Page 5

Message: A significant point or central theme, especially one that has political, social, or moral importance.

I f it was so important, why wasn’t I told when it mattered most?

I walked upstairs to my flat. The party morons were trickling out of my doors.

Stepping past a couple practically fornicating on my front door, I continued on. There was so much weed I could get high from just taking a deep breath or two. Smells were mingling together, sex and booze, with vomit and body stench.

How long did I have to keep staying here?

I walked in the kitchen, grabbing a beer, popping the top off on the counter. Turning, a pink-haired girl was in my space. She stared at me in her drunk as fuck state. Her makeup was smeared, and her blue eyes looked glassy.

Was this chick okay?

“He…hey,” she slurred, falling onto the counter and wiping drool off her face. “I know you! You wanna bang my bestie.”

Rolling my eyes, unsure who the fuck this girl’s ‘bestie’ was and caring even less, I swiped a towel from the stove and handed her the material.

“You may wanna lay off the bottle.”

She did a weird hiccup laugh thing and stumbled toward me. The odor she gave off made me nauseous—a cheap perfume, beer, and sweat.

“I-I-I kn…know you,” she repeated, nearly incoherent at this point. “You’re that h—”

Her body fell into my arms, my reflexes keeping her face from kissing the damn side of the bar. I sighed and hefted the dumb drunk over my shoulder. A few partygoers saw me unlocking the bedroom door and began hooting and hollering their praise.

Why did college students only think about sex? Well fuck, who was I to judge.

“Now it’s a party, dude! All right.”

Drowning out the noise, I took the incapacitated girl into the bedroom and tossed her on the beanbag on the floor at the end of my bed.

When would my life fucking matter?

My anger pooled into my gut, the hatred and self-loathing eating away any other emotion. When I found who killed her…

My daughter’s beautiful eyes haunted my memory again and again. No matter how hard I tried to block them out, they were always there. Watching me. Seeing me fail. I still hadn’t found Xenia’s killer. A whole fucking year of pointless living and still not so much as a single clue.

Fury fueling my actions, I picked up my cell, smashing into the keypad, the only person I needed to hear from.

“Did you find anything?” I said before I even let him say a greeting.

I could hear Quinn sigh on the other end, and I didn’t wait to be told how useless he and all the fucking cops were for the hundredth time. I just threw my fucking phone at the wall.

I flipped the girl over to her side so she didn’t die in the damn room and left the key on the nightstand by her so when she woke up, she’d take her drunk ass and go.

Throwing on a hoodie and pants for the chill that came with the night, I crawled out the window and down the fire escape.

Yet again, I would do it myself. I’d track this son of a bitch down until the day I died, and when I found them, they’d better hope they kill me.

The cemetery at night was always calmer than the rush of the morning. It felt peaceful even. I came here when I needed to think, clear my head, or just fucking scream.

The night trapped the sound like it was accepting of it. You could scream for hours out here, but no one but the dead heard. I would know. This past year I had screamed myself hoarse on my damn knees and then screamed some more.

The thing about strength is to know what the bottom becomes so that when you do manage to crawl your ass back to the top, you know how big of a hole you had to claw up from to get there.

The question was, how did you not fall back deeper when you reached it?

“Hi, Daddy.”

I jolted backward, my ass velcroing to the ground. The haunting melody of her voice was strong. I’d heard it for a while now, and her sweet greeting gave me some comfort.

“Hi, Xeny bug,” I said back to the air around me.

I dusted off the gravestone. Her beautiful name was written in big letters alongside her mother’s.

“I miss you, Daddy. It’ll be okay.”

I tried to smile. In case her spirit could see my wallowing ass sitting on her grave.

“I know, Little Flower. It’ll all be okay when I find them.”

I reached into my pocket, bringing her little drawing out. Those stick figures were my only peace for so long.

“Daddy?”

Her voice sounded clear, not the song-like echo I was used to hearing. Confused, I spun around. Standing beside me in the sunflower dress from before was Xenia Lynn Masters.

“Hi, Daddy,” she repeated, twirling that dress around and smiling.

Well, I’d finally lost my goddamn mind.

“Hi, Little Flower. It’s nice to see you, pretty girl.”

She smiled and jumped up and down, her springy dark curls bouncing with her movements.

“Let’s play hide and seek! You need to find me, Daddy.”

I tried to quell my anger. I didn’t want to scare her. Even if she were in my fucking head, I would enjoy the time I got with her.

“Okay, where are you going, Xenia?”

Her laughter cocooned me, and her image bounced around my body. I was playing hide and seek with my dead daughter. Oh, how the mighty had fallen.

“One, two, three…” I began, listening to the direction the giggles were going.

“Ten. Ready or not, here I come.”

I walked around the graveyard searching for my Little Flower. She was nowhere to be found, of course, because she wasn’t fucking real, but I still searched. I came across the tree where I had found that woman with fiery blonde hair. People didn’t just hang out in a cemetery.

What had she been doing here?

I walked past the tree line and over to the fresh grave where I had first seen her. The inscription read, ‘Here lies Noah. Beloved son and brother. Gone too soon but not soon forgotten.’

Beloved son and brother, huh? The girl looked too young to be a mom, so that means she lost her brother then.

Xenia appeared from behind the grave. “Boo! You found me.”

Her smile was radiant as she disappeared, fading away like mist.

“Sleep tight, Little Flower. Sleep tight.”