Sound Waves {the flash}

one

"A handful of moments I wished I could change. And a tongue like a nightmare that cut like a blade."

The lyrics flowing slowly through my earbuds tugged at my heartstrings, the familiar melody feeling as if it was the anthem of my life for the past three months. Even though I couldn't relate to the subject matter directly, I understood the emotions from which the lyrics were taken from. The song was written from a place of personal loss and pain, and it was scary how much I felt was translated into the heart-breaking song. Before her death, I'd always thought about delving into Izzy's music taste, but I'd never had the time to. The only time that I would ever have a chance to listen to her music was whenever she got to work before me and was playing it from her computer. I was glad that I had gotten around to it eventually, though. I never knew that the world of pop-punk could be so relatable and empathetic towards just about every kind of pain there was. Even though the majority of the songs were written about rebelling against conformity or angry heartbreak, the ones that I had liked the most dealt with the kind of pain and loss I'd felt for what felt like an eternity at this point, not only with Izzy but also with losing my mother at a young age and being in love with my best friend for basically my entire life.

I wasn't sure how I'd managed to survive the past three months. The first few weeks after her death, I was a complete and utter mess. I seldom left the house unless I had to go to work or there was a meta attacking the city. Even if I was going up against a meta, I didn't put much of my heart into it. I just caught the villain and put him in the Pipeline without much thought or care. I had had absolutely no drive to do anything, almost like my will to live had vanished into thin air. I didn't like who I was in those first few weeks, but I felt like there wasn't anything that I could do about how I felt. I was getting better the more time passed, though, but it was still hard. Adjusting to life without someone who had become such a big part of it was hard. Being at work was the hardest. I didn't like having to get used to working alone again, and that was when I found myself missing her the most. I missed being able to look over and see her mouthing the lyrics to whatever song was playing or seeing her eyebrows furrowed as she tried to analyze a fingerprint or DNA sample. I hadn't realized just how much I had idealized just about everything about her until I wasn't able to see her anymore. I tried my hardest not to think about it, but her memory haunted me.

I shifted on the mattress that I'd had since I was in high school, my back beginning to ache from lying in the same position for too long. I turned onto my left side, facing the curtains that had been drawn for weeks now and seeing the small stuffed wolf sitting near the edge of the bed. I hadn't told anyone but Joe that I'd taken the wolf from Izzy's apartment a few days after she'd passed. I thought that everyone would have thought that it was ridiculous of me to take a seemingly insignificant keepsake, and I was glad that Joe understood. It was too sentimental of an item of hers to be sold at an estate sale, and I didn't want to see something that meant so much to her given to someone who wouldn't care for it and appreciate it the way she had. I knew it sounded foolish to have so much protection over a stuffed animal, but I knew how much Izzy loved it. It was the only physical object she had to remember her family by, and I wanted to honor that even though she was gone. It also allowed me to still be linked with her even in the aftermath of her death. The smell of her perfume had almost completely left the stuffed animal, but, if I tried hard enough, I could still smell traces of it and remember her sweet scent.

I stared at the stuffed animal for a few minutes, feeling like I was staring at a person rather than an inanimate object. The placid, emotionless eyes seemed to reflect the torment swirling around inside of me, and it was strangely calming to stare at them. That only proved that I was slowly losing my mind from sleep deprivation. I still found myself screaming in the middle of the night because of the memory of holding her dying body, and I couldn't even remember the last time that I had gotten a good night's sleep. I hadn't reached the point where I was going to tell Caitlin about it because I didn't want to worry her, but I was getting very close to breaking. I knew that she of all people would come up with something that could help me sleep through the night, something that a normal therapist couldn't give me. Along with alcohol not affecting my body, medicine would only help for a matter of seconds before it was gone, my body absorbing the sedative at an accelerated rate. If I took any kind of prescribed sleep medication, it would take all of four hours for the medicine to be completely out of my system, and I would be haunted, yet again, by her ghostly memory. It was nice to be able to sleep for four hours, to be honest, but I needed something more than that.