You’d Be Better Off Dead

The sun glistens as it lays to rest on top of the horizon. The warm breeze shivers up and down my spine.

I hear my voice shrill, ‘Fine then! You’d be better off dead!’

And as my voice echoes around the bridge, suffocating us, Olive sinks down in slow motion, her clothes attempting to morph into a parachute and a single tear reaching down her cheek.

Nikole inhales slowly and then pats her lap. She’s staring into my soul with a deafening condescension. My file is held tightly in her grip and she squeezes the corners as she talks.

‘Do you know why we’re here today?’

I look at her. I open my mouth, but no words fall out. I look down. I’m blinking too much. One. Pause. Two. Pause. Three.

‘Do you remember- do you remember that day with your sister?’

‘Olive’, my teeth clatter.

‘Yes, Olive,’ she smiles, grimacing her teeth, ‘what lovely names you both have.’

The sun glistens as it lays to rest on top of the horizon. The warm breeze shivers up and down my spine. The crackling leaves crunching under my feet with each step.

Olive is sitting on the edge of the bridge, as if she is looking for the strength to jump. She is stroking her arm now, like a tiger rejecting his stripes. I reach my arm out towards her as I approach.

‘Olive?’ my voice whimpers in the air.

Olive’s body, standing up, turns abruptly and she is falling down now. Further and further from my grasp.

‘You’d be better off dead!’ my echo hisses back at me.

‘Did you know your sister was suicidal?’

I’m looking down at the floor, tap-tap-tapping my feet.

‘Jude?’

The clock on the wall is ticking, as the hand stops still with each second. It’s like an incessant drum, reminding me of the present. The one where she’s not here. No, she’s still alive. She is. She’s still alive. She has to be.

Nikole is suddenly kneeling in front of me, holding me in restraints as she pretends to soothe me.

‘Jude, where are you now?’

The sun glistens as it lays to rest on top of the horizon. The warm breeze shivers up and down my spine. The crackling leaves crunching under my feet with each step.

Olive is sitting on the edge of the bridge. Tears are dripping gently from her eyelids. I need to help her. I walk slowly towards her.

‘Olive?’ I whisper.

‘Please,’ Nikole’s voice pierces my soul as she rubs my skin raw, ‘count with me. One-‘

My bedroom door slams open hitting the wall with a massive thud. I jump in my skin.

‘Hey, Jude, what are you doing?’ Olive asks as she slivers towards me.

I show her my art, making sure to pay special attention to the Bob Ross ones, as his guidance always make me feel more talented.

Olive slumps down on my bed, holding up my paintings as if she is presenting them to herself. A smile creeps onto the side of her mouth. I haven’t seen one of her smiles for a while and so one creeps onto mine too. I shake the smile off my face. I don’t want to embarrass her or anything.

‘I love your art. You should be an artist one day’.

I chuckle quickly and look down, protesting my gratitude. Olive yawns, stretching her arms up toward the sky. Her sleeve retracts, revealing Olive’s new artwork. I frown and all the air slinks out of my body. Olive quickly drags her arms down, covering them up again with her deep, black cardigan sleeves. She exhales and squeezes her arms across her body.

‘It’s none of your business,’ she hisses.

‘It’s definitely my business when you choose to hurt someone I love’, my voice hisses back, as my body retracts within itself.

‘Jude, you’d never understand. You’re too young’, Olive mutters as she turns away from me, ‘Life is just so hard sometimes…’

‘Fine then!’ my voice screams as my body shivers erratically, ‘Just do it then! You’d be better off dead!’

Olive looks at me with her eyes drooping wide. My lip quivers.

‘Olive, I’m-‘, I start to utter.

Within a millisecond, Olive is already out of my sight and I hear the front door slam downstairs. My only resolve is that I know where Olive will go.

‘Jude, remember the grounding techniques I taught you,’ Nikole stares me down, ‘What do you see? What can you touch? What can you-‘

‘Why would you say that to me, Jude?’

‘I don’t know,’ I mutter, shuffling my feet behind me.

Olive inhales sharply and wipes the tears off from her face.

‘Give me a hand, will ya?’ she asks, in a high-pitched moan, squeezing her jaw into a smile.

She stands up. I reach my hand out. She starts to turn around. I step forward to give her my hand. Branch. I trip. I land my fall. She does not.

‘Where did you go, Jude?’

I’m crying. Nikole is sitting next to me, having moved her chair next to mine, and she shoves a box of tissues on the table towards me.

‘Are you-‘

The sun glistens as it lays to rest on top of the horizon. The warm breeze shivers up and down my spine. The crackling leaves crunching under my feet with each step, like sounds of bones breaking.

Bones breaking.

Olive is falling now. Is she-?

‘Jude!’ Olive screeches in pain, ‘Jude! Oh, my fucking god! I think I broke my leg!’

I pick my legs up one by one and peer over the bridge’s ledge. My Olive, my sister, lays on the train tracks below.

‘Jude! What are you doing?! Help me!’ Olive’s voice shrieks from below, reaching up towards me like floating, glistening sharp shards, reaching down my throat, slicing it from the inside.

Train smoke rises from the horizon as nails imbed into my feet. The real me desperately grasping at my body to move. To do something. To do anything. The chug-chug-chugging of the train getting louder and louder and louder and louder.

‘JUDE!’ Olive’s voice pierces the bubble smothering me. The nails are no longer in my feet. My throat no longer cut. I race down to the tracks.

‘Olive…’ my voice trails off into the wind as I stare at my sister, who is no longer my sister, lying on the train tracks, alone, cold and frightened.