Body Swap Sequel: Remember me

Homecoming

(I'VE ADDED A SONG/YOUTUBEVIDEO INTO THE RIGHT SIDE OF THIS PAGE. Do feel free to listen to it while you read this chapter :))

I was in hell again. Or… heaven. Whatever it was. The white walls were back, as were the beeping noises and the quiet conversations of people around me. The person who greeted me this time was wearing the same white, button up coat but this time it was a man. For the record, it wasn’t Jesus.

He explained to me that I was in hospital after a failed suicide attempt. It was just my luck that every time I try to leave this god damned Earth, somebody had to pull me right back in. Next time I’d just take a fu.cking knife and shove it through my heart. I doubt that I would have felt anything anyway, since there was nothing left in me to feel pain. I couldn’t feel anything anymore.

After I was discharged from the hospital, I was escorted to a mental health facility by an overly emotional mother and an extremely disgruntled father. They dropped me off there with promises of visiting me every day, before being ushered out by the doctor at the mental ward. I was kind of glad to be rid of them.

For the first time since I’d lost Hailey, I finally felt a sense of relief. Being in there meant that I didn’t have to try to live a normal life anymore, and no-one expected anything of me. I still couldn’t feel happiness, but the weight pushing down on me didn’t feel so heavy anymore. It was still there – it always would be – but I could ignore it now that I had peace and quiet. There was no annoying mother forcing me to stomach three disgusting meals a day. There was no irritating football manager threatening to sue me for breaking my contract with him. There was just silence, and it gave me peace of mind.

*

I was at the ward for four bland months. I met a girl while I was there – Allison. She’d just lost her mother in a car accident. There wasn’t much that we wanted to talk about, and for the first time in a long time, I actually felt glad. She understood what I needed. She was similar to me. We would both sit in silence looking up at the clouds through the barred window and not say anything.

Alyssa, as she liked to be called, didn’t want to talk about the way she felt after the car accident. But when she looked at me, her eyes told me everything I needed to know. So that was how we became acquaintances. We’d always get up in the morning, go into the common room, nod at each other and say our hello’s through a look, before sitting down on the comfortable old sofa near the window and just stare out for as long as we wanted to. It was nice to have someone there, even if it wasn’t communicable.

On the day that I left, I went to see her in her room. She still had a week left there, and a part of me was slightly sad that I had to leave her. She provided a sense of comfort that my parents failed to give me. She had been looking outside her window at the green field beyond the ward, when I walked into the room. She didn’t turn around, but her finger twitched slightly to let me know that she knew I was there. I walked up to Alyssa and stood beside her. I wasn’t expecting her to turn around and greet me. Being next to her was greeting enough.

I finally tore my eyes away from the green gardens outside and turned to look at her. Alyssa ignored my gaze as she continued to stare outside for a long time, before eventually turning to glance at me. I planned on telling her that I was leaving through words, but it was as if she already knew.

At first my face felt painful as my lips stretched, before I realized that I was slowly beginning to smile at her. The muscles in my face ached after not being used for so long, but it was a smile that I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. I offered her the smile as a way of showing my sincerest gratitude for her company while I was here. She kept me sane in a place designed for the insane, and she was always a comforting presence, constantly at my side, never giving up on me. I remember the first time I refused to eat dinner at the ward. The nurses eventually cleared away the table, but left my plate in front of me in case I changed my mind. Alyssa had finished her plate and she watched as the other patients got up and left the table. After a while, it was only her and I at the table. I watched her, wondering why she wasn’t leaving. She simply sat there, looking down at the table, without bothering to get up. It took me a while to understand why she was there. She was waiting for me to finish my meal, and I realized that she wouldn’t leave until I ate my dinner. I would have been annoyed at her tactics, had I not been so surprised by her kindness.

She was the reason that I ate my first proper meal since Hailey passed away. She was the reason that I came to accept that Hailey had actually passed away, and had not just gone missing. Being at this facility helped in unimaginable ways and it was all thanks to her.

So there I stood, smiling at her as a thank you for everything she’d done for me. I was expecting her to raise her eyebrows at the abnormal sight of me smiling, but she did no such thing. It was comforting to know that she didn’t think it was weird, that she accepted it – that she accepted me. Without saying a word, Alyssa stepped towards me and wrapped her arms around me. This was her goodbye to me.

*

Once I returned home, I found it weird to walk back into my room – or at least the spare bedroom that I lived in after Hailey passed. That was 11 months ago. I couldn’t quite believe that it had been almost a year. It still felt like the time hadn’t passed at all. I didn’t feel like I was in a constant state of changing anymore, because Alyssa had helped me to finally get a grip of the world around me. But time – that was still a concept that seemed foreign to me. I could sit in the same spot beside the window with Alyssa for hours and not notice that dusk had fallen.

“Colton, could you come down here?” My mother’s voice was hoarse as she called me. I walked downstairs slowly and noticed that both she and my father were sitting at the dining table. She had cooked a large meal for all three of us, and for the first time I felt guilty for how I’d treated her. The guilt shocked me. I hadn’t taken the time to think about how much Alyssa had changed me emotionally. For a start – she made me feel much more than I was capable of when I was first taken to that institute. I was suddenly very scared that I would begin feeling again and that I would have to live with the torturous heartbreak, but I ignored the terrifying thoughts and decided to sit down with them anyway. The meal passed less painfully than the previous meals I’d had with them. I even engaged in occasional small talk. It might not have been much, but it was a huge improvement from the times when I would leave the dinner table without a word, my plate still untouched.

As we finished our meal, there was a knock on the door. My mother frowned slightly as the atmosphere in the room changed. We knew who it was. Jonathan – my football manager – probably here to harass me into rejoining the team. 

“We should really get a restraining order on that guy,” my father muttered, getting up to go and open the door. My mother and I both got up in order to brace ourselves for the impending argument. I followed her into the living room as my father pulled open the door aggressively.

I’m not sure what happened at that moment. I wasn’t sure whether the mental ward had made me completely insane, or whether I was so desperately hopeless that I had begun hallucinating again. Because, standing on my front porch, was Hailey Bridge. 

(...yep. I believe the words you're looking for are "holy sh.itcakes, that b.tch is back!" :P) 

CHAPTER CHALLENGE: Get this story to 1000 reads!