My Dear Cyra

Stumbling backwards. Breaking through the glass, shards cutting into me, that sinking yet rising feeling as I fell. The ground is close, the painful end, and I can’t stop myself…

 

I wake up in a cold sweat, the dream fresh in my mind, the feeling of falling from such a height still there. Terror claws at my gut, and I have to breathe. I didn’t fall, it was just a dream. Just a dream.

My room feels too closed in, yet too exposed at the same time. I rush to the lightswitch, and turn it on.

My heart racing, I walk to the kitchen, hoping that a glass of water would cool my nerves. I fill a glass with water and take a sip. I still feel kinda nervous, anxious.

A scream pierced the uneasy silence. I drop the glass, and it shatters. I then realize which glass I was using.

This was her favorite cup, the one I got her on our last trip out of the country. Our last trip…

The cup was broken, broken beyond compare, just like my life, just like I picked up the pieces, the glass cutting my fingers. The pain kept my mind away from the dream, where it would have wandered otherwise.

I threw away the pieces, my mind numb with pain, with loss.I had a few hours before I had to go to work, so I went over the the living room, sat on the couch, and flipped on the tv.

Anything to take my mind off of her.

 

Darkness. The inside of a casket. I push up. The lid lifts, and soil fills what was empty space. I keep my eyes closed against the earth. Pushing through, I make it to the surface, pulling myself out of the grave. The moon lights the stones, and I can see the house from here.

That’s where I’m going.

 

I wake up. This time, there isn’t the terror, just unease. I feel like something’s watching me.

Too scared of what I might find, I just keep my eyes on what’s ahead of me. The feeling’s building as I go to turn on the light. I flip the switch.

The room remains dark.

I flip the switch on and off, again and again. Nothing changes, except my levels of panic. The rest of the house is even darker, so there’s no use leaving the room.

I feel a cool breeze against my back. Wait. The window shouldn’t be open.

I turn around, and there she is.

Her skin is deathly pale. Shadows the shade of bruises are under her eyes. Skin is stretched tight over a bony frame, and gnarled fingers stretch out towards me. Cuts trace her skin, bloody marks, ragged scars across the canvas that is her. She looks like what she is, a corpse.

 

But she’s still beautiful.

 

“Cyra,” I whisper, barely able to talk, tears pooling in my eyes.

Cyra stands before me. My wife.

She had died a year ago, when she had stumbled and fallen through the glass building where she worked.

And when she died, so had a part of me.

She walked towards me, reaching for me, her arms open. I rushed towards her, tears falling. I held her tight, burying my face in her dress.

Her nails traced my skin, leaving cuts, shedding blood. She bent her head down to my shoulder, burying her teeth into my flesh.

But I didn’t back away. I was tired of the dreams, the shaking, the constant emptiness without her. It wasn’t just the house that was empty. It was me. And I was ready to let go.

I didn’t wonder why she did this, or why she was here. I felt the blood draining out of me.

I grabbed the gun from off of the nearby table and lined my head up with hers, and pulled the trigger.

 

Now I will be with my dear Cyra, forever.