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He thinks he sees her sometimes.
In flashes, in desperate moments, she seems to just follow him around. He can feel her delicate little fingers come up and squeeze around his neck, sometimes he wishes she’d finish the job before he does it himself. The stench of cheap beer only seems to permeate the rooms he finds himself existing in.
Lately, Mark only seems to know shame. Burning deep inside, he hopes that one day it’ll consume him whole. He’s become nothing but a shell, he can’t even look at himself in the mirror most days without seeing her show up behind him. Hair, matted and soaked with blood, hanging over a once pristine face. Wholly unique, he once told her, he hadn’t ever seen someone so beautiful as her. He spent every hour of his day mapping out the features on her face, tracing them out in their quietest moments, his thumb would brush over her cheekbone whilst they laid under thick covers. “You’re beautiful,” he’d whisper, smiling all sleepily. “The most beautiful.” He’d mutter.
The funeral was a closed casket.
When they arrived at his door, when they asked him to come identify the body; he hadn’t even recognized her at first. Glass had marred her skin, caking her face in that deep crimson, he could only tell it was her from the peachy toned polish on her nails and the simple wedding band that rested upon her finger. The days moving after had felt slow, almost impossible to navigate. He canceled his classes for the week, he left his house once to buy himself a small amount of groceries and a six pack, he ignored any and every call that reached his cell phone. He thought, if he could determine himself to do so, he could lock himself away from the world and rot from the inside out. A weakened enamel, acid rising and bubbling up until it destroyed whatever was left of him.
Two years, yet it’s felt like a lifetime without her. He thought he could try to move on, he thought that he might’ve been able to drown himself in sorrows and meaningless dates with women he met through his sister. He was wrong. He knew that, he could feel it every time the weight on her hand pressed down on his shoulder, he could feel it every time the edge of her jaw dug into the crook where his neck and shoulder met. He could feel it in the illness that seemed to only plague him endlessly, only medicated through another night of self-isolation and the acrid burn of room temperature whiskey. He could feel it through the illness that he saw only in the form of her broken body, straddling him every time he tried to sleep, pressing down on his chest until he couldn’t breathe. He can feel her bubble inside his throat, he can feel the sting of her nails in his shoulders and he becomes paralyzed.
He couldn’t bring himself to go back to teaching, faces blended into one as they repeated a mantra of hollow apologies for his loss. He didn’t have to find the courage in himself to quit, they fired him after a student reported him to admin for smelling like booze.
He wanted to work remotely, find something that could keep him locked in the extra room they had, the slats of a baby’s crib sitting in the corner untouched. He’s turned it into an office, though not through much work. He’s moved a desk, a wheeled chair and his laptop into the room. He’s made no effort to remove the boxes, he writes reminders to himself to give the baby stuff to his sister, yet he never leaves his house long enough to visit her, or the oaf that calls himself her husband.
That idea only worked for two months before he found himself seeing Gemma in the women on the corporate zoom calls.
He’s a qualified person, they tell him, just not what they’re looking for right now. He wants to scoff and laugh in their faces, what else could they be looking for at a goddamn office job? He’ll continue the job hunt another day, he finds his car driving with a mind of its own. He ends up outside the bar and pulling into a parking space, an old habit that refused to be put down. He thinks of himself as a dog sometimes, past his prime but too headstrong to let himself go to sleep for good.
He sees her there, he knows he does.
A shock of black turns into fiery red, a color she always said was her favorite. The red falls in loose, messy curls down to the woman's shoulder, an arm covered in a satiny blue fabric as she nurses some kind of cocktail. Mark stares at her, tries to find out where Gemma has gone in her, he knows he had seen her there. The woman turns to look at him, almost as if she knew he was staring at her. The curls turn into straight black for a moment as she smiles at him, perfect teeth flashed under the dimmed lighting of the bar, he feels himself go rigid in his seat. There’s something about her that feels like Gemma, maybe it’s some kind of divine punishment for trying to move on from her like this. She knows that he cannot fill the space she left within him, she’s ensuring that now even. The words escape him before he can even realize the name that slips from his tongue and burns like wildfire.
“Gemma? — ”
The shame burns, the acid in his throat rises as the embarrassment sets in.
She moves from the stool, she was only two spots down from him before. He should move, he should run out of the bar and drive himself as far away until he finds a new State to exist in, something as far away from Kier as possible. She seats herself next to him, resting her elbow on the bar and her cheek on her palm. “You– I..” He tries to stammer out something, the words only seem to fail him though. The woman seems unbothered by his poor introduction, simply letting out a laugh with a tilt of her head. “What? Do I look like your girlfriend?” Her tone is playful, her voice sounds nothing like the name he let slip. “No– No, I didn’t mean..” His voice trails off, stopped short when her hand reaches to rest on his shoulder. A peachy pink nail polish on freshly manicured nails. “My name is Helly.” Her voice feels like a lullaby, something dangerously soothing, he can feel the phantom hand come to clutch at his throat again.
“..You looked like someone else for a minute. I–” Helly’s hand moving to touch his cheek stopped his rambling completely. “You looked like my.. Late wife.” The courage to finish his sentence found him again, she gave him a pout that came off as mocking almost. “I don’t look like a ghost, do I?” She tilted her head again, she wasn’t Gemma. “You’re really.. You’re not her.” He felt like an idiot, stumbling over his words and losing his train of thought and he hadn’t even touched a drop of liquor. “I told you, I’m Helly.” Her thumb brushed over his cheek bone, he felt a shiver shoot through his spine.
“I’m sorry, I need to go–” He tried to move from his seat, he tried to flee and pretend that the entire exchange never happened; yet Helly grabs his arm suddenly. “But you haven’t even told me your name yet.” Her tone is like honey to his ears, a dangerous thing, entrapping him in her stare. “..I have to go find my wife–” He tried to pull away, tried to move out of her grasp, before her voice cut through again. “I thought you said she was dead.” She raised an eyebrow, Mark was forced to come face to face with his lie. “I don’t.. I don’t know what I’m doing here.” He muttered, defeat lacing his voice. He only earned a laugh from Helly, he only earned the toss of curls that appeared black for a mere moment over her shoulder, he only earned the sight of the woman being completely different from the one he married.
Her hand wouldn’t move, nor would hers let up from his neck. Helly’s voice severing him from his common sense.
“Aren’t you going to take me home, Mark?”