Months on top of months on top of months and what was to show for it? A big, empty house and a small empty ghost of a girl trapped inside. The last indication of happily lived lives that once resided within these walls were that of the Lockette family; an average, everyday family with a mother, a father and three beautiful young girls, all with warm chocolate curls except the oldest who’s hair most resembled that of her grandmother’s strawberry locks. All was well in the world until it was catastrophically not. Lorelai walked inside the abandoned house, reliving memories as they came to her when entering its rooms and corridors. This new pastime seemed to be the only thing the red haired victim of tragedy could stand doing with her everlasting spare time. Good memories in the morning, not so good ones in the afternoon and the worst one of all in the evening, just before bed as if the house was toying with her the way a cat would a mouse before putting it out of its misery. Only Lorelai could never escape her own misery…those lucky, lucky mice didn’t know how good they had it.

The events of February 15th would forever be seared into Lorelai’s head and although it tore her heart to a million pieces every time the images would flash across her mind, reliving that memory appeared inevitable. Whatever was left of her could still feel the agonizing desperation that overcame her entire being that morning; trying with all might to simply reach out and touch her mother’s shoulder. No, that hope had been lost seven months before the date when the house marked its claim on Lorelai and bound her to its walls forever. When the remaining Lockettes left, they took everything they own leaving behind only the furniture and a few bits and bobs in attempts to get away from their horror story as fast as they could. They took their memory of their oldest, tucked it away to live forever in warmth’s of their hearts but poor Lorelai and her spirit were unknowingly left behind to be forgotten. When the memories would come, she would try to fight that specific flashback but time after time, she’d loose her battle. Whenever the emptiness was on the brink of completely consuming her being, the girl was forced to crawl to her favorite window up in the attic, sit under it with her legs hugged tightly to her chest, take two deep breaths and succumb to her nightmare. She could even smell the faint aroma of scrambled eggs and burnt toast that were being made in the kitchen downstairs that morning whenever the thought of that dreaded morning was projected onto her frontal lobe.

***

Ribbons of broken sunlight poked through the sheer plum colored curtains that blocked seventeen year old Lorelai Lockette from the peaceful Sunday happenings of New Orleans. The small crack in the window that she made every night out of habit, allowed the slightest breeze carrying the almost undetectable scent of a neighbor three doors down cooking Jambalaya, to creep inside the young girl’s room, mix in with the smell of her mother’s cooking and billow the curtains just enough for the rays of light dance about in the air until they made contact with her skin. The girl lay, anything but gracefully; diagonal on her full sized bed with her left foot hanging off the side and her fiery locks covering her right eye along with the rest of her pillow. Normally, her body would have already known if the day was going to be a bad one and the aches would start automatically, progressing aggressively until they jolted her body awake but this morning was different. It was the calming kisses of the sunlight that pulled her back from deep slumber instead of the life sucking torture that damned house had forced on her. Lorelai’s eyes fluttered open slowly and took an unusually long amount of time adjusting to the dark haze that seemed to linger in her eyes. She pushed the thought aside and decided it was just the gloom from outside’s February sky creeping into her room then continued on to get out of bed and headed to her bathroom to brush her teeth the way she would on a normal day.

Her morning routine went on and she was thankful for the opportunity to complete it without getting sick. Just after taking a brush to smooth out her deep strawberry colored hair, her simplistic bliss was disrupted by the most bone chilling scream followed by the sound of dishes crashing down to the floor coming from behind her bathroom door. Lor’s body jerked and her eyes widened to the size of walnuts before she swung the door open wanting to find the source of the disruption but instead found her sister, Posey, hovering over her own lifeless body. What? That’s not possible. Surely she was still dreaming. Lorelai desperately scanned the scene to try and make sense of what she was seeing. She watched as Posey violently shook Lorelai’s limp shoulders in attempts to wake her, already dead older sister. Voice panicked, eyes blinded with tears, fifteen year old Posey cried out, “Lorelai! No! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Please, you have to wake up!” Paralyzed with fear, the red head stood in the door way of her bathroom and watched as her father, within seconds of Posey’s scream, came bursting through the door first, followed closely by her mother. She watched as the air escaped from their lungs and the joy of another Sunday morning with family vanish from their now horror stricken eyes. “She’s not breathing! Dad, she’s not breathing. Oh my God. Mom, what do I do?.” The fifteen year old girl was literally choking on her own words while her eyes were painfully transfixed on her sister’s cold, dead body.

Father Lockette stepped over the tray of breakfast on the floor and, in one swift movement, replaced his living daughter’s body with his own then copied her desperation. Posey landed in her mother’s arms, “Call 911, Posey! Go downstairs and call 911!” Sobbing, the young girl complied. Lorelai watched as her father’s hands tried to resuscitate her body, pushed aside her stomach churning confusion and stepped out into her room. She hovered over the scene, just behind her mother and reached out. “Ma! I’m right here! Just turn around, Ma. Please tell me you can see me! Please! I’m right here! I’m right here!” She went on and on, panic growing in her voice until she was screaming out. Anxiety, fear, heart break, everything! It all overcame her; hands raised up to hold the side of her head, not knowing what to do Lorelai took a step back. No, no. Certainly this was all a dream and she would wake up any minute in pain there was no wa – “Mommy? What’s wrong with Lori?” Both Lorelai and her mother turned their heads only to find the youngest Lockette standing in her pjs, terrified and teary eyed. “Faye! Baby girl, I’m righ-“ Lorelai’s plea was cut off but her mother turning on her heal and rushing to her five year old. “Faye, no. Come with me baby. You’re not going to see this.” Mother Lockette scooped up her daughter and vanished from the room leaving Lorelai alone with her father and her…dead body.

***

After the house was done torturing her, all the memories stopped and it was as if she had the nights to herself. To rest. To reflect. That’s when she’d think of him. The all too familiar boy with golden brown eyes she used to dream of. The dreams had long since stopped but there was something different about the memory of him than it was with any others she had about her real friends, even her own family. The irony was that her memories of real life people and events now seemed to be more like memories of dreams and her dreams of this boy seemed much more real than they used to ever be. They were now like real, actual memories from her life not just stuff she saw in her head. Lorelai stood from her spot under the window and shuffled to the corner of the attic where she slept. Her petit ghost body managed to move her old mattress and white metal bed frame from her room to the upstairs attic, along some other trinkets her family left behind. She laid her body down and thought for a second that if she thought of him hard enough, maybe she could feel him lying next to her. But alas, no success. Instead she sighed and turned on her side, tucking her legs in close and her hands under her pillow to star out the window. “If your’re real and your’e out there,” she whispered so softly that she could have been whispering in the boy’s ear, “just come back to me.”

***

Two weeks later;
Lorelai, with nothing else to do, walked the perimeter of her prison that morning. She circled around the house, walked on the railing of the porch and hopped down. She’d make her way to the green lawn of the front yard and slip off her low top, white converse so she could immerse her toes in the soft tickle of grass. This was something that would never get old for her in this new world. With eyes closed, she’d slide her feet, one in front of the other and try to feel each individual blade of grass hugging her feet. After a few more hours, Lorelai formally deemed the rest of the day pointless and laid her body down on the grass in desperate attempts of feeling something for the day even if it was just the grass on her skin. She sighed because she knew deep down it was all still so hopeless. In all honesty, she wasn’t surprised that after all these years, the house remained empty. Out of the four families that came to view the house when it was put back on the market after the Lockettes made their exit, not a single one made an offer.  She’d follow the families around as they walked from the living room to the dining room, the upstairs bedrooms to the tool shed and green house in the back yard and she’d overhear them whisper to each other murmurs about how the house doesn’t feel right or how it’s just not for them. Other times the girl tried so hard but failed even harder to make herself be seen by neighborhood kids playing soccer on the street in front on her yard, the mail man delivering the post to every single house on the block except hers, even the stray cats roaming the streets at night for their next meal effortlessly ignored her. Life was always around her, all happening just inches away from the white picket fence that closed her in.

There she was. Glued to her front lawn, back to the ground, arms outstretch to her sides, staring up at the forever grey sky above her and invisible to the rest of the world. Lorelai closed her eyes and her mind went racing. What had she done to deserve such a fate? Oh how she longed to go back and beg and plea and get down on her hands and knees to ask her parents not to make the move to Louisiana! With a million thoughts fervently parading around in her head and the weight on her chest getting heavier and heavier as her panic progressed, finally, when she couldn’t take it anymore, she screamed. As loudly as she could.

With every

Ounce

Of

Might

her body could produce, she screamed. Her hands balled into fists and her toes curled in. Her stomach contracted to tightly that she was sure she’d be sore the next morning. When she had no more air left in her lungs, the scream pouring out of her small body went silent and her eyes shot open. Tears fell from the corner of her eyes and rolled down the sides of her temples. She was done. She was exhausted and she had no more fight left in her. She raised her finger tips to her lips, closed her eyes and envisioned her sweet, sweet boy from the dreams that used to be. He was her only solitude is this God forsaken world and now she was letting go. Peace overwhelmed her body for a moment. She seized it and blew a kiss out to the sky. “Good bye. I love you, forever.” She offered the whisper up to the sky in the most desperate hope that if somehow, if by some miracle this person was real, he could feel her in that very moment and know that he was loved so genuinely, so profoundly, so infinitely by someone. By her. Her hand fell back to her side and her eyes closed.  She was giving up.

Lorelai spent days if not weeks sprawled out on that mini field of grass. Unmoving.

Alone.

***

A noise coming from the side walk in front of the fence that guarded her from the rest of the world was the first trigger to bring back consciousness to Lorelai. Dazed, her eyes fluttered open before she realized what was even happening. A man in slacks and a sports jacket came marching up to the fence, obviously proud of himself for some reason or other, and slammed a small sign with the world “SOLD” on to a much larger “For Sale” sign that had lived on the front yard since the day the Lockettes moved out. Lorelai shot up and looked out to the man, now walking away, laughing into a cell phone. “Sherry?...You’ll never believe it! I sold it!...Yup! Sealed the deal just this morning!...Some married couple with a sick son. Poor kid. By the sound of it, he’s probably going to die soon…Yeah. Well anyway I’m on my way back to the office now. See ya soon!” And just as soon as the scene started, it was over. Lorelai watched as the crooked real estate agent drove off in his shiny silver Volvo. She held herself up with her elbow, locks of red hair fell over her shoulders and she stared out to the street in disbelieve.

The next day, sure enough, two large Uhaul trucks pulled up to the front of the house and Lorelai, having made her way back into the house after days of hibernation outside, watched nervously from her widow. She couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling that something big about to happen but couldn’t pin point or even guess what. She scarcely allowed herself to hope that today would be the day she’s be seen. For years, she remained undetected to the world, why the hell would this day be any different? Still, she watched, trying to suppress the urge to jump out the window for a closer look. Hours passed and she listened to the music of new life downstairs; movers hauling around sofas and tables and beds and washing machines and a fridge. Lorelai decided that even if she’d never be seen or heard again, she would still be happy about the move either way. She would be around people again. She’d feel their love and she assured herself that it would be enough for her.

After a while, when the peak of the move had settled down, a blue Honda Pilot drove up and parked in the drive way. But it wasn’t the massive SUV that caught her attention. No, it was the siren free ambulance that followed behind it. The girl was suddenly hypnotized. Dazed and dizzy even. Every single thing that surrounded the white truck with red letters the read Soux Falls General, all of it went fuzzy but the truck was crystal clear. Lorelai leaned against the glass, pressing her body against it so hard that if it were anyone else just 15 pounds heavier than her on that glass, they’d surely fall through. She watched intensively as the drivers got out and walked round back to get the double doors open. There was a small crowd of three paramedics and, who she would soon find out, Mr. and Mrs. Kingston. They were all blocking the person being rolled out on a stretcher. Lor’s breath grew frantic, her mind was racing but was completely empty simultaneously. She NEEDED to see who was being pulled out of the truck.

She knew this feeling. This feeling of familiarity but it wasn’t settling well in her stomach this time around. Then before she could even comprehend what was happening, there he was. Asleep and undisturbed and perfect.  Instantly, she recognized him and her hands flew to her mouth. She stood in utter shock, disbelieve, confusion, excitement, in love. She slowly lowered her hands to her chest, as if to steady the frantic heart, “You’re real.” The words escaped her lips as a breath of air. She watched as the boy’s eyes flickered open to reveal the most familiar pair of eyes dart back and forth between the house, his parents, paramedics and on looking new neighbors standing on the side walk. “Look up. Come on, look at me!” A desperation she had never experienced before overcame her. “Can’t you see me? Please see me. Please. Please. Please.” Her body started to tremble as the words came piling out of her, one right after the other. Her breath grew shorter and heavier. She was panicking as her eyes reached out in despair to the boy she flew to the moon with once upon a time.  But he was too weak.

His eyes caved in and he fell back into his peace. “No, no, no. Wake up. Please, just look at me! PLEASE.” She pounded her fist against the glass but before she could watch the noise of her signal snap him back to life, she ran to her corner, defeated, to give her heart the space it needed to implode in on itself. This was a heart break she had never even dreamed was possible, but there it was. She couldn’t breathe or see or even think. Her happiness, her salvation was right in front of her and then torn from her just as fast as it came.
Faster.