“That word again,” she thought to herself and chuckled. Handful. She never thought a word - that word would encapsulate everything she was and is so nicely. It felt like it wrapped her in a bow and put her under the tree.

Reaching for a stepping stool, she placed it down and stepped n top of it, grabbing for the shoebox. She pulled it down and sat down on the stool, placing the box in her lap. As she took the lid off and placed it next to her on the floor, she pulled out a stack of photographs from behind a white cardboard divider. Thumbing through them, her emotions were mixed. Some of these memories were great, things she never wanted to forget. Things that changed her forever, and nights that she had since forgotten.

A smile overcame her when she found a picture of who she still believed was her first and only true love. She still blamed herself, but began to accept it more knowing that he was happy. She always had a different outlook on love than most, but she knew for a fact that if you really cared about somebody, all you want is them to be happy. He was, and she took solace in this.

One photo after another, being placed behind the next. Next was a picture of her and a group of friends hanging around a campfire. She wrote on the back, Florida, 2014. She missed her friends, and she often felt alone, but she knew it was vital to be accepting of yourself before you could ever be accepting of anyone else.

Evangeline placed the pictures back in the box and reached from the other side of the divider. Again, taking out a handful of pictures, she had them in her hands and began to cry. Tears streamed down her face and onto the pictures, causing her to let out a muffled, “fuck.” before wiping her eyes and standing up, doing a quick pace around the room.

She sifted through one more time, the first photo being her old style Victorian house with a glowing green lawn, and sunflowers planted in her garden out front. The next, was Evangeline, in her backyard, playing with her daughter as her husband cooked on the grill. A massive above ground pool was seen in the near distance.

She began tearing up once more, and decided this was enough for today. She put the photos back in the box, and flipped over the divider card face up. It read, “The Future I Want, by Evangeline Carter.”