3:50 PM

 

I tip the glass over and watch it fall from the table. Slow motion splashes of water catching light in rainbow prisms. The crash of the glass amplified, screaming destruction and jagged edges.

 

 

And so I wait for her. She is always leaving glasses on the edges of counter-tops, so close to falling. I hear her coming and press myself into the corner.

 

There she is, rushing down the hall, her tousled ponytail coming loose, framing her face with wisps of light brown that match her eyes. Her foot steps down, naked and quick. Her face distracted by the rush of the clock. 3:35 PM. She is late, so very late.

 

She didn’t hear the glass breaking or see it falling in front of her. She squeals in pain, withdrawing a toe doused in red, splashes of the same pooling beneath her upraised foot.

 

I watch as she sits down hard in a nearby chair. Her face scrunched in that familiar grimace of pain as she looks down at her foot. She doesn’t look at me as I stare at the way the pain traces lines in her face. She mumbles under her breath about stupid shoes and stupid socks as she limps towards the bathroom to nurse her wound.

 

3:40 PM. I did it!

 

She will be late leaving the house. The truck will pass the intersection without incident. She won’t be there at 3:50 PM. Not this time. The nightmare I’ve been living over and over will end. I see it when I close my eyes. Even now as the events are set in motion to change. I see it happen.

 

3:50 PM. The truck, large and blue, runs the red light. There is no warning, no screech of brakes, no horn to call out. Just the thud and rip of time as it slams into the side of her five-star safety rated SUV. It was supposed to be the best that money could buy. Something to protect her and her children everywhere they needed to go. It didn’t protect her that day.

 

But maybe it’s all her fault. The seat belt latch was broken and had been broken for weeks. She kept putting it off, always the procrastinator. Putting it off because she hated car repair shops and her husband couldn’t find the time to bring it in either. If only they had taken it more seriously. It all could have been so different.

 

She felt her body press into the strap across her chest followed by a sudden release of tension as the latch gave way. Her body flew through the window. The glass shattered into cubes that caught in her eyelashes and stabbed into her skin. She was bewildered and equally terrified at the weightless feeling of her body as it flew before gravity took hold slamming her down on the asphalt. Her neck broke like dry pasta. An image spun crazily in her head of her mother coming home from the grocery store, snapping the long noodles in half before she placed them in a jar. It sounded just like that. Her neck crunched and shattered, leaving her entire body numb.

 

I see it all as I look over the scene. As I’m staring down, I realize that the crumbled broken body is my own. There is no way to describe the realization of being dead. No way to comprehend how it feels to watch as blood creates a massive pool of dynamic red around your own head. There is no way to comprehend the way it seeps into the blackness of the road as if it was hungry to see how I taste.

 

And even now, as I realize that I have done it, that I have changed the future… I cannot describe this feeling. Is it hope? Is it joy? Is it anticipation? I don’t know.

 

I only know one thing.

 

I am not going to die.

 

The clock keeps ticking down the time, the moment of my death is close at hand. I watch myself examining my own wounded foot. I can almost feel the pain, but the fact that I have lost connection to my physical body makes it impossible for me to actually experience it. I can only wait, watching myself clean and bandage the long cut on the pad of my foot. My physical lips mumble incessantly. I didn’t realize that I talked to myself so much.

 

It’s 3:45 PM. I watch myself gingerly put on my socks and shoes and make the painful slow walk to the car. Excitement is building now. It will be happening soon. My consciousness will resume ownership of that body. I am not dying today. I will not stay a ghost.

 

I’m ready.

 

And so I wait with painful agony. I just want to forget the last few weeks. Forget waking up to see myself dead. Waking up to the lights and sirens as they came to save what was already lost. Forget the wispy feeling of my own soul as it anchored to this new, shimmering, translucent form. Forget the last few weeks of torture, trying to figure out what it is I am doing.

 

I never want to remember how, for what seems like eternity, I’ve been watching the last few days of my life repeat themselves over and over. I watch from the corners of the room as I go through the motions. As I watch myself kiss my children goodnight for the last time. I stare sadly as my body hugs my husband lightly without knowing I will never have the chance again. I have been stuck in this loop and I’m finally going to break it. I’m going to get my life back. I will be inside of my body again!

 

So I get in the passenger seat, invisible and clenching onto the armrests with my useless translucent hands. It’s almost time! We’re just a few moments from the dreadful intersection. The light is green. No accidents. I stare with intensity at the clock. 3:50 has passed. The time of my death is behind me. It is now 4:00 and the truck has been here and gone.

 

It will happen now! It has to happen now!

 

I close my eyes as we pass through the intersection. I imagine it being like a veil or a door that will lead me back to the world of the living.

 

I don’t feel any different.

 

I thought there would be some sort of sensation. A tingling perhaps? Maybe a burning? A sound of ripping fabric? Even the pulse of my blood and the sound of air entering my lungs.

But… there is nothing.

 

I open my eyes and look at the clock.

 

4:15 PM

 

 

The children are in the car.

They talk of their day, loud voices in chaotic unison. My body smiles at them from the rear-view, my voice reminds them to buckle up. But… that’s not me. I’m still staring at it happen from the outside. I’m still in this second body watching my real form check the rear view mirror and back out of the parking spot.

 

This isn’t right! I should be alive again! I never died! 3:50 passed and it is time for me to live again! I changed it! He said I could change it!

 

I feel my body slip from the car as it turns down the road.

I stay in the parking spot, hovering over the ground, my legs still bent as if I’m sitting. I’m not bound by gravity or any of the limitations that the living are. No, not anymore.

 

I’m still dead and I can float if I want to.

 

There’s lots of thing I can choose to do as a ghost. I can pass through walls, furniture, even people themselves. I can be anywhere I choose in the blink of an eye. I don’t eat or sleep or need anything to survive. But, I thought I was going to leave this behind.

 

I’m still dead and now I don’t know what to do with myself. But I do know who to blame.

 

Marco of the deep purple eyes. He lied to me. And with the van driving out of sight, I think of him. Sitting in his tall black leather chair. Staring at me from behind his steepled fingertips. He said that time was merely a formality. I could change it all and get back what I had lost.

 

He came to me as I sat on the bottom of the ocean, the waves flowing around me, through me. I had retreated there so I could stop watching myself die. At least I could get away from that repetitious hell. The bottom of the ocean seemed as good a place as any to hide. The fish didn’t seem to mind. I don’t know how long I was there. I had stopped thinking about time, it had become useless. I was just waiting… waiting for it all to end somehow. My despair had reached a crescendo, everything inside of me was shutting down.

 

Suddenly, there he was. His hand outstretched to me. I thought he was another ghost. I hadn’t seen any others and I was shocked. He held his hand out to me and after I hesitated for a moment, I reached out to him. Our hands crackled together like static electricity.

 

He told me he was there to help. He said he was a Guide, an Angel, sent to lead me on the path that I needed to take. He was handsome and kind, and took me to a small house. Once there, he told me to sit. I was shocked to feel that the chair was soft underneath me. I had not been able to feel anything since my death, always hovering over the surface in perpetual levitation, even when I was sitting. I didn’t know that I could actually feel again, but Marco had changed that.

 

He sat down at his desk across from me. He put his hands together and told me secrets. Secrets about what I was, and what I could do in the form I had taken. He went to explain that my world was bound only by what my mind allowed. He said that I could move past the days that had been stuck replaying around me. I could move forward into the future. I could watch my children grow up.

 

I just had to let go of the past.

 

And so I did. I ripped myself away from the images of my death. For the first time, I saw what happened after the paramedics took my covered body away from the scene of the accident.

My children were broken. They were too young to lose their mother. My husband, a good strong man, was at a loss. The loneliness seemed to cripple him. Their world crumbled into sadness, overflowing from my son’s eyes, devastation that I could not fix. My husband turned to drinking, it was as if he too disappeared from their lives. Women traipsed in and out, and I could see my children harden and grow cold.

 

My boys grew up and I watched over them in utter despair. They suffered through a life full of stumbling pain and terrible decisions. I couldn’t bear to watch as they followed the path their own father laid out for them and fell into a world I would have never wished for them.

 

I stared at my youngest falling asleep in a haze of bitter drunkenness, his brother somewhere far away in the same state of destruction, and I knew I couldn’t take watching it anymore. I stepped back from his bedside remembering what Marco had taught me. I could go back. Without hesitation, I closed my eyes and moved back to the time right before I died. I passed my house as the SUV rushed down the street towards it’s final destination and the end of my life. I didn’t follow, choosing to rush to Marco instead.

 

I rushed to his office, flinging myself into the chair once again. He was expecting me. He knew that I would come. He watched me as I raged and smiled with that sad lonely smile as I cried, longing for tears that never came. I could only scream and wail.

 

That is when he told me that I could change it. I had already learned to manipulate time. Now it was time to learn how to fix it. He said it would only take changing the timeline just enough to alter the events. He said it was easy. He taught me how to move objects. Once I had it mastered, I tried several times to change things. I moved car keys and hid shoes, but somehow it always ended the same.

 

Until the glass. The glass had seemed like destiny. I had left it there so many times. As if I needed it to fall on that day. Finally, the timeline was changed, just like he said would happen.

 

But something went wrong. While everything around me seemed to have progressed, I have stayed the same. I’m still dead. I should be alive.

 

I need to speak with him.

 

So I stare at the door to the small house. It is closed and even though I should be able to pass through the door, something is keeping me out. I step back, my body moving easily through the trees and the gate behind me. But as I move forward, I slam mercilessly into the hard wood of the door each time.

 

There are no sounds coming from inside. Marco is not here. I’m confused and upset. What has happened? What did I do wrong? What can I do to fix it now?!

 

Maybe I can go back and change it again. I attempt to go back along the timeline, before my death, but I am unable to do so. My body feels weak and tired. I’m shivering and I’m cold. I haven’t felt like this before. It’s confusing. I’m scared.

All that is left for me to do is return home. That is just as easy as before. I close my eyes and open them to the front door. I hear sounds of laughter and cooking as I drift into the kitchen and into the corner once more.

 

I see my body pulling a pan of roasted chicken from the oven. I remember planning this meal, but I never got to taste it. My oldest son, Nicholas, is helping to set the table. I watch myself pass behind him and tousle his soft blond curls. I used to do that all of the time, but I can’t even imagine how they feel now.

 

My youngest, Peter, rushes into the kitchen with my husband at his heels. His dimpled cheeks grin up at me as the body I used to call my own sneaks him a taste of the mashed potatoes and gravy. He lifts his thumbs up in approval.

 

My husband, Benjamin, is opening a bottle of wine. He pours two glasses as the family sits. It’s like a twisted nightmare, as the picture perfect quality of it all sinks into me. I am an observer now, from the corner of the room. My back pressed into a wall that I can no longer feel. If I move too much I’ll fall right through.

 

I watch in agony as they smile and laugh. Nobody sees me or hears me cry. They clean up together and prepare for bed. My physical body tucks my children in and kisses them lightly on the cheek. The lights are low and she heads into the bedroom with my husband. His hand is low on her back. She smiles as he pulls her inside of the room and closes the door.

 

I don’t want to see what happens next.

 

My thoughts begin to burn as I sit outside of my the room where my children sleep. They will never see me again. I’m still dead! And who?! Who is in my body? Who is this woman living the life that I was forced to leave behind?

 

I pass into the bedroom where she is now sleeping. I stand beside the bed in the stillness and glare at her. I want to hurt her again. I want to see her bleed again. I want her to die like I am dead. She should be missing these lives; I should be in that body!

 

I can’t understand anything anymore. Who has taken over my life?

I need to get out of here. I want to go back to the bottom of the ocean. Maybe another angel will come to guide me away from this hell since Marco is gone. I close my eyes, longing to open them to the swirling of the black water as it spins around me. With aching slowness, I open them.

 

This is wrong. I’m staring out of the doorway of the house, the dark tree lined street replacing the image of the ocean I had hoped to see. My body feels frozen, I can’t move forward. I am anchored here as if bound by an invisible rope.

 

What is happening? Why can’t I move?

 

Something has gone terribly wrong.

 

I’m struggling, pushing, forcing myself to move, but I can only go backwards. I get a strange sense of being watched, turning slowly to face the hallway behind me.

 

His dazzling eyes are hard to miss. He steps forward, his shoes making no sound on the hardwood floor. Marco leans down and picks up a tiny triangle of glass that had been broken only hours before. The edge catches the dim light of the moon that is streaming through the window.

 

His smile makes me cringe as he moves closer to me.

 

I haven’t smelled since this all begin, but suddenly a rotten odor fills my nose. I lean back further as he stops a few mere inches from my face.

 

The glass between his fingers is held up to my eyes. With a flick of his wrist he sends it flying at me. It passes through my cheek and lands impotently on the floor near the doorway that I cannot pass.

 

“What did you do?” I say to him, my teeth clenched. I want to launch myself at him and rip his eyes from his face. But I need answers first.

 

“I gave you the information you wanted. You asked me how to fix this.” His voice is like a liquid, flowing up into my ears as if it was honey. I feel an almost hypnotic tingling. I shake myself free and ask him again.

 

“What did you do?!”

 

He laughs. It’s deep and full of amusement. His fingers tickle sparks across my face as he touches me.

 

“Oh Sarah… it is not what I did. It is what you did. You wanted to change destiny, but you have learned, as we all must, that it cannot be changed without consequences.”

 

I jerk away from him and step past him deeper into the house.

“You never said any of this would happen…” I say to him without turning around.

 

“Oh sweet Sarah, you never asked me what would happen. You only heard what you wanted to hear.”

 

I can feel him behind me.

 

“You wanted your children to have a better life… with their mother. And they will have just that.”

 

I knew that he was right. And perhaps I hadn’t really thought about what I was doing. I just wanted my children to grow up happy and successful with full vibrant lives. It wouldn’t happen if I was taken away from them. It wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t there to support and guide them.

 

But it wouldn’t be me… and I had to accept that… but still… something had changed.

 

“Marco… what is wrong with me? I… I can’t leave… I can’t go back in time. I can’t… do the things you told me that I could do before.”

 

His words hit me like a ton of bricks. “Oh… you cannot go backwards or forwards anymore. You have made a choice to bind yourself forever to this location , and you must move at the pace that it sets. You made this choice when you changed the timeline. You are in a different world now.”

 

There is a buzzing in my ear. I feel weaker than before.

 

“I’m stuck in this house forever…” I whisper. Not a question. A statement. A fact.

 

“But you will see the future that you chose for them. You cannot leave, but you will have the ability to see what happens away from here. I will teach you.” Once more he tried to touch me, my skin crackling as he reached out. I don’t want to feel him again.

 

“Stay away. What is done is done. I just want to be alone.”

He stops. Silence.

 

“Perhaps another time…”

 

I can sense he is going to leave. Panic chokes me.

 

“Marco!”

 

I turn and he stops, staring at me.

 

“Who… is… who is inside of that body…?”

 

He doesn’t say a word. He walks towards the staircase and the bedroom where she sleeps. I follow after him, but he is gone.

He hasn’t answered my question. I’ll have to wait until he comes back.

 

But for now, I know that I am stuck. This is what I chose when I changed the timeline. I don’t want to believe it and the anger towards her still sits inside. So I drift around this house, watching my children laugh and play. I watch them learn and grow.

 

So far, I’ve resisted the urge to hurt her. It has not been easy. So many times I could have tipped over another glass, set something in her path, thrown a knife into her back. But I can’t. Sometimes I think she knows I’m here. It’s like she’s looking at me, but then she’ll do something that makes me think differently. Just the other day, I stood right in her path and she walked through me without flinching. I find that my hatred for her grows every day, but I’m helpless to do anything about it. She is the “mother” to my children now. She is all they have.

 

I’m almost glad I don’t know what soul is inside of the body that was once mine. It’s easier to think that it’s just running on motherly instinct, taking care of the children that I love. It seems to have all of the same skills that I do. She is kind and fair. She cooks well and keeps the house clean. She goes out during the day, I’m not sure where to. But she always comes back in time to care for the children and run the house well.

 

The only thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes she seems distant. She doesn’t laugh as much as I did. She doesn’t seem to feel joy in the boys smiles the way I did. She almost seems like she’s biding time, putting on a show… hiding something. But… there is no way for me to know. I simply have no idea what happened when I changed the future of my life. I don’t know what controls the body that I used to call my own.

 

One fact remains constant, I am dead. I have many unanswered questions, but Marco has been gone for weeks and I don’t think he’s coming back. The last time he was here, we finished my training on something he calls the “Third Eye”.

 

“It’s a way for you to use the existing spiritual link between yourself and your children to see through their eyes,” He told me one night. And since that night I have been able to do just that. I find it easiest to connect with my children. I see them going to school and playing with their friends. I can even see their dreams at night. I feel very close to them in those moments, less like an observer and more like a particpant.

 

It’s the last gift that horrible creature gave me. Honestly, I hope he never comes back. He made a habit of slinking up behind me in the dark when the house was quiet and still for the night. He had a constant smirk on his face, telling me that he knew more than I did. He told me that he would stay with me until his job was done.

 

I guess he’s finished now.

 

I try to be greatful for the future that was created from my choice. I am able to watch my children grow up. Things are a lot different than the life they would have had in the world where I died. I can’t hug them or talk to them, but they will never know the pain of my death in their childhood. I must take reassurance in the small things.

 

Even now, on this day before summer begins, I am smiling. I am sitting in my children’s room, seeing through Peter’s eyes. I see Nicholas running from his 5th grade class, while Peter follows happily waving his 3rd grade report card in the air. They jump into the car and their excited voices bring a melancholic warmth to my chest.

 

She is quiet, contemplative, as she turns out of the parking lot. Nicholas laughs and comments about her being on time to pick them up again. He is looking at the clock. I notice the time is 3:47 PM.

 

From Peter’s eyes, I see him staring down at a picture. It is a self portrait of our family. There is a large red heart over the one that is me. He points at a clay vase sitting on his brothers lap. Nicholas smiles and points to the card. It says, “To Mommy” and he hides it under his shirt. Peter giggles. I long to hold these gifts and show love to my boys. I will never get that chance.

 

Peter glances at the clock again.

 

A chill rushes through me.

 

Blaring at me, the time of my death.

 

3:50 PM.

 

There is a loud horn and a gut wrenching crunch as metal hits metal.

 

My vision is cut off. The blackness falling like ink. I suck in and my eyes open on the interior of my son’s room once more.

An unholy sound erupts from my throat. I have never made such a sound, but the wail is escaping me and I can’t stop it. Like a hundred different voices rushing from my throat in agony. I rush at the barrier of the doorway and slam myself into it repeatedly. I’m unable to cross and as I reach out for my children, they are not there. Panic strips my mind of all logic and understanding.

 

It was a truck that slammed into the vehicle my children were in.

 

Disbelief. It can’t be.

 

It couldn’t have been the same one.

 

Something screams inside of me that it is.

 

I am pacing. The world is pulsing around me. The sun sets like a bloody red exclamation point. Nobody has returned home. I can’t find my children. My link to them is gone. I can only see black nightmare shadows crossing everywhere. And I feel fear. So much fear. I don’t know what to do.

 

I reach for my husband, but he too is disconnected from me. Something has changed again.

 

It is past midnight when a car stops in the driveway.

 

The slumped form of my husband is walking inside. He drops his keys and jacket in the doorway and falls into the wall, sliding down with his head in his hands. I kneel in front of him, looking into his bloodshot eyes. He is crying and pulling at his hair. After a few more minutes he stands, looking dazed and confused.

 

He stumbles into the kitchen. There is a glass perched on the edge of the counter top. He grabs it and fills it with water only to place it on the edge without drinking any. I’m tempted to tip it over, to show myself, to let him know he’s not alone. He walks past me without a glance and falls down onto the couch.

The phone rings and he looks at the screen before answering.

 

“Mom…” He answers, covering his face with his hands. “My boys… My babies… they…. they’re gone Momma. They’re gone… I… I… Sarah? She’s OK. She’ll be OK. The seat-belt… we just fixed it and she’ll be OK. But my babies…”

 

I can’t listen anymore. Has time stopped? This can’t be happening! This can’t be real! I tuck myself into the farthest corner. It’s not happening. They are not dead. They are not.

An image of Marco flashes in my mind. Rage flares up, erupting, violent, volcanic, magnificent.

 

I fling my arm out and the energy of it slams into the wall.

I see Benjamin stand from the couch. He heard me. He looks around bewildered before his shoulders slump and he climbs up the stairs. I find him there, staring into our son’s bedroom. His shoulders shake with tears that won’t come anymore. A feeling I know all to well.

 

Without thinking, I fling myself at him and pull my body around his. I don’t think he feels me, but suddenly, I can feel him. I feel his heart beating in his chest and his body trembling. His arms don’t lift to hold me, but I refuse to let him go.

 

He stays this way for hours. Until another call comes and I let him go as he talks softly. Like a zombie, he goes down to his keys, scooping them from the floor and heads out once again. I reach out to him, and the tender connection between the two of us is back. I sigh and allow myself to focus on the things he sees.

 

I need to know where he is going. He may be going to see our children. I can feel a choking in my throat. My children are dead? They can’t be dead. Maybe they are just really hurt, and that is where he is going!

 

My world is shattered as he drives to the hospital and heads down a hallway following signs that hurt my eyes to read. He stops at a door.

 

Morgue.

 

He shakes the hand of a tired looking man. He signs some documents and with a shaking voice asks to see them.

 

I am conflicted. I don’t want to see, but I simply cannot turn away.

 

The tired doctor leads him to a room. Sterile, windowless, and empty except for two stainless steel tables.

 

Laying there, hands folded like angels, are my boys. Their eyes are closed and they look like they are sleeping. Their skin is pale, and there is purple and blue where the blush of life used to be. I can see the caked dried blood in the blond curls. The limp broken angle of my youngest son’s back. I can feel myself dying all over again. Benajamin cries again, his tears blurring his eyes and the last view I’ll have of my sons.

 

He crashes out of the room and rushes outside. He chokes for air, and I am helpless. He’s going back to the hospital, up the elevator, down the hall to a dark room full of beeping machines. He’s going to see her.

 

He sits down next to the bed and grabs her hand. She is sleeping, bruises painted across her face. After a few moments her eyelids flutter and she opens them, staring up into his face.

 

My mouth flies open and the connection is lost. I reach out in vain to see what he saw once more, but our link is severed.

But I have seen enough.

 

Her eyes.

 

The light brown of my own replaced with vivid unmistakable lavender.

 

Marco.

 

I’m pacing, stomping through the house. I pass the glass full of water on the counter and knock it to the floor. I turn to the cabinet and fling it open. In a rage, I begin to topple them from the shelves. Every ounce of energy is spent creating a cascade of falling glass, littering the floor with jagged edges that seem to shimmer in the light.

 

My rage spent, I find a corner and I wait. He returns with her draped over his arm. After the death of her sons, she is smiling. It is a sick and twisted reminder of now who is really in that body.

 

He takes her upstairs and lays her in bed. He props crutches near her to use. He heads down and I hear him exclaim at the mess on the kitchen floor. I don’t care.

 

“You killed my children!” I scream as I fling the crutches across the room.

 

The eyes of the body open as he rises from the center of her chest like a wraith. His mouth twisting into the grin I hate so much as he begins to speak.

 

“Sweet Sarah, that is not true. Just like you were supposed to die in that other world. Your children die in this one.”

 

I hate everything he says. He’s a liar and a thief.

 

“You stole my body. You took it from me!!!!”

 

His laugh, again, scratching into my mind.

 

“Stole it? My dear, you gave it to me. You must have known somewhere inside that you could never have your physical body back. You opened it up for the taking, my dear sweet Sarah.” He crosses the room and lifts the crutches, placing them lovingly next to the body. What was once my face is lost in vacant confusion, staring up at the ceiling. It’s creepy and I look way.

 

Marco begins to talk again.

 

“I have yearned for a vessel for so long. Yearning for the chance to breathe air. To taste. To feel. Can you imagine hundreds of years of this?! Do you know how hard it is to be the first to find a soul who is as hopeless as you were? To find a person who is willing to change time to get their lives back? You should be thanking me! I helped you when you needed me. I gave you all the tools, but you made the decision on what to do with them. You chose this future by changing the past. The consequences were unavoidable. Think about it, Sarah.”

 

He is pacing the room, ranting. I hate the sight of him. I look away as his voice fills the air.

 

“You are the reason your children are dead.”

 

His words pierce my heart like daggers. I can’t hold back anymore. I’m screaming and running at him. He catches me by the wrists, visible orange sparks fly between us. I smell the rotten flesh, I see the darkness swimming behind his eyes. He was never an angel. At least not the kind that ends up in heaven. He is something else entirely.

 

“You tricked me… you lied to me…”

 

He laughs. “That is what I do…”

 

“My children…”

 

“They are no longer your concern.”

 

He lets me go, and falls back into what is now his body. He opens his purple eyes and winks at me. I step back shuddering. I can’t stay in the same room as that thing. I pass my husband on the stairs. He looks concerned and sad. His finger tip is cut from cleaning up the glass. I don’t care anymore.

 

I scream and pound on the barrier keeping me in the house. I am stuck. I cannot go. I feel lost and confused. I don’t know what is real anymore. I retreat to the room that once belonged to my babies. I sit and stare at all of the things that made up their world. The pile of action figures and race cars streaming from the toy box. The colored pictures posted on the wall. The Buzz Lightyear lampshade. The soft plush bunny hidden under the pillow on the bed that belonged to Nicholas. The tattered blanket that Peter kept with him from his toddler years.

 

I see visions of them. Playing. Laughing. Reaching for me. Their love is like a cage holding me in place. What do I do now that they are gone?

 

I stare at nothing as I sit in a state of shock until I realize that many days have passed. I don’t even care. I notice movement and I see them from the window. Benjamin packing up a new flashy car. Marco, in my body, sitting in the passenger seat, not even glancing up as they drive away. I don’t know where they are going. Perhaps they are leaving for good.

 

Without warning, I drift back in time and I find myself passing through the last days of my children’s lives. I see them as they lived their last moments, utterly thankful that they were so happy and loved until the end. If this is my hell, I embrace it.

 

It is the chance to see my children smile every day.

 

I even imagine that I can hear them.

 

“Mommy…”

 

Oh my sweet Nicholas.

 

“Mama…”

 

My little Peter.

 

I can feel their little hands reaching around my neck, pulling me into embraces that only they can give.

 

“Mommy, why won’t you look at us?”

 

My eyes fly open.

 

Shimmering little boys sitting in front of me. Reaching for me.

My children.

 

With me.

 

Perfect and alive.

 

Perhaps alive is not the word.

 

But it doesn’t matter. They are here. I am not reliving days that are gone. This is happening now!

 

Their faces are lit with smiles as they realize I am recognizing them, at last. How long have they been here trying to get me to see them? How long? They both reach out and we touch, and it is not shocks and sparks like when Marco touched me. No… it is soft, sweet tingling and so warm.

 

I cover them with kisses and they laugh.

 

“I missed you mommy…” Nicholas says. “Is it time to go away from here?”

 

I take their hands. How can I explain that I am trapped here?

I decide to simply show them.

 

We walk down the stairs and pass the empty rooms to the front door.

 

I hesitate.

 

“Mommy, can we go?” Peter asks.

 

My children tug on my hands as they cross outside. I’m scared. I can’t go with them.

 

The clock on the wall near the door catches my eye.

 

3:50 PM.

 

My heart leaps with something I can’t describe. My foot slips across the doorway without any resistance. I step outside and pull my children close.

 

“Yes, we can go now.”

The End

Written by Monique Doucette

August 2010