Amy Isn't Dead!

I could hear the clock clicking as I tried to organize my chaotic cabin in the office.  I hadn’t stepped out of it since two days. There were bright chances of me missing the last train home, but I couldn’t care less. My lonesome apartment still smelled so new and empty, the blank walls stared at me with sad eyes, and I could hear the silence in every corner of the house. Therefore, I took my time to finish off the work on my dusty demanding desk as the raindrops tap-danced on my windowpane.

It was after midnight, when I finally finished fiddling with my desire of not going back home and headed out of the building where my office was.   I knew home was far away, and walking alone would take longer than eternity.  Being a brand new widower, I was still mourning her depressing death. Working helped me keep her tormenting thoughts away, but her memories came rushing back to me the minute I would be all by myself.  I’d left the city in which we’d first met, fallen in love and created our own little world. Nevertheless, her thoughts were still as fresh to me as the smell of rain. Her demise depressed me dreadfully. Thinking about her killed me a million times a day, and yet, I deliberately thought of her.  Doing so, did something strange, but special to me.

“Three months! Three months are more than enough to forget a person, Ryan.” I finally heard her talking to me.  I was getting lost in the world of illusion. A wonderful world where she talked to me, fought with me, scolded me, made me laugh (sometimes cry). The world where she wasn’t dead, where I wasn’t dead. Our world- Amy and Ryan’s world.

“ I don’t want to forget you, I’m happy living this way.” I said in hushes, hoping no one heard me speak to myself.

“Living? You call this a life. When was the last time you went out with your friends? Or called any of your relatives up? Or watched the game? Or trimmed your beard for that matter.”  She yelled at the top of her lungs. My sloppiness always inflamed her temper. She could’ve killed me, had she been alive.

“Ryan, my love, what’s gone is gone. I’m just hazy history now. You can’t stop living just because your wife died?” She said leaning towards me.  I knew she was delusional, but her image still smelled of my Amy.

“You know just how much I hate the word ‘dead’. The dead don’t frown like you, or smile the way you smile. They don’t come back to the ones alive, every night. The dead definitely don’t talk, Amy. And you talk to me, all the bloody time.”  I held her by her slender shoulders, a part of me knowing I was resting my hands in the air.  “I don’t care if the world can’t see you, I know you’re there.  I feel you around me, in me, all the time.” I held her hands. Her fingers as light as snow, as soft as silk.

“You’re losing it, my friend. You’re going crazy. You’re trying to find life in the dead. No matter what you do, and how hard you try you cannot deny the fact that I’m no more. I’m dead, Ryan. DEAD! I’m a lie that you keep telling yourself, to make life easier. But that’s not how things work, I’m not coming back, live with it and stop drowning yourself in misery.”  She hyperventilated.

“I’m not miserable.” I murmured. 

“I’m not real, Ryan.  I might exist in your head, and your heart, but I don’t in your world. The sooner you accept it, the better it is. I’ll be there for you like I’ve always been but you need to stop hallucinating. You cannot live by a myth. You have to move on.  You can’t drown yourself in work and disconnect yourself with the rest of the world.  Go out, live life like it’s meant to be lived. Meet your friends, meet new people, and make new friends. Be the Ryan that you are. “She looked tired of repeating herself.

She hadn’t said anything that I hadn’t heard before. ‘Meet new people’, was all I’d heard my near and dear ones say ever since she’d passed away.  But coming from Amy, it sounded like I’d finally been given the permission to move on. For the first time in three months, I felt it might be the last time I’d see her.

“I need to go now.” She said as the clouds above me roared in anger.  “I don’t think I’ll be coming back soon. But I’ll always be by your side, I promise.” She came closer to me and smoothly slid into my arms. Ironically, Her skin was as cold as that of a dead body.

“Don’t go.” Was all I managed to whisper.

“I have to. I love you, Ryan. I always will.” I closed my eyes as I held the wind in my arms.

“I love you. Amy.”

The wind made the trees around us rock wildly. The stars in the sky seemed to have gone back to sleep under the blanket of black clouds. She stood still in my arms for a while and then within a split second, she was gone. The rain shook me to life; I opened my eyes to find myself standing on the long lonely road. Except, it wasn’t all that lonely any more, I knew she was next to me. She’d promised, she’ll always be.