12/31/1999
Letter #25
Well, it’s the 31st of the month. Here I am, all dressed up and ready but it seems there’s nowhere to go.
Joshua is right. Life is complex and mysterious but death is simple: it’s the destruction of a living being. That’s it.
I saw them bury your waxy, skeletal body. The only place you could be said to exist in any material sense is inside that god awful opalescent pink casket your dad picked out for you. I suspect he only chose it because it was the most expensive option. There’s no better tool for upselling than guilt.
You couldn’t even read during the last months of your life; what in the world made me believe you’d be able to read these letters now?
I hear a strange soft, mewling sound and the words on the computer screen begin to blur and swim together. I lower my face into my hands as my chest heaves in violent, ugly sobs.
A warm hand rests on my shoulder and squeezes. Blinking through my tears, I look up at Joshua’s beautiful, calm face. He kneels down beside me, whispers, “come here,” and wraps me up in his solid arms. It feels so good that a low moan escapes my throat before I can suppress it.
He holds me for a long time, running his fingers through my hair just like he used to. After a few minutes, he says, “I need to show you something.” He stands up, offering me his hand. I take it.
He guides me into our bedroom, toward our bed. My face flushes with heat and my pulse quickens. He couldn’t be thinking...could he?
“Look.” He points toward the head of the bed, a huge grin spreading across his face.
Confused, I examine the bed but can’t find anything out of the ordinary.
“Look higher,” he says.
I do as he says until my gaze lands on the painting above the bed. After a moment, I see what he’s talking about. The huge, crying eye looks the same but the blindfolded girl isn’t collecting the eye’s tears with her cup anymore. Instead, she’s holding the chalice out, as though offering it to us.
I gasp, turning to him. “When did you repaint this? And why?”
He looks intently at me. “I didn’t repaint it, Theia.”
“C’mon.” I shove his shoulder gently. “You can’t think I’m that far gone.” He doesn’t even crack a smile. His expression is so sincere it verges on desperate. I look back toward the girl in the painting. If he didn’t repaint her, who did? I climb on top of the bed for a closer look and Joshua does the same. Tentatively, he reaches out to touch the canvas but the girl inside the painting throws her hand out to ward him off.
Shock floods through me. I want to turn to Joshua to gage his expression but I can’t tear my eyes away from the painting.
“You were right,” Joshua whispers. “It is her.”
I squint at the girl, trying to make out her features but the blindfold covers too much of her face for me to tell for certain.
She holds her cup out to me. As I reach for it, the stemmed cup expands until it’s so big and heavy that I have to hold it with both hands. It’s full to the brim. Tiny, vibrant green plants with yellow blossoms line the inside of the cup, shining with their own light through the clear liquid.
The girl nods, turns away, and crawls into the depths of the pupil.
“Wait!” I call out. "How do I follow you--"
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I’m sucked out of the house, rocketed through the bright sky, and hurled through space towards the moon. I reach its pale, velvety surface within seconds but rather than landing, I glide along it like a current of wind. Towering cliffs loom ahead and I’m on a trajectory to crash into them but just before impact, I see a narrow canyon that carves through the great wall. I thread between the cliffs, weaving around a long succession of tall, thin rocks that almost look like pillars as I rush through the canyon. Many of them are toppled or leaning against the cliff walls.
I keep catching glimpses of movement down below but it soon becomes obvious that this supposed movement is really just reflections coming from shattered glass at the base of the canyon. The high walls curve steadily left, sharper and sharper, making me dizzy, like I’m circling a drain. Abruptly, the canyon ends in an alcove, its pale walls extending high above in all directions except the way I came in.
The floor of the alcove is piled high with soft, glimmering sand so dark it’s almost black. A long, clear shard of crystal rests in the silver sand, just beneath the base of the far canyon wall. The shard’s tip is covered in pale dust. I look more closely at the canyon wall above the crystal and find words scrawled haphazardly into it:
What’s done can’t be undone
But our path is a circle
So don’t look for beginnings or ends
I never left
You’ll find me here, in the middle, always
Something cold drips onto my foot. I look down to see the chalice still in my hands, so full it’s spilling down the sides--
I startle awake, my body slick with cold sweat. This time, my eyes are so raw that it takes me a while to open them. The light coming through the curtains is the deep red of evening. Of course it had just been a stupid dream. I’d known that the whole time. Hadn’t I?
Sighing, I untangle myself from the damp, twisted pile of blankets. Halfway through sliding out of the bed, I freeze. Resting on the nightstand, right beside Evy’s framed promise, condensation beading on its intricately carved surface, is the huge chalice from Joshua’s painting.
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