Conversations with the Dead

A Short Story by AnneMarie Buhl

Copyright 2010, AnneMarie Buhl

All rights reserved. Published by Doomed Muse Press.

This story is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to doomedmuse.press@gmail.com.

Cover designed by Greg Jensen with photo © Zastavkin/Dreamstime.com

Electronic edition, 2010

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Conversations with the Dead

by AnneMarie Buhl

“I’ll scream,” she says but they both know she won’t. He stands outside her window and the ten feet between them isn’t enough. He’s close; she can smell him, clove cigarettes and spice.

“Come down and talk to me. I think I’m being patient about this, Lizzie. Just come talk. Now.” He is calculating the distance to the screen; she can hear it in his tone. History hangs between them, palpable. She closes her eyes, feeling his hands on her body, feeling the bruises that came later, the yelling, the blood, and the need in her veins. His name is etched in the scars on and beneath her skin.

“I have nothing to say to you, Griffin.” She’s tired. Her eyes in the half light of her room are hollows in a pale face. She feels sick. She can’t accept things are over anymore than he can. His presence here hurts more than she wants to admit. And she is more tempted than she would like by the offer of ‘just talking’. She misses the talking. She misses the feeling that someone in this world could understand that everything isn’t ok, that sensation of someone listening. Someone who notices her.

“I miss you, you know. Things can’t be going well for you.” Griffin takes another step towards the window, into the light creeping around the side of her home.

She stares down into his clear features, wanting to reach down and brush the curl of soft dark hair from his cheek and she is glad it is too far down to reach. How can you miss me? She wants to say. You are here so often. Don’t you know I don’t want you? Or is it that you know how much I do?

“I quit the damn junk. You have nothing I need now,” she says instead. Her voice is as thin as the lie. You have everything I need, she thinks. He used to be all she ever wanted and she forgave him a hundred horrors. It is her choices that brought them here, her deception to the world and to herself. She tries to think if he ever lied to her and she can’t recall a single time. Why can’t she just forgive again? He moves up, right underneath the window now, so close she can hear him breathing.

“Lying Lizzie,” he hisses, “Who is going to love you if I’m not here?”

“No.” She lets a sob escape as she scrabbles backward from the window. She wants it all to be over. She wants him gone permanently. She has expended so much effort and pain to clear her life of heroin and she clings to the hope she can cleanse herself of him at the same time. Her naivete disgusts her, but this doesn’t stop her belief that she can choose another path and leave him behind.

His presence, his constant stalking her, keeps her on edge. She never slept well, but there is no sleeping now. Knowing, always listening, staring over her shoulder, certain she saw him. Living with the mix of disappointment and relief when he isn’t there. Living with the desire and cramping terror when he is. When morning comes she stands in her yard near the big pine tree, staring down at the cigarette butt that is the only sign of his presence. She clutches the knife he gave her long ago in that brief breath before the nightmares. Her eyes are hot, tight with tears as she raises her head, looking up into her own window. The corner of her loft bed barely shows, reaching back into the depths of her room. The corner where she curls, night after night, shaking, wanting. The knife is big in her hand, solid. The choices seem so clear now; in the sunlight there are no shadows, no shades of gray. She doesn’t want to die. But she doesn’t see that there is any other way, not while he is still here, still so present in her life. Reminding her of the things she has done, the damage she took, the pain she caused, and the things she allowed him to do. He hasn’t made good on his threats against her family, her friends. Not yet. But she cannot live in this limbo forever, and she knows that she cannot possibly live with the choices after. Lizzie’s gaze drops to the knife, the smooth metal double edged and shining. Who am I kidding? She wonders. She is not alive now. She is a flesh mimic, a parody life. But he has to stop. And there is only her to do it.

The lack of sleep makes her hands shake and she gives up on lining her lower eyelids after the third try. The dark smudges give her eyes a hollow look. She goes through the motions ritualistically, each movement drawn out and practiced. My life needs a soundtrack, she thinks, something moody without intelligible language. She feels her feet skidding out from under her, the decisions are made, her fall started. The world is contained in minutes now, her life measured in each careful movement, in each breath. A part of her is whispering that this isn’t the fighter’s way out, that this decision is the easy path. This is the hard path, she thinks. She is always looking towards tomorrow, always making promises to change or do things tomorrow. But there is no tomorrow anymore, just tonight.