Skeleton Book

She was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. From her glittering heels to her heart-shaped, dark-featured face, she simply seemed way too perfect for this imperfect world. Maybe that's why she did what she did. She just couldn't stand to be here anymore, and I get that. I can't stand to be here either. Especially when I know that it could've been my fault.

     I knew I recognized her from somewhere. She looked so familiar. Her dress, navy blue like the night, was adorned with a golden leafy pattern. And her hair, her waterfall of rich chocolate curls, cascaded all the way down to her hips. She was the perfect representation of timeless, carefree beauty, the kind any artist would crave to capture on canvas. That's when it hit me, then, where I had seen her before.

     And as I slowed my car down in a daze of shock, her stunning dress glittered briefly in my headlights before she took a step backwards and disappeared over the edge of the guard rail. I could hear the splattering crack of her impact with the pavement below as clear as day as I rushed out of my vehicle and ran to the edge of the overpass. It was a kind of sound so sickening that even now I still hear it whenever I close my eyes. 

     At first I couldn't do anything. I just stared at her lying there, broken and bleeding and still, until I became so dizzy I nearly fell off the overpass myself. I turned away from the edge just as I threw up on the side of the road. A car rushed past and blared its horn, as though to remind that this was not just some sick nightmare. This was real. I had to do something.

     I stumbled down the grassy sides of the exit ramp that led to the bridge and started to run out onto the highway. Traffic wasn't an issue I had to worry about. If you're like most people, you don't travel on a rural highway in the middle of Montana at two in the morning unless you absolutely have to be somewhere, or you have absolutely nowhere to go.

     I remember seeing a man already beside her, his car pulled over several feet away, warm exhaust fumes rising into the cold October night air. His shaking hands held a wavering flashlight over her body, revealing every gory detail of her impact with the road. It was excruciatingly clear that she was dead. Black spots danced at the edge of my vision as a feverish heat and icy chills spread throughout my body like poisonous vines. It was so quiet. I remember my dragging footsteps across the pavement sounding like falling rocks. The man must've heard me, because he turned around. The yellow beam of his flashlight momentarily blinded me as he asked, "Are you ok, miss?" I nodded. I couldn't really say anything else or I would've thrown up again, or burst out in tears, or both.

     The rest of the memory is still kind of blurry, but I have bits and pieces of it. Too much blood loss does that to your brain, I suppose. At least that's what the doctors say. First it's like there's a wall in your head, hiding something you absolutely need to know, and no matter how hard you try, you can't see anything behind it. It's truly agonizing. But, lucky for you, your wall happens to have holes in it, allowing pieces of random memories to escape. You just have to figure out how to put the puzzle back together. And the more pieces you place, the more you realize that you don't even want to finish it. But it's not like you have a choice. 

     That October night was the start of it all, though. It took the police a while to show up, after I finally remembered to call 9-1-1. Or maybe they showed up quickly; time didn't seem to be working properly then. The man, who's name I came to realize was Phillip, used his flashlight to signal the occasional car or truck around the scene. Several people stopped along the side of the highway to help, after they saw what was going on. It shocked me how just moments ago that this girl was a living, breathing human being, and now she was just another inanimate object, reduced to the degrading title of "the body". One woman said she had a blanket to move "the body" so it's out of the way of traffic. Another man said to leave "the body" until the authorities arrived. In the end, they left her lying in the road until the police showed up with an ambulance following close behind. Paramedic staff filed out, and, after barely checking her pulse, wrapped her in a body bag and shoved her in the back of the vehicle. The siren still droned on as they carried her away, even though they really had no reason to hurry now.

     The police asked us all questions, but especially targeted me. Apparently I was the only witness who actually saw her jump. When they finally finished, I arrived back home, where my concerned parents wrapped me in their arms. I had never felt more exhausted before - so drained of energy and life, that nothing else seemed to matter. I wanted to sleep, but I couldn't even close my eyes without being transported back to that overpass. I kept rewinding the memory of her eyes meeting mine with so much finality in her soft expression that I just knew that she was going to leave this horrible world forever. And I didn't even try to stop her.

     In the morning, it hit me like a ton of bricks that this was all too real. Icy dread snapped me into full alertness as I realized what I had forgotten to do when I arrived home last night. I sat up so fast my head spins, and I stumbled out of bed, my legs tangled in the covers. 

     I began to rifle through my drawers and tear through my closet and frantically feel under my bed. And then I finally found it, tucked away in a corner of my dust-covered shelf where it had lied unused for months now. My old sketchbook. Same purple floral cover with a coffee stain at the bottom, the top right corner bent a bit as a result of once constant use. And as I opened it, ever so slightly, I stifled a scream. 

     I toppled backwards and fell into my wall behind me with a solid thud that I was sure my parents must've heard. My sketchbook lied in front of me, turned over against my beige carpet so I couldn't see the pages. What the actual fuck? was the one thing that kept replaying over and over again in my mind until my mom came into my room and said, "Oh my God, honey, did something happen? Are you ok?" and I realized I'd been saying this out loud. 

     "Some-someone drew in my fucking sketchbook," I managed to choke out through my panicked breathing. 

     Normally, Mom would've scolded me for my language, but she seemed to sense my urgency as she picked up the sketchbook and began flipping through the pages. "Honey, these are beautiful. Did you draw these?"

     "Yeah, yes, but not the first page." I peered over her shoulder like a skittish rabbit as she flipped back to the front.

     "Oh my Lord, she's gorgeous." What the hell? I realized I'd been closing my eyes, and as I slowly opened them, I saw the picture was still the same, and I nearly wailed in despair. 

     "M-mom, how... how can you not see it?" (italicize)

     "See what? Are you ok? You look so pale." 

     By this point I had lost all means to respond. How could my mother not realize that the picture of the girl in the blue and gold dress I had drawn a year ago today was now, in fact, a skeleton?

     Like an actual drawing of a skeleton. It sent so many chills up my spine I thought I was going to freeze to death. I couldn't even look at her longer than a few seconds at a time, but each time I did she was draped in that beautiful dress that no longer fit her slim frame. And then her skull - expressionless, hairless, factured. The missing shards of it were actually drawn on the page, as though scattered about on the pavement she died upon. And the creepiest part of it all - there were no eraser marks. There was no evidence, anywhere, that my drawing of the beautiful dark-haired girl had ever existed. It was as if the drawing had changed by itself overnight.

     I apologise in advance, by the way. I still don't remember much after my "incident", but I remember enough. Enough to piece together why I did what I did, and enough to know that it didn't make a goddamn difference, anyways.

       I had thought I might've had PTSD, but what I was experiencing just didn't add up. Flashbacks were one thing, but I had a sick feeling the skeleton in my sketchbook was something else entirely. I felt as though I could never fully breathe anymore, as though an invisible noose was tightening around my throat, every time the explanations dwindled and facts blurred together with fiction. I'd never felt more alone, or more detached from reality. I feel as though I've been living in a movie ever since.

      The dates were never fiction, though, as I soon came to realize. They were never a coincidence. How could I be so naive to once convince myself that they were? They were there, on every corner of every page of my sketchbook. And once they were written, the people I had depicted had just one year left to live. No more, no less; the dates never lied. But they posed the inevitable question: Am I the killer? Did they die because I drew them? Or am I just the fortune teller? To this day I still have no clue.

      The rest I can remember in glimpses, like a slideshow. I can practically hear the projector whirring inside my head as slide after slide passes in front of my eyes, replaying the absolute worst moments of my life. It never ends. There's nothing I can do except watch.

      The memories aren't in order, but I've gotten good at rearranging them so they actually make sense. First there's the grocery store. I walk up to the entrance, breathless. I sit on a bench by the doors and I see him. The real-life version of the second drawing in my sketchbook. Black curls of hair fall across his pretty face as he looks down at his phone. He glances up at me for a moment with radiant storm-gray eyes, and I'm too terrified to even move. He walks in the store and I call after him, but it's too late. The trigger has already been pulled, and I'm already running.

      I remember glimpses of all their faces, but hardly the stories that go with them. It always seemed that I was the last to see them alive, and I remember the helpless, excruciating anguish that seemed to melt my bones whenever the thought reared its ugly head in my mind. I remember the smell of smoke, the peeling purple cover of the book that had once been one of my greatest sources of joy, withering away to ash as flames lick the pages. I had thrown all my art supplies into the growing blaze for good measure. I thought I would never draw again. 

      That didn't make it stop, though. They still died, and I realized that it would haunt me as long as I lived. The problem wasn't the sketchbook - it was me. I needed to end me. Then maybe, just maybe, all of it would stop. The panic that made my lungs stop working. The fear that made my heart stop working. The guilt that made my brain stop working. All of it. It was an odd sensation - it was though I were a balloon and couldn't stop floating away. I could never feel anything anymore, as if I were already dead - just a ghost of my former self. And that's when I knew it was time.

                                 . . . . . . 

     I crack open my crust-covered eyes and cringe inwardly. Was I crying in my sleep again? I rub my eyes as I sit up in my bed and wince at the glare of artificial light reflecting off sterile white walls. The small window behind my head lets in a trickle of morning sunlight, obstructed slightly by the branches of a leafy maple tree. The metal door clicks as chippy blonde Brinley enters, wearing her baby blue Nurse's uniform that matches my bedsheets. "Good morning, Vivian. How are you doing today?" 

     "Great," I say sarcastically, imitating her dazzling white smile, her teeth the same shade of unnatural white as the walls.

     She sets a styrofoam cup of water down on the little table beside my bed, along with the pills. When I just stare at her, she sighs, her enthusiasm stripped away in just a single breath. "You really should take them, you know."

     "They don't work."

     "We're trying to find the right combination of meds for you - "

     "They. Don't. Fucking. Work, " I say, clearly enunciating each word like a petulant child.

     "You need to take them anyway. Schizophrenia symptoms are (italicize) manageable..." she trails off as I continue to glare at her in defiance. She meets my stare with glittering green eyes. She's pretty, in a way. That is, when isn't being such a pain in the ass. She's new here, but she's learning to stand up to me. I guess I have to give her credit for that. "You can't have recreation time unless you take your medicine. You know that by now, right?"

     I continue to glare as I pop the pills in my mouth, one at a time. Recreation time is the only time I get to see Louise, one of the younger "prisoners" of the mental ward. She's only seven, but extremely smart for her age. Honestly, she's the only friend I have in here. 

     When I finish, Brinley scampers over and checks inside my cup of water, to make sure I didn't spit any of the pills out. "I need to change your bandages, too." She says, and doesn't wait for an answer as she gently peels the gauze off my wrists, revealing shining stitches over deep scars. For a moment she pauses, and I wonder if she's actually built up the nerve to ask me why I tried to kill myself. I try to formulate possible responses in my head, but there is no easy answer. I thought I might be a murderer, I could say. I wonder how she would respond to that. Thankfully, she never asked the question.

     I still wonder if everyone I drew in my sketchbook had actually died. I can't remember what the last date was. Part of me knows, deep down, that it actually happened. The memories are too real and traumatic for it to be fake. I still have to watch them die in every dream. Maybe there's still time to escape, to try and find them before it's too late, but I never could back then. How could I find them now? 

     But without people I had drawn on paper dying right in front of my eyes, the logical side of me nags at me to accept that this was all just a long nightmare. Maybe it was. I did go into a coma for a few days after all the blood loss. And I very well could be a schizophrenic. That would certainly explain a lot.

     Now I'm sitting down at a long, rectangular table, the kind I used to sit at in my school's cafeteria. Louise stands across from me, her tiny Asian face pinched in concentration as she diligently organizes my colored pencils, her delicate, long black hair pulled back into neat pigtails. I've always felt kind of sorry for her, and all the young kids who are here. Children don't deserve mental illness, but Louise handles her OCD surprisingly well. It used to be much, much worse, far worse than what I ever thought a kid's mental disorder could or should be. I'm glad she's getting better now. But I don't know if I can say the same for myself.

      I've finally finished drawing her again. Same soft coffee-brown eyes and rich dark chocolate curls. Same navy blue dress like a dark waterfall with dancing golden leaves woven into the fabric. But the more I color, blue and gold and brown, the more she becomes less and less alive, slowly turning to bone. I guess that's one thing the meds can't fix. 

      Louise bounces around to my side of the table, like an eager, hyperactive frog. She always likes to admire my finished drawings, and I usually let her keep them, though I never draw people that much anymore. I only ever draw the people I've drawn beforehand, and I keep those pictures in my "room". Nurse Brinley, positive as always, compliments my drawings day after day, completely oblivious, just like everyone else, to what I really see every time I look at them.

      Now Louise peers over my shoulder, and out of the corner of my eye, I see her brow furrow in confusion. And then she laughs, a sweet and innocent sound, and I imagine flower petals falling from a tree of spring blossoms. But the moment of bliss is fleeting. "Ewww, why'd you draw a skeleton, Vivian?" she says between giggles, and my blood freezes in an instant. "That's sooo creepy!"