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FORTY-FOUR

GIRL

As I lie on my back in the cold, I see stars. They twinkle and I wonder if I’m finally free. I place my hand over my empty stomach, knowing that I’d lost my baby boy. It was a boy. A mother knows. I felt our bond from the beginning.

I look up. Darkness envelops me, but the stars; they are so beautiful. Maybe that’s where my baby is now, twinkling in the sky and looking down on me.

If we’ve battled through all of time to be together and have the opportunity to be mother and father, our baby wouldn’t just vanish into nothing. He existed and his matter is out there. He is the star and I am the star catcher.

Reaching up, I try to hold the twinkle, but it vanishes and my hand brushes nothing.

I hear his words floating in the breeze, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. They’re warped.

Tears fill my eyes. If I carry on following the darkness, maybe I’ll be set free, but my freedom won’t be the beginning of another chapter, it will be the end.

Maybe I’m letting go of my life.

This is some kind of purgatory that I need to figure out. Is there any way back to my little bunker? I just want to start again and I want to be close to him and love him. We can’t wait until the universe puts us together again. We might live ten lives before that happens. Ten wasted lives. I want this one. I’m not finished with it yet.

What is death like? This is something I’ve started to ponder more over the past few days, or is it weeks? My head is like cotton wool. I’ve tried really hard to remember what the in-between is like; that place between death and rebirth.

He can remember. He tells me that it’s beautiful, that all the colours are iridescent and a calming sound makes a person feel safe, like whale noises, but they are angels.

I’m his angel and he needs me.

I begin to hum a tune, one I made up, in the hope that he can hear me as I leave this life, then I feel a thump as my head hits my pillow.

I’m still here.

Water or sweat drips down my face, but I can’t see. The darkness was real, it’s all real, and the twinkling above is the camera as it watches me.

The raging heat inside me feels as though it’s about to escape. Am I cold, am I hot? I don’t know. I shiver uncontrollably until I throw up. The in-between is beckoning me, maybe I need to give up. Maybe it’s time. This pain is too much.

A flash of my past fills my mind. Meowdon. Mum, Dad. The game of chess we started playing that we never finished. I’d be so much better now. My mum and me lying on a yacht off the South of France where she prepped for a rich person’s dinner party. I had a life out there in the real world once. My drawings that filled my bedroom back then, I want it all back. I want my life and my baby back, but that’s not how life works.

I can never have these things back.

A murmur filters through my ear. It’s not him. It’s someone else.

If I had the strength to cover my clammy chest up, I would, but I’m dying. I can’t move and now, maybe, just maybe, this other man who whispers something I can’t quite make out is the new dreamer. Maybe his dreams are now my dreams.

I feel pressure on my chest and a faint light comes from one corner of the room. I prise my eyes open a little more, but the brightness sends a flash of pain through my head so I close them tightly.

His rough fingers begin prising my lips open, but I do my best to keep them clamped shut.

What does he want with me?

His hands smell like baby lotion, and the taste begins to make its way around my mouth, making me want to throw up again. I heave, but there is nothing left in me. My arms are so weak, I can’t even lift them to fight him. Instead, I clasp my teeth together as a warning to him to keep his fingers away from my mouth.

‘Stop it or I will break your neck,’ this man yells. Where is he, the man who I love? It’s not him. His hands are soft and his voice is a little higher. This man speaks almost monotone, even when he shouts.

I recognise this voice from my past.

I can’t breathe. He is upon me, pinning me down on the bed, his fingers once again trying to prise my mouth open.

I don’t want him to break my neck. I just want the love of my life back, and all I can do is cry.

‘Open your mouth or I swear to God I will slice your bony throat open and feed you to the pigs.’

My loud sobs are now filling the capsule, I open my mouth and feel something slightly choke me then the water comes, spilling everywhere, making me cough and splutter.

He lied. He’s going to kill me anyway.

All that broke me and built me back up, all that made me feel a love I never felt possible, it will soon be gone. I will be gone and no one will know or miss me.

I am no one, just a star in the sky, twinkling away in the hope that someone will notice me amongst the other million stars.

I am a no one.

Girl – no one.