The day was bright. The way sunlight spotlights strangers sitting outside coffee shops. Leaves catching the rays that make flowers welcome the warmth with beckoning petal embraces. It was a day like others, and yet one of a kind.
Today.
Today was the day I buried a known stranger.
The kind of person that was a close as my shadow, but I couldn’t tell you her name. Not anymore. If only Peter Pan’s Wendy had sown her to the soles of my feet when we were children.
I had an umbrella under my arm as I walked, unwilling to drive there and make the journey meaningless. It was a long walk. One I had started early and hoped would never end.
Memories both tried to swarm my mind and squash themselves into boxes to be shoved out of sight. A giddy experience that left an odd expression plastered on my face. The feeling akin to waterlogged mascara or stepping in water wearing only socks. Uncomfortable, annoying, frustrated, sad. And a little angry.
I neared one of the city’s many cemeteries, moving towards a slight incline to watch for the invited. The few people in attendance shuffle into a defeated mob. Dressed in black, they appeared more like skyrise buildings at nightfall then people. Distant creatures, dry eyed as they muttered among themselves.
I imagined rushing down towards them, scattering them like pigeons. I wondered who they were, huddled in coats and pretty black frocks with heels. Pretty little wax people. My stranger’s parents were old, holding onto each other as though their combined weight kept them on the ground. One blow and they would be off spinning into the atmosphere. My forbidden memories whispered the satisfaction I would feel giving them the same pain they inflicted onto my stranger. The same disgusted, dismissive look that haunted me decades later. Would they recognize the child within me?
I realized I was squatting on the grass, gazing down at them like a spray-painted gargoyle. Standing, I opened my umbrella and watched the hearse rumble into view. The father detached himself from his wife, transporting her veined hands to his other daughter. Together with his son and four others they carried the coffin. From the look of their clothes, they were funeral parlour men. My legs itched to run down the hill, begging to be by her side again.
One last time.
But I watched and spun my umbrella, the golden fabric catching the light. I watched as they lowered her. I would farewell her with beauty, with light, with colour. My shadow, my stranger who spent so much time dwelling in the dark – I would send her off with the colour of her cheeks, the gold of her hair, the blue of her eyes.
She had untethered from me. She had run with the smoke and the chill, chasing shadows and grasping at silhouettes. She had left my light and become a stranger. The close I drew to her, the more she had faded. Until there was nothing holding us together but a feeling and a wish.
No one talks about how light can burn.
The people collected flowers and moved to place them on her, on my stranger. A man with a white collar talked. Women pulled out fabric to dab at their makeup. Then like autumn leaves they flowed back to the cars, leaving the casket to make it’s burying appointment alone.
I moved a foot.
And then another. The umbrella was left in the grass as I first walked and then threw myself towards my stranger.
Funeral workers stopped at my presence, drawing away a safe distance from the rainbow-colored demon hurtling towards them. Falling to my knees I peered into the hole, looking down at the flowers scattered across the embossed surface.
“Pull it up.” I said harshly.
“Ah, well…”
I turned to stare at the two men looking at me, fear dancing in their eyes. “Now.”
They moved into action, slowly cranking the contraption. The casket rose, the flowers falling into the hole like fake compliments. I watched it. Fixated. Angry. Scared. Frustrated.
It rose to my eye level, my body rising with it.
“Listen.” I said, “you will bury it after this. And you will never speak of who is in here. Human or demon. Spector or spirit.”
With aching fingers, I lifted the lid, hands hovering over the fabric inside. I traced her cheeks with shaking fingers, leaving silver lines where we made contact.
I was never taught how to save someone from themselves. I had failed her at the moment she failed herself. Had she known that it was me who had planted those flowers by her apartment, maybe she would have felt less alone. I had placed people around her who would love her -if only she chose them. I had made a stranger pass her by in the gutter just as she lost consciousness.
I had dialed 911. I had laid beside her as the paramedics clambered around her like ants. But we could not save her from herself. She did not want us to.
She wanted to leave. Sometimes marathons never get to see the finish line. But I could not allow her to go where she had a ticket to.
So.
I traced my finger down her nose, through her badly dyed hair. Finally, I wiped my fingers across her eyes, watching them flutter. She looked up at me, her peaceful mouth curving into a question. Her grey skin filling with silver power, her hair returning to golden curls.
“We are granted one soul to take.” I told her through tears, “one soul to join the ranks of guardian. Take joy in death as I could not give you in life.”
I waited for her to yell at me. To scream. To cry. I took away her chosen ending. Slowly she blinked up at me, resting a gentle hand against my cheek.
“Thankyou.” Was all she said.
Together we walked away from her body, retrieving my umbrella.
“Let’s go stranger.” She said. Then, taking my hand she smiled up at me with the grin of her childhood. She smiled at me.
There I realized as our next assignment appeared on the inside of my umbrella.
I was home.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
