Reasons to Live - a collection of flash fiction stories

Just Like Heaven

Classical music filled the air around her. In her room, with her headphones on, she was alone, truly alone but not in the way that frightened her. Her eyes closed, her index rose and began to conduct the imaginary orchestra, to the notes, the sound of Pachelbel's Canon. Behind sleep deprived lids, shaded with whispers of too much drink, the violins soared and flew away on the coat-tails of magpies. 

One for sorrow, one for joy--

Sera!

They say green eyes boast an insanity. Some people whisper of those with emerald stains having been created by the hand of some lunatic. Sera's snapped open, they were as bright as chartreuse set ablaze.

                                              * * * 

"Come on." Sera stepped over the tall weeds, onto one of the rocks. She felt her toe slip and outstretched her arms to steady herself. The water underneath her did not look so pleasing right now.

"Woah, Nellie! Don't fall now. Doubt you'd look any good with seaweed coming out of your ears." Her cousin's teasing laughter followed her. Sera furrowed her brows and flipped her the bird.

Sera and Heaven had been born three hours apart, their mothers were sisters and the two girls had been raised a couple houses away from each other. Both with sickly pale skin, they had been worried over by over-protective mothers. Sera remembered being rushed from exam to exam to terrifying blood test. 

No! Mommy! Tell him to take that needle away from my finger. 

Prick. 

All those doctors had been pricks, beasts, boogie-men, least in the eyes of a scared four-year old who later learnt of colourful things to call them.

Sera looked at her cousin, it was almost like seeing her own face. The same smile smiled back, the same dark hair was tossed over shoulders. The same love for the violin and the same secrets were shared under whispered caves made out of blankets. Even their eyes were the same, the only two relatives born with that bright shade of green. "You would be quicker if you shut it." Sera frowned, but she could not stay long at her beloved cousin for too long.

The love for Heaven had been instant, Sera would swear that she had fallen in love with her younger relative the moment she had laid eyes on her, just days old. People would laugh if she was to ever tell them that, everyone but Heaven. Heaven did not have a rotten heart, not a single bad drop of blood flowed through her veins. Even when Heaven had sliced her wrists open one warm summer's night, and made Sera watch the droplets fall onto the ground, even then Sera believed that it was her cousin's way of merely showing that she, too, sometimes loved so much she ached. 

"Sera, look at what I have done."

Sera had watched as the knife drew blood, at the way skin began to weep vermilion. She crawled to Heaven and pulled her close, as they sat on the floor of Sera's childhood room.

She remembered how Heaven had looked up at her and gently smiled, "We're all mad here, Sera. The whole world is insane." Sera closed her eyes and remembered the burn of green. "Don't ever forget that."

                                           * * *

The air was hot, it made the hairs on her arm stick to her skin. The cove was not too far away, they had been there many times before. What would be better than a quiet afternoon basking in the sun and diving under the surf?

"Not another word." Heaven pretended to zip her lip, then muttered, "Can't move too quick, dummy. I have two bottles of wine in my backpack. If I slip-"

"You won't f*cking slip. Now get a move on it."

                                               * * *

"Impossible? What's impossible? People say that this is impossible, but I'm sure that they thought that going to outer space was impossible. Perhaps it would have been if people had stopped reaching for the stars. We think that impossible is our fate." Her hand reached for the bottle, grabbed it by its neck so hard it looked as though she wanted to choke the life out of it. "It's just a word." The bottle smashed against the rocks and the rest of the wine bled over glass and stone till it turned the water red.

                                             * * *

She shivered, her teeth clattered. The blanket one of the men had tossed over her shoulders did little to numb the chill or the fear. It had been four hours and fifteen minutes. The sun had still been high in the sky then, now it lay before the horizons, strands fanning out dark like hers had.

She watched the boats come and go. The lights shone into the water. Voices sounded like the buzzing of bees. No one made any sense, not till someone told her that her body had been found.

The pleasant buzz she had felt before now just caged her thoughts. She wanted to think clearly! 'I'm sorry,' a gentle voice drifted to her ear. A perfumed hand rested on her shoulders. She wanted to shove it off, to scream at them and tell them they were wrong!

'Nothing is impossible, darling. Not if you want it badly enough. Now watch me Sera. The rocks will break my fall. I'm too full of wine to feel the pain.'

It was just like Heaven to believe those words, to live by them. Hell, they were her hymn, singing it loud and clear every Sunday.

Rewind. Let's go back to a place and time, anywhere, before this, anywhere! Back to even the dullest of times. I don't care. This can't-

The sound of sirens scream in her ear but beyond them she can hear the whisper echoing in her ear, "Sera, look at what I have done." 

© Christine Bottas. All rights reserved 2015-2016.