Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ And Then He Was Gone ❯ And Then He Was Gone ( One-Shot )

Sarah Kutz

Untitled

Dohn. Dohn. Dohn. My feet like frozen bricks drop heavily on the ground, one after another, yeah, just like that. One, two. It's deadly, that pattern of moving. Dohn, dohn. As my feet were dully hitting the plastic Sysco crap linoleum, it was reflecting the bright lights overhead. Those lights are trying to keep the grunge fest grocery store alive-looking, probably. But it's hard to hide that horrible dirty rain-puddle gloom in the air, since it's all over the place. I suddenly do a quick reality check and I stop feeling horribly dead and listen in to what my mother is rambling about. It's like she's just another grocery store light, trying to make it all happy again. But I can tell its fake, it's so fake that it's killing me.

“Should we have quesadillas or fondue tonight, I wonder? But then I'd need to buy fruit… What do you want for dinner tonight?” Bright lights still shining… not working… Just making the mood more intensely awful.

“Quesadillas,” I slur, and turn to stare at some neatly arranged apples nearby, so she would get the hint that I don't care whatsoever. Yeah, well, she either didn't catch it or choose not to, because she continued to think aloud. I began to tune her out… After a few moments, I was completely off and away. I put my brain-thought-radio to scan for a while. It ran, switching from this to that, trying to find something interesting to think about. It's just about to be realized that there is just junk broadcasting now, when my brain made a mistake; it turned to thinking about you. I tried to lock that door, turn off that blaring radio. But the thoughts escaped. They roamed around inside my mind, threatening to cut the sanity power cord and shatter my world into bits. I already could hear that gong of doom ringing, and I felt myself slipping into a glazed-over state of despair, when mom called me back to reality yet again.

“Samantha, go see if they have Annie's soup here- I think aisle one, maybe.”

“O-okay.” I stumbled away in the direction we had come from. And then I fell into the deep depression that seemed to sprout up in front of me as soon as she stopped talking. I remembered that time in fall; I remembered how we laughed, and how afterwards your smile seemed to be stained onto the corneas of my eyes. My eyes became blurry with tears, and not because I couldn't find the soup in aisle one. As I scanned the posters of the aisles, looking for the organic section through the droplets of moisture in my eyes I refused to let go, I saw. I saw your greenish-grey eyes, the ones that sparkled like tiny bits of minerals that time I looked into them and saw your joy inside. I didn't see the organic section as I walked past it. I didn't hear my mom say, “Did you find it?” I was trying, so hard, to bring back every detail of every time I was near you. I wanted to live in it. I wanted to fill my self up with it, make every pixel of my minds' eye bring back those times. But I new in a millisecond that there was no way. “And then he was gone.” The words replayed and replayed in my head. The tears collected in my eyes finally were forced over the edge and they crawled down my face. He's in a better place now, I thought. But in the pit of my heart I knew it was just like mom, just like the bright grocery store lights. It was all so fake, and it would not do. And now I was free falling into the chaos of my frantic despair. My insides screamed as I thought about how I'd never see you again. Yeah, Never. I'd never hear you speak, I'd never inhale your scent. All I had left of you were memories and name inscribed on your grave.

I didn't eat casadillas that night. Or fondue.