Her

I never believed in God as a child.

In fact, I would sit idly, fantasising about the crack in my grandmother’s living room ceiling, wanting it to split open and cave in. I would picture the plaster crumbling over, breaking as many bones in my little body as possible. Just so she could stop boring me about this religious bloke who, apparently, was the best thing since sliced bread. She would try to educate me on all the healing he had done in the world, and all the wonderful things he had planned for my future.

Unfortunately for her, it went in one ear and out the other.

She’d go on for hours about forgiveness, about how no sin was too great unless you repented. I used to wonder if that meant she would forgive me for skipping Sunday school or for stealing the odd five-pound note from her purse to buy sweets.

I never asked her.

She passed away a few days before my eighteenth birthday. I had planned to tell her the truth about the things I did behind her back, not for her to forgive me, but to see if she’d practice what she had preached. But she was gone before I found the courage.

I had sat in the back of the church during her funeral, hands clenched in my lap as the ceiling pressed down on me, remembering the last night I had seen her alive. Guilt flooded my trembling body as various memories of us flashed before me. Then, the last memory of us.

We had decided to take a last-minute stroll, sometime in the evening, down the canal and across a bridge that overlooked a beautiful, small waterfall that ran down into a lake. A quiet area where the swans would raise their young. The perfect, peaceful getaway.

I never told anyone what had happened that night. Simply, because I couldn’t remember. But the story I told the police sounded close enough. The version I told was easier to swallow. And the police labelled it as “an accident”. And my family said it was “just bad luck”. But sometimes I replay it in my head, and every time it feels…different? A stumble, a blur of movement, and then the sickening splash.

Maybe I could have stopped it. Maybe I couldn’t. I wasn’t so sure.

A couple of weeks had passed. The flowers had wilted, and the cards had collected dust. The canal had just become another place on the map. And the memory of her was fading. But it never left me. It couldn’t. I left town soon after.

I had told people it was because I needed a fresh start. And after a while, I convinced myself it was true. A new town meant a new job, with new people. A new me. But the new town was smaller, quieter. And my flat overlooked a small churchyard. A beautiful, small yard that the trees embraced with pride and where the headstones sat quietly. My new job wasn’t so bad either. I worked in a café, pouring tea and clearing tables, making occasional small talk with the customers. It was what I had needed. A place where nobody knew me, where nobody asked questions.

It was peaceful. At least, it should’ve been.

But the little things began to follow me.

And the guilt quietly crept in through the cracks.

I returned home from work one day, finding the kitchen faucet flowing freely. The plug stuck to the bottom. The sink brimmed as water spilt over the counter in slow, deliberate drops onto the floor, almost hauntingly. Mocking me. I shuffled over with furrowed brows, instantly switching it off.

I didn’t remember turning it on. My lips pressed tight as I tilted my head from side to side, a silent refusal. My chest tightened, but I pushed it away to one side and refused to let it get to me.

Soon, the swans came. And I began seeing them everywhere, in places they didn’t belong. With their eyes sharp and watchful, studying me with distaste. I found them in paintings that hung eerily around the town, they found their way onto book covers, slipped their way inside and with each flick of the page, it twisted my stomach into knots. Again, I shoved the thoughts away.

I began attending the church not long after, not in desperation, but for the silence. Possibly some answers. The stillness felt like a shield from my thoughts, closing away the chaos. The priest spoke to us, to me, about mercy. About forgiveness. How it waited patiently for every sinner. I wanted to believe it. I had to.

Yet I couldn’t.

Because if forgiveness were real, the memory of her hand slipping from mine in the night and the sound of the water swallowing her whole wouldn’t still claw at me. Cold and relentless. Purposely following me everywhere I turned to.

The days bled into one another, as colour drained from each passing moment until everything blurred into a dull, lifeless haze. I dragged myself through each day, trying to keep my head afloat. Each step muffled, the sound growing distant. I forced myself to work, to keep myself from seeing things, desperate to keep my mind from straying to the places she clung to. But there was always that undercurrent, that weight pressing from somewhere inside, pulling me backwards towards something I couldn’t escape from.

Then she started to visit me.

At first, it was only in dreams. Quick flashes of her face as she hovered over me, just beyond reach. But soon, she was pulling me from sleep, forcing me to see her as though she was there.

She would stand in the corner, where the shadows grew the darkest. Her eyes were dull with an empty look I couldn’t bear to face, and I would often feel the tips of her trembling fingers as they brushed against mine in desperation. My limbs would still as she neared, holding my breath in hopes she wouldn’t come any closer, hoping she would see the fear she struck inside me. But the second I found the courage to confront her, to reach and to pull her close, needing her to know how sorry I was, she would vanish - leaving me with the shadows and the sound of my raspy breath.

I told myself I was imagining her. That it was grief and how it loved to play tricks on the mind. And reassuring myself that it was normal for my room to reek faintly of the canal, the same stench that clung to the night I lost her. I couldn’t seem to shake the guilt that came with it.

Out of nowhere, it all got too much. I stopped going to work. Stopped opening the door. The hours turned into days, and days turned into weeks. And I would find myself sitting at my window for hours, glaring into the churchyard and studying the headstones, waiting for something. I’m not sure what I was waiting for. But sometimes I would see her leaning against one as she tilted her chin with her glassy eyes as though she was listening. My lips moved without meaning, words spilling too softly for even me to understand.

Until one day, the words sharpened into a chant I couldn’t stop. ‘I’m not guilty. You know that, don’t you?’ But the longer I repeated, the less I believed them. The tone in my voice shifted.

I decided I couldn’t keep up with this town anymore. The noise, the people and the heavy weight of her eyes that stuck on me like glue. So, I left and went back home. Maybe there, I would find peace in the silence of the old walls and empty rooms. Something I had been trying to grasp since the incident.

I should’ve gone home. I knew that. But instead, I found myself wandering further into the night, down a familiar path that seemed longer than I remembered, down the canal. Each step echoed in my ears as the mist clung to me, heavy and damp. I refused to turn around. I didn’t mind the cool air as it seeped through my clothes. I needed it to gnaw at me. The same way the memories did. The way she did.

My feet stopped in the exact spot we had stood together, my grandmother and I, just before it happened. Suddenly, the water began to whisper below the bridge, as the black mirror beneath refused to give me back my reflection as I searched for one. My lips closed tightly as the silence pressed closer, as if waiting for me to fill the void. I couldn’t stay quiet.

‘You once told me,’ my voice raw, ‘that God would forgive you, no matter the sin.’

The words scratched my throat as I forced them out. I felt childish, like I needed to confess the truth. However, I held my breath; I didn’t want my confession to sound pathetic. Childish.

The mist shifted. And for a split second, I swore I saw her. Her face was lost in shadow as her damp jacket clung to her despite the night air howling beside her. I pressed my palms flat against the rail, hard enough for the rust to bite into my skin.

And the anger erupted from me as I spat at her. ‘You lied!’

The wind blew harder, creating a storm that ruffled and ruined my hair, irritating me further. Though it didn’t seem to bother her. My shoulders shivered, but not from the air. Rage, guilt, grief. It clashed violently altogether.

‘I killed you!’ An animalistic hiss spewed from within. “And I repented. But he hasn’t forgiven me. You haven’t forgiven me.”

And then it was done. The truth came out just like that, and although it burned the pit inside my stomach, the wind slowed, coming to a calm rumble.

Until it was finally clear to me.

I killed her. Not God, not fate. But me. Her very own flesh and blood.

For so long, I told myself stories that only I wanted to hear, to believe that it wasn’t my fault. That I wasn’t involved in her death. That God, or fate, would share the weight of what had happened.

But the truth was simple. She was there, with me. I chose to do it as she stood beside me. And she died because of me. It was quick, but it was cruel. And I had to live with the chilling replay of the hitch in her breath, as my name caught at the back of her throat.

And I did live with it. As the world span indifferently. As if I didn’t take everything from her. In a way, God gave me another chance. He gave me another sunrise. He let me wake up. He let me breathe in a new town, with new faces, new streets. It was a fresh start.

But clean? No. Not clean.

Because she was always there. Every time I closed my eyes, she stood hopelessly in the shadows, and her steps echoed behind mine. And when I begged for forgiveness, she would point her delicate, damp fingers towards me, accusingly.

If this was God’s mercy, then it was cruel. To let me walk, to let me smile, to let me pretend – making me start fresh, when he knows damn well the past doesn’t stay buried.

I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing my palms harder under my bones that ached as unwanted thoughts flooded throughout, drowning me in nothing but regret.

I opened my eyes slowly, staring idly at the water as it refused to hold still, as though even the canal didn’t want me.

‘Punishment,’ I mumbled to myself, finally understanding, ‘to live, to keep living. He let me start fresh, but he will never let me become clean…’

And at that exact moment, for the very first time,

I believed in God.