02.17 AM

This is a short story by Ashley Dorrell, a good friend of mine. She haven’t entitled it yet. She specialises in short short stories, and from the looks of it, she’s written a lot of these.

Abigail looked back at the empty house. Everything had been packed; every nook and cranny was emptied. Her friends had already said their farewells. Unable to resist she entered the house once again. She tried to ignore the desperate: FOR SALE sign attached to the door as she walked in. The floorboard creaked under her weight as the door closed behind her, she came to a stop as she surveyed the emptiness of the room. She had often read about these times, when a person would be thrust into the past with an avalanche of memories that are too painful for them to bear. In those cases they were described as forceful as a wave or a full speed train. Yet this was not the case, the memories did not hit as hard as she had expected, rather they fell gently like a winter snow. One after another the snippets fell on top of each other, blanketing her mind in a cold numbing embrace. His face seemed so close, the memories so cold she thought she could see her breath despite the humid summer air.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” he asked proudly, looking around the empty house as if he was imagining what could come of it.
“Leaving? No…It isn’t…”she replied tonelessly back.
“A life together! You and me… This will be our home, our life!” The promise that left his lips seemed so tantalizing. She wanted it, she craved it, but reality reeled her back in.
“If this was our life, then why leave?” She addressed the memoric apparition and for the first time it turned to look at her, breaking free from the re-enactment of a past moment. He leaned against the wall and looked down.
“To be honest, I’m not sure…I don’t know what went wrong.”
“You LEFT! That’s what went wrong!” She threw the words angrily at him, gaining only a sad look back from him, distant and sympathetic.
“Abby, you never needed me. Sure, life right now is scary, but in all seriousness you will be ok. You don’t need me, this house, or this town. This isn’t your path.”
“But I want you back, I want you home! Why didn’t you stay?” She asked, desperation inching in her voice. The apparition turned towards her and hands with invisible weight only felt by emotion touched her shoulders, “Listen to me, Abigail, I can’t explain the path you are on, you are meant for something so much more. Not here but elsewhere.” “I don’t want that,” she cried waving away the hands that she longed to touch feeling to presence there, sobs racked her body as she fell to her knees. “I don’t want this, I want what we had.”
“You need to let me go,” He said and with that he waved his hand and a pair of scissors appeared. He offered them to her and she took them, they glowed with a light that seemed to come from within, as soon as they touched her she saw it. Two red strings tied to her pinky finger one was a vibrant red and stretched endlessly into the darkness, the other was more faded a mere echo of the vibrant string, this led to his pinky finger, connecting their hearts and lives. “You have two choices Abby, you cannot cut both. You can cut the real one, the more vibrant one or you can cut the fake one. Please Abby… let me go. Its for your own good.” He begged.
“But… if I… if I cut it then…”
“You and I will be separated forever, yes. Abigail do it…” And she did, the vision of him evaporated. Misting out of her sight, before vanishing she saw him give his warm smile to her, as if to say: “You did well, everything will be ok.” And so she knelt there alone clutching a faded red string in her hands.