Not Coming Back

[Flying Badger*]

It didn't make sense.

Vivian had been sitting in her mom's favorite old chair, the one that was the ugliest green ever but was still so comfy and warm, for almost two hours. She hadn't moved since her dad had gotten the phone call, just sitting and thinking. It just didn't make sense...

Her mom was dead, dead just like everyone else who had been in the back car when the trains collided. She was just a mess of bones and blood and organs now, all squished flat. Vivian knew this.

So why was she sitting in that chair, staring at the door expecting her mother to come home from work? No matter how many times Vivian told herself that her mother wasn't coming through that door, it felt like any minute Lily Paine would open the door to the tiny apartment, pretend to be angry that Vivian was in her chair, try to push her out and eventually agree to share. They would watch Cartoon Network, and Lily would tell Vivian about her day, and then Amanda would come running down the hallway and demand to sit with them too, and...

It didn't make sense.

The apartment was quiet. Amanda must have stopped crying. She had run to her room screaming as soon as she wrapped her brain around what happened. She was so little, only eight years old, how could she lose her mother like this? It wasn't fair. Why this sort of thing happen? Vivian's mother never hurt anyone, she wanted to be a doctor, save people. She would have helped so many people one day, and now...

Now she was being pulled from the train wreck, along with the other bodies. Vivian figured it must be really gross to see, all those crushed bodies. She wished she would stop imagining them. It was making her sick.

"Honey?" The sudden sound of her father's voice made Vivian jump. She turned to see him standing on the other side of the room, leaning on the wall behind him like it was the only thing holding him up. Vivian had never seen him look so tired. "Why don't you check on your sister?"

It took Vivian a couple seconds to process his request. Right. Sister. Amanda. Right...
"Y-yeah." She croaked hoarsely, standing up. Her legs felt like jell-o from sitting so long. She wandered to the room she and her sister shared, hearing the hum of the television as her father turned it on. Right, he probably wanted to check the news. He wanted her out so she wouldn't get upset...

"Mandy?" Vivian mumbled, entering her room. She saw a little lump under the covers of Amanda's bed, rising up and down steadily. Amanda must have cried herself to sleep. Vivian sat down on her own bed, picking up her old teddy bear, the one her mother used to talk through when Vivian was little.

"Hello, Vivian!" The bear would say in a high-pitched voice. "It's me, Sanford the bear! How are you today!"

Vivian hugged the worn stuffed animal to her chest, curling up on her bed.

It didn't make sense...