not a kiss.
I can’t remember the last time I kissed him … but I can taste his blood in my mouth.
Chris with the cocoa-colored eyes and hair like silk on my skin. Chris with the lips, soft as falling feathers on a windy day …
Chris: the love of my life.
Chris: who is dead.
One minute we were laughing … or were we shouting? Discussing our plans for the day … although now I’ve forgotten what those plans were.
And the next … the next … we’re upside-down, strapped in our seats like a rollercoaster, only we can’t get off, we’re stuck, suspended in mid-air. The roof of my Buick becomes the sky. I’m mesmerized as it swirls like one of those psychedelic spinning tunnels, like they have at the county fair.
Oh, the fair. That’s where we were going, weren’t we?
Chris promised me a deep-fried Snickers bar.
And I promised him I’d stay sober.
Chris: The Love Of My Life and Chris: The Headless Man On The Seat Beside Me are one and the same.
This is my fault.
Chris is dead.
I did this.
I. Did. This.
***
I stopped answering my phone months ago, but that didn’t stop my sister from calling. Every day, at five past noon—a phantom phone call, followed by a buzzing barrage of texts.
Hannah is calling … read my phone screen.
But Hannah was always calling. And I, her less attractive, less successful, less stable sister, was always ignoring those calls.
As predicted, the texts came next:
Hannah: How are you today? Want to go out to lunch? Need me to stop by?
Translation: Are you alive? When are you going to do normal things again? Don’t tell me I need to come over there and drag you out of bed again.
Me: Busy. Can’t. No.
My sister is more than my sister. She practically raised me after the death of our mother.
I would love nothing more than to answer her calls, to have her beside me—but not this version of her. Not the sister that tiptoes around me like I’m a melting chunk of ice in the center of a deep, black sea.
I’m a sinking ship she wants to save … but she’s too afraid to come aboard. Because, deep down, she knows I’ll suck her into the murky black hole, too, just like I did with Chris.
Wiggling my jaw, I tried to ease the phantom tooth pains as I pulled myself out of my twin-sized bed. The sheets and comforter lay tangled at my feet. Angry red numbers blinked at me from the clock on my bedside table. It was 12:30 in the afternoon, the time when most normal people were working.
Everything hurt: my arms, legs, chest, and back. My teeth.
Traces of the dream still lingered and would stay there for most of the day, the way they always did.
My nightstand was covered in pill bottles. I twisted the caps off, one by one, and swiped out two pills of each. Pain pills. Anxiety meds. Leftover antibiotics. Another med to counter the side-effects of the first two. I washed them down with an ashy can of Mountain Dew. Grimaced.
Every night, the same thing: the car accident reenacted, but the details were always fuzzy, always evolving … whether the actual memories of that night were becoming lucid or more convoluted, was unclear.
I just wish they’d go away. Period.
It’s not that I don’t want to think about Chris. I miss him … I love him … but I can’t.
I can’t let myself go back to that place. I’m Hannah’s sinking ship, and Chris … well, Chris is mine.
No, dear husband, I will not come aboard.
Because if I do, if I let myself go there … that ship will suck me down, down, down, and never let me loose.
During my wakeful hours, I’d become an expert at burying my feelings. But these dreams—these warped flashbacks of the accident—were trying to remedy that all on their own. I could push away the memories and the horrors while I was awake, but when I closed my eyes … the dreaming side of myself took control. That side of myself wouldn’t allow me to forget, no matter how much I wanted to.
Maybe it’s payback for what I did.
Karma.
What goes around comes around—isn’t that how the saying goes?
For the rest of my life, will I have to relive those awful, ticking moments in that crushed-up Buick?
Of all the things about me that needed fixing, the sleep/dream issue was my priority. But my doctor wouldn’t prescribe sleep medication, or any other downers. They didn’t mix well with my other meds.
I want to be reassembled. Scrapped for parts. My memories wiped clean.
I padded down the hallway to the bathroom, leaving my buzzing phone behind. Without turning on the bathroom light, I began my lonely morning ritual in the dark—brushing my teeth, gargling mouthwash, combing the knots from my hair.
The dream snaked its way back into my brain while I brushed.
Cringing, I recalled the gummy taste of my own teeth. The teeth that I had initially—and strangely—believed to be my husband’s teeth.
I can still taste blood in my mouth. But whose blood is it?
It’s like sucking on a battery dipped in sugar.
Taking a deep breath, I flicked the light switch on before giving myself a chance to change my mind.
My toothbrush fell from my mouth, bouncing in the sink, as I studied my reflection in the bathroom mirror. No matter how many times I saw my face, I’d never get used to it now.
I look worse than the last time I checked.
It looked like someone was pinching my nose, the bridge a hard knot in the center of my face, the nostrils squished flat on both sides. The plastic surgeon had done the best possible job.
There’s only so much we can do, Camilla …
The skin on my nose
