Weird little thing. I’ll level with you all–this was born out of me having writer’s block for the past few days, going, “Oh, to heck with it,” and using Squibler’s Plot Generator with Dangerous Mode turned on (where if you stop writing everything is erased). As such, it’s a bit of a hot mess, but hey, I got out of my rut for now and managed to write a surprising bit in a short span.
The pink glove lay on the ground, almost covered in snow. I look at it with something like despair, but not surprise. I knew that this would happen from the second that I let her go out that night. Some sick part of me might have even hoped for it.
She probably hoped with equal measure that I would come after her. That I wouldn’t let the spirits steal her away. They always leave a little calling card like this. It isn’t always clothing, though I wish that it was. Sometimes it’s a piece of hair, sometimes something that really shouldn’t be cut off. A finger, a toe…
I’m glad that the last piece of her I have isn’t gruesome, though it doesn’t feel appropriately terrible.
The snow buffets the empty street and the apartment buildings and the sandwich shop that looks like it’s been closed for years. And me. It feels like it’s mostly lambasting me. Chastising me for still not picking it up. If I touch it, if I extract it from where the snow has started to melt and refreeze over it, I will admit that she’s gone. That I hadn’t stopped her from going out without so much as a dinky little talisman to protect her.
Did I want something bad to happen to her? I don’t think I did, after all, I had told her to take her coat with her when I left. That has to count for something. I didn’t want her to suffer out here. Or at least, I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable.
It was just breaking up. It wasn’t supposed to be a death sentence. I didn’t know she loved me enough to do something so stupid.
No. It wasn’t love. The thing that had broken us up was her obsession. She wore these gloves and that matching stupid beanie hat because she knew that I liked them. She wore them because she wanted attention. Maybe she thought that if I saw her put them on as she was shouting I would see them as the neon warning signs that they were. WARNING, DANGER, CLIFF.
Does it matter anymore what she intended now that she’s gone?
I pick up the sodden glove. It drips half-melted snow crystals the longer I hold it in my grasp. I debate pocketing it or putting it in the trash. I wonder how long it will take for them to come for me, too. I wonder what they’ll leave. I don’t want any of what I’m wearing to define me; snow-ruined slippers, pajama bottoms, extremely worn shirt with my alma mater (it was that or the faded Spongebob tee and I am NOT standing for that being the part of me left behind).
I should be crying, shouldn’t I? With sadness for her or for myself. But she’s been dead/disappeared/whatever from my life for a while now. It would be like mourning fog.
The glove drops from my hand and back to the snow like a limp carcass. I don’t step on it as I walk away, but I think about it.
Leave a Reply