Stillbirth

[lanzandpine]

She appeared in his dream again.

He found it quite strange how a person that he had never met or heard in his life can manifest herself so often in the depths of his subconscious. Perhaps the shackles of the material never really reached him there. Afloat in the open ocean, and forever frightened.

David held a cup of coffee in his hand and looked at the evening view before him. The setting sun covered everything in a warm, summer orange color, and the greys of the concrete and monotone colors of New Vegas seemed to brighten up. (Why did the dams of his mind always seem to open up during sunsets?) This world accepted him. He rested his chin on his knuckles and let his eyes simply take in the sight of life. The taste of an overpriced latte seemed fit for this contemplative palate.

There was nothing graceful or great in standing still and losing yourself in the surrounding world, David thought, but it felt authentic and real. He found it strange how empty it was at the observation deck, despite the sprawling view at an evening Vegas that it allowed. It wasn't the most beautiful of landscapes that one can experience, but it was utterly familial, and there wasn't anything for David worth more than a place where he belongs. Another sip of the coffee followed his contemplations. He thought that there was nothing familial about Amelia, except for the blood that ties them. Why must her image, then, come after him, even to this day? David truly believed that he was over it, yet there she was, waltzing in the roughest depths of his mind. Her words seemed to still echo in his ears, the remnants of his vivid dream seen clearly. Yet they felt indifferent and enigmatic, still. Distant sparks in an open, dark vacuum. "Hello, David," - she said to him, in some unfamiliar place, some kind of unconscious rendezvous that Freud would've loved to analyze - "Doing alright? Don't forget to put the kettle on." David sipped on his coffee and pulled from his memory his reply in the dream: "What kettle?" The whole sequence was unnaturally cohesive. He remembered Amelia's smug smirk. "What, did you lose even the kettle?"

David couldn't really understand what she meant by that. Rather, what he himself meant - this dream was, after all, naught more than a conversation with himself. Yet for some reason he still felt as if she was hovering by him, with that smile of hers. He was an only child with a sister. He could only interact with her vicariously, through his parents' stories and the machinations of his subconscious. Sister, sister, sister.

David felt guilty before her. He wanted her to disappear from history before. He felt the strange, unfathomable ire for her before. The kiln was out, the fire was no longer there, but in the past it was raging, consuming. He was bastardized, stuck in the shadow of a figure no longer there, he felt. To have looked her in the eye and exclaimed his hate for the fact of her existence, oh, would've been a sweet deed, or so he thought back then. Now, ire and hatred all inevitably bring him to a bitter sorrow. Bitter, ugly, disconcerting. There was no freedom from these shackles - he forged them himself.

David laughed for a moment, his lonely, forlorn, and booming voice ripping apart the lonely silence of the observation deck. And then he shed a tear. "God, I am a bastard, Amelia." His mutterings were heard by no one, especially not her. "I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry."

The great expanse answered with a solemn silence. And so there he was, almost kneeling before the shadow of something not quite there and not quite gone, forced to drown by the ball and chain tied to him.


The weights seemed to have gone in an instant as he raised his head to look at the sky. He thought he heard something. Of course, he didn't, it was not possible at all in the realm of his reality, but he thought it, and perhaps that is just enough. Amelia spoke, once again, with that childish and smug grin of hers that he saw on the pictures. She spoke so clearly, for a dead person.

"You'll be alright."

And truly, who was he to doubt?

David let out a sigh and finished his coffee, the latte having gone cold by now. He picked his walking sticks back up and slowly headed home. For no reason in particular, a smile was spread across his tired face.

"Maybe I'll do some reading."