SGQ - Vignette #1 - "Ellie's Road"

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Cold. Dark. A drifting mist of memory and emotion. You are utterly alone.

It wasn't always this way. With each passing moment you felt those memories slipping away more and more, like grasping handfuls of fog, nothing seemed to last. There were a few burning memories you *could* hold on to.

It's early evening. It's May. It's 1959. You're cold, but too excited to be cold. Your symphony is the gentle thrumming of crickets in the wooded countryside around your house. You pull your small shawl closer around your arms and wish your legs were similarly protected. But it doesn't matter, you're *So* excited. Tonight is prom night, and tonight Cliff will be picking you up soon.

Cliff.

You kick up a heel and spin in place on the dirt driveway to your house, careful not to get dirt on the tops of your shoes or the hem of your pink dress. You just can't help it. Cliff! He really was more than you deserved. He was handsome, dreamy really, kind, intelligent, brave. Cliff's been talking a lot about the football scholarship he's set to receive and the school's he's weighing. He's even talked about going into politics. How exciting! Cliff's father is a veteran and a war hero, Cliff himself is a football star with excellent grades. A few years of school and he could be well on the way to becoming governor, or maybe senator! You close your eyes and spin again, thinking of what it would be like to be the governor's wife. You'd attend parties, you'd have insightful views on relevant issues.

Your spin comes to an end and you look down at your dress and yourself again, laying a hand on your stomach. It's flat for now, but you know that won't last for long. You've missed your past few periods and really the timing can't be a coincidence. When you were younger your grandmother told you that 'girls just know' when they're pregnant. And you know. You've never been more sure of anything. While part of you was sad that you and Cliff hadn't waited, you also knew that God would forgive you. Your mother had had you young as well, young enough that you'd done the math and determined she had likely gotten pregnant before marrying your father.

It was okay. Before Governor, but after prom, Cliff and you would be married. You'd visited the travel agency in Lasker City and looked at honeymoon destinations. Of course, you'd couched them to the agents there as 'graduation gifts' but you half-suspected one of the women there had an inkling of what you were thinking about. Maybe Florida would be nice, a tropical get away. You hoped the heat wouldn't bother you or the baby too much.

The tranquility of the night was broken by the rumble of a car engine.

You look down the road, slightly uphill and saw the two beams of headlights stabbing the light and cutting a path toward you.

You clasp your handbag closer to yourself and beam back. One prom night seemed to stand a gateway between you and your future with cliff.

The purring engine of the car doesn't slow down. Maybe it wasn't cliff.

You frown, people didn't usually travel this way, especially at night, although it could be one of your neighbors enjoying a night drive. You squint into the light trying to make out the make of the car as it passes.

It doesn't pass you. The vehicle jerks sharply left, crossing the center of the road, pinning you in the headlights. You open your mouth and take a step back and then you are moving, legs smashing into the front grill, head bouncing off the hood. You somehow feel your high heels fly off into the night as you go airborne over the vehicle. For a moment, you hang weightless before crashing to the ground, the grass in the ditch pressed to your face, you feel the trickle of blood come from your hairline, drawing a blood line across your face that soon becomes a sheet as the bleeding increases. For some reason, your first though is that you'll have to redo your makeup.

You try to sit up and then you feel the pain. A rippling explosion of fire through your body, your legs are pillars of flame that twist together into a white-hot knot of incoherent screaming in your hips. Your right arm won't move and you can't turn your head. But you can scream. Or you can try to.

You let out a quiet squeak that turns into a sob, tears mix with blood and you are unable to speak, you draw in a breath that feels like fire and water.

You somehow hear the idling of a car engine nearby, that gentle knocking sound. You again try to turn your head, to beg for help. Please, call my parents, call Cliff, call an ambulance for my baby.

You hear the sound of glass on pavement. A bottle falling to the road and then a car door slams and the engine revs.

A beer bottle rolls into the ditch beside you, leaking its golden contents into the dirt as the car roars away.

You sob and suck in another fiery breath, your vision doubling and fading. The pain so intense you can no longer think, you're drawn into a world of hurting and darkness. It takes you almost fifteen minutes to die.

After that, your memory is unclear. You remember walking, the world around you dark. A car's headlights break the horizon, coming your way. You stop, staring at the oncoming light. Cliff? Your dress is torn, dirty, bloody, but Cliff won't mind. Cliff loves you.

The car nears and you reach out to it, almost floating into the road. Cliff.

The vehicle brakes hard, tries screaming on the road and it swerves, almost, but not quite enough to miss you.

You watch the hood and body pass through you without slowing, you hear the terrified screaming of the occupants, and then you stand in the road and watch the car speed away, the world fading to darkness again. Cliff? The years move faster than your nights, time loses meaning for you. In your rare moments of lucidity, you walk the roads, looking for Cliff like he would look for you. Knowing that one day he'll be the one in the car, and instead of screaming through you, he'll stop and let you in.

The fog is again replaced by darkness but it's not the open road that greets you. It's a girl in black, with black hair in her face. She's staring at you, eyes wide beneath her hair.

She's the first person you've seen in so long. Certainly the first one to not drive past you.

"Hello," you say, "Um. Who are you?"

She struggles for words for a moment. "Alice, I wanted to uh. To talk to you."

You tilt your head, "To me? About what?" You weren't interesting. You were very much regular. You were much more interested in who this girl was, and why she looked like she'd gone to a funeral recently.

"Do you know what happened to you?" she asks.

"Happened?" you ask.

"Yes, what's it like to be dead?" Alice asks.

A shock of cold hits you, the years flooding back. Blood pouring down your battered face. The helplessness of being left behind, the quiet 'chugging' of an emptying beer bottle the only sound but the crickets.

"Dead!?" you blurt. The blood is dripping onto your dress now. You take a step back and put a hand to your cheek, coming away coated in blood. "Oh my god!?" Your balance goes, you feel the weightless tumble of being thrown over a speeding car, broken limbs tumbling. "Oh my god!" your voice sounds far away. "What's happening to me?" Oblivion is coming to take you, the tide of time coming in to cover these painful memories in quieting fog.

Then this girl, Alice, is in front of you, kneeling beside you, her eyes are kind, her voice patient. "Ellie," she says, "You died."

You feel the echo of pain from that night, the night you'd tried so hard to forget. After all, you just wanted to see Cliff again. You take a sobbing breath, tears on your face. "How do you know my name?" You become aware of your surroundings. The rolling grassy hills, the silent stone markers. You look behind you and see the gravestone that bears your name. "No!" you gasp. There will be no governor's mansion, no baby carriages, no prom dances, no late night walks. No future. No Cliff.

"It's true," Alice says. "You've been dead a long time. Everyone knows about you!" She sounds like she's discussing a celebrity. The strangeness of this is enough to draw you out of your self-pity.

"What?" you ask "What do you mean?"

Alice thinks a moment before speaking. "People say that you died on prom night. Waiting for your boyfriend to pick you up-"

"Cliff," You supply, and he's so much more than just 'your boyfriend'. He was your future.

"You died from a cliff?" Alice asks.

"His *name* was Cliff," you say, the hint of irritation in your voice. He was your world, he was your reason for being.

"Well they say you wander the road every year on that same night," Alice says, suddenly stopping to listen to the still night. "But she's understanding me. Seems like she's remembering."

"Who are you talking to?" you ask, tears forgotten, your attention focused on this strange girl, forgetting the fog you live in.

Alice doesn't answer right away but she does lay a hand on your back, so warm it almost makes you ache. "I'm sorry, Ellie. I thought you knew."

Knew? How could you? You couldn't hold your memories any more than you could hold water in your hands. What were your parents' names? Who is the president? What year were you born? You know that you can answer this last one by looking at the date on your tombstone, but the answer is not in your mind, buried within the ocean of forgetting. You shake your head.

"You've been like this a long time. What has it been like?" Alice asks, again that sick curiosity edging out.

You sniff. "Cold," you say, trying to recall exactly how long you've been wandering alone. "Lonely. I just . . . " you fight for meaning. "I miss Cliff so much." Cliff would forever be the pair of headlights on the horizon, threatening to drive back the night. The warm interior of his car, a smile on his face and the soft strains of music on the radio.

"Is there anything I can do you for, Ellie?" Alice asks.

The first person in so logn that's talked to you, the first person you've spoken to since the accident. What can she do? She can't take you from this nightmare, she can't make Cliff come to you- or can she? "Can you help me find Cliff?" Hope burns you.

Alice hesitates. "Why not?"

"You'll do it?" you ask, thinking again of the joy you'll feel to see Cliff again.

Alice tilts her head in confusion, "What do you mean?"

You blink, was Alice like you? Was she forgetting? She was still your best hope. "I mean are you going to help me?"

Alice frowns, eyes distant. "I don't understand."

"What?" you ask, repeating your request. "I want you to help me find my boyfriend."

Alice sits silent for a few minutes. "No?"

A stab of pain lances through you. The only person who you can talk to, the only one in a vast sea of dark emptiness and she's abandoning you. Tears are threatening to come, you've come so far to be broken at this last minute. "But . . . You said . . ."

"What?" Alice asks, looking at a point over your shoulder, eyes unfocused, listening.

You study her face careful, watching emotions play over it, her expression shifting subtly to distaste.

"You mean ghosts?" Alice says.

Ghosts. A word for what's happened to you now. A fairy tale turned real. Dangerously real. Maybe that is what you were, maybe that's why Alice couldn't hear you anymore.  "Are you talking to someone else?" you ask, puzzled by what else could be happening.

"That sounds like something Holly would do," Alice says, frowning.

Holly? Who? "Alice?" you ask.

"Yes," she says, eyes on you again like she'd forgotten you. "Sorry."

Was she insane? Was that why she could see you since you . . . Since you died? "What are you doing out here anyway?" you ask, "Why did you find me?"

"Well," Alice rocks her head side to side, a finger pressed to her bottom lip while she is clearly lost in thought. "This is sort of the stuff that I'm into."

"Dead things?" You ask, suddenly overwhelmed with the sense that you were, or had become a waste, or a burden.

Alice responds honestly, "Yeah."

Shrugging, you trace a finger around in the grass beside her, the blood on your face and dress starting to dry into a caked mess.

"Would it be alright if I came back to visit you sometimes?" Alice asks.

"Visit me?" you ask, blinking through tear and blood-streaked makeup.

"I might not have any answers to help you immediately," Alice says apologetically, "but it might be nice to have someone to talk to, you know? Plus, we might find a way for you to attach yourself to an object for a little while, so you could get outside for a bit . . . "

You sniff again and wipe at your nose before nodding. The fog of your past had receded so far that you felt yourself at the end of a decades long pier, alone with nothing but miles of misery behind you. "I'd like that. Now that I've talked to you . . . I remember. I've been here for so long."

"And I will try to help you. Maybe we can even find Cliff."

For the first time you can remember since that horrible night, you smile. "Thank you, Alice. You're kind."

Alice looks startled that you would say that. "Ellie, I have to go," she says "My sister will worry about me."

You stiffen up a bit, feeling a knot of fear in your gut, "Please don't be long. I get lonely out here."

"I'll try my best. Bye, Ellie. Don't be sad, okay?" she says.

You sniff one last time. "I'll try." Alice doesn't look away as the world around you melts to shadow, that limitless cold overtaking you once again. This time though there's something you didn't have before. You look down and, cupped in your hands is a small park. A spark of light and warmth. A spark of remembrance. A spark of hope. A spark given to you by a girl named Alice. The hope that you would see Cliff again. The promise that you weren't forgotten.

"Thank you," You close your eyes, a hot tear running down your cheek, "Alice."