An eternal dusk

Things felt different now. Sacha couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but there was something in the air, like a memory long forgotten that clung to the tips of her hair and down the hem of her dress. The falling night smelled like sadness, like regret. Something wasn’t right. She just didn’t know exactly what was wrong yet.

Sacha had been in the dark about a lot of things since her birth a few months ago. The feeling wasn’t new, per se. But it had never been so strong. She could almost taste it now, almost touch it. It smelled like freedom, like a whole new world opening, a strange world with strange lights and strange sounds. Sacha was curious, of course. Maybe a little bit scared.

Where she lived, things were always grey and dull. There was nothing to do but walk around in circles, whispering to herself the same meaningless little words, trying to decipher their sense. “I’ll love you forever”, she’d recite, like an old mantra that has lost its meaning. “Please come see me one day. I think maybe you’d love me too.”

The only interesting parts were the rips. It was like the fabric itself of her little grey universe got torn apart, and suddenly there was light, sounds, life coming in through the breach. That’s when Sacha got to see her dad. “Hi,” she’d tell him, smiling radiantly – he was so tall, so strong! she felt like no one would ever be as safe as she was there with him – “my name is Sacha. I’m seven years old and a half (I will be eight years old in four months and three days). I’m writing this letter to you because you are my daddy.”

***

As the night fell, Sacha watched the grey walls of her little universe slowly dissolve into a colourful setting. This was like nothing she had ever seen before. There was no rip; her world simply seemed to melt away into the other one, the living one – the one where her father was. Suddenly she was part of it as well, little Sacha in her little white dress, scribblings of ink dripping over the fabric and painting her skin black.

It was a loud world, messy, agitated. The sky was pitch-dark by the time Sacha could make out her surroundings, but there were lights all around, making the streets glow an eerie red-golden light. Children were running and laughing all around her, and the air smelled sweet, like candy, like fun. She could still taste the sadness at the back of her throat, though – the regret that tethered her to this place. To her dad.

Sacha wasn’t in any rush. She sat herself in a dark corner of her dad’s garden and watched as the children came up trick-or-treating to his door, watched as he gave them candy and winked at them in his vampire costume as they ran away laughing. She had never had the time to watch him like this – happy, relaxed. When she came to visit he was always sad and bitter, and he tried to chase her away, shaking his head no as she clung to him desperately, asking him to visit her, asking him to love her.

When the children started to retreat, and the night settled for good, she made her way to the front door. It felt weird, to exist like that outside of her dad’s immediate thoughts. It felt like she had all the time in the world before her, and no script to follow. And yet what could she say, other than her script?

“Hi”, she told her dad when he opened the front door, “my name is Sacha.”

For the longest while, he didn’t move, looking at her as if he had seen a ghost, unblinking, unbreathing. The silence stretched on and on, until a light breeze pushed Sacha inside the house, past her father and onto a large sofa. She sat and tilted her head.

“I’m writing this letter to you because you are my daddy”, she explained again, as her father slowly closed the door, inch by inch, as if hoping she would hop up and disappear right through the closing gap. “Mommy told me everything.”

He stayed silent. Sacha had almost never heard her dad’s voice. But she had almost never stayed that long with him either. Tonight, she was more than a ghost, more than the shell of a few words written on a sheet of paper. Anything was possible.

“You never came to see me”, she added, hoping to get a response. Her dad crossed into the kitchen, pulling a bottle of amber liquid out of a low cabinet and pouring himself a glass. “I think you just forgot! I forget a lot too, don’t worry. I understand.”

“Mommy says that it’s because I didn’t want to see you both”, he finished in a low, raspy voice, echoing the words that little Sacha had written so long ago. “But she’s just being mean. You think I just needed a reminder. Surely I’ll be here next Thanksgiving to eat the turkey with you!”

They stayed silent for a while after that. The whole situation felt surreal to Sacha. But it felt good, as well, like there was a little bird flapping its wings inside her chest, warming her up from the inside. She had always been so cold, ever since she was born. The warmth made her feel bold. Powerful.

“We didn’t have a turkey on Thanksgivings”, she decided to tell him in the end. That wasn’t in the script, but it felt right to let him know. “That’s what’s been crossed out. ‘Mommy makes us turkey breasts, because we could never eat a whole turkey!’ But Sacha hoped that if you came, the three of you would be enough to eat the entire turkey, like the other families.”

He frowned. “Sacha hoped?”, he repeated. “Aren’t you Sacha?”

She squirmed on the sofa, smoothing out the folds on her white paper-dress. “I’m Sacha’s letter,” she tried to explain. “I’m all the words she put on paper, and all the feelings that came along with the ink, and I’m all of what you felt reading this letter as well. Not really her… but to you, close enough. I’m all you’ve ever known of her.”

***

Sacha – she called herself Sacha, it was much simpler and much prettier than “Sacha’s letter’s ghost” – had been born on the day that her physical representation had died, thrown into a fire and left to burn slowly, the paper curling and blackening as the words disappeared from its surface. That hadn’t been too long ago, but the letter itself had known a lengthy life before that.

Sacha had plenty of useless memories, of staring at the inside of a wooden cabinet, hoping to be picked up once more, hoping to be seen, read, accounted for. The words seemed like they burned hotter the longer they went unanswered. “Please come see me one day”, little Sacha had written in her naïve faith. “I think maybe you’d love me too”.

The letter had been forgotten, stashed far away and left to rot for all eternity. No doubt it was pure accident that led to its rediscovery. It was decades later by then – decades too late. The letter was burned, and out of its ashes rose Sacha, along with a newly found guilt, a lingering sadness that followed her everywhere, defined her. She had once been all hope and candor. Years later, the childish words written on her dress had taken a sour understanding – a cynic disenchantment.

Life as a ghost, however, had mostly been more of the same as the cabinet. She existed in her small, grey world, forever running in circles, forever repeating the same words. “Lots of love, Sacha”, she would say again and again, trying to understand the complex waves of emotions that overwhelmed her when she did.

It was the rips that gave it all meaning. The colors that invaded her universe ever so briefly, the unabashed intensity of every action. Her dad, on the other side of the breach. Trying to reach him through any means possible, getting him to notice her, to answer her, to accept her. When had she ever known any other reason for living?

***

They sat in silence, though Sacha would have loved for them to talk more. Her dad didn’t seem to know what to make of her, now that she was finally here in front of him, a ghost made flesh and blood. He had spent months avoiding her, shying away from her touch, her voice, her words. Sacha had thought that it had meant something – that were she to be close to him for more than a few minutes, then something would break inside of him. Then something would happen.

The word was warm and vibrant, that at least was good. Even in the quiet of the night, it was livelier than her ghost universe. There was a fire in the corner of the living room, crackling happily…

“Why did you throw me into the fire?” she asked without thinking. That was off script. Completely so. Yet with the intoxicating air of that special night in her lungs, she felt compelled to ask. Desperate to know.

He seemed surprised. “You… the letter, you mean?”

She nodded. His eyes wandered around her tiny frame, her white dress covered in words that they both knew by heart. It had been blackening steadily for a while now, burned by an invisible fire, some of the words blurring on the edges. Her time was limited, she knew that now. All magical nights have an end, and she’d be gone with the dawn.

“You reminded me of unpleasant memories”, he settled for after a beat. “Of missed opportunities… a path I didn’t take.”

“A path you regret not taking”, she acknowledged. He shook his head no, but she could feel it right inside her chest, the pang of guilt, the bittersweet regret. “You do. You never came to see me.” She closed her eyes, remembered Sacha and the way she had smiled while writing her letter. “I think you just forgot! Again, and again… you kept forgetting, daddy, didn’t you? All day, every day.”

“I did come. To see you… Sacha, I mean. It was years ago now… years after that letter though. You were all grown up, you know? A beautiful young woman. You didn’t need me anymore.”

He was wrong. She didn’t know how to explain it to him: the profound longing, rooted deep in her bones, the eagerness for anything that he might be willing to give her. She pictured little Sacha, writing at her desk, and the ferocious need and love that had burned inside her tiny chest, that had passed onto her letter and kept burning bright all those years.

“That’s not true”, she managed to say in a bare whisper. “I’ll always need you.”

“I came”, he repeated. “But by the time I came, it was too late. There was no place left for me in your life. No hole where a father could have fit nicely…”

“No hole”, she echoed, and then she was angry all of a sudden, as if some reserve of bitterness and rage had just uncovered inside of her, “no place? Look at me. Look at me! I’m that hole, forever empty, forever scarred. I’m that empty grave where a father should have been. How dare you?”

She stood up, and it felt somehow like the world had stood up with her, like the night was hers to control, like she could do absolutely anything. “You left me”, she said. “You were never there to begin with. You never even tried to see if you’d love me. How dare you? How dare you? I didn’t deserve a father like you.”

There was a deafening silence. Her dad finished his glass in one long gulp, and grimaced, and closed his eyes. “No”, he agreed, “you didn’t. She didn’t.”

I’ll love you forever, she thought, yet the words didn’t pass her mouth. She tried to imagine little Sacha growing up, growing free and strong and one day, one day facing her father and telling him she didn’t need him anymore.

“What was she like?” she asked. “Sacha, when you saw her.”

He let out a small, sad little laugh. “She looked tough. But nice, you know? Fierce and eager. She wanted nothing to do with me though. I didn’t get to know her well.”

She couldn’t picture it, try as she might. “Please come see me one day”, she recited softly. “I think maybe you’d love me too.”

***

The colors started fading right as the night was brightening up. Sacha cleared her throat without really knowing why, watching as a grey filter started to dull the vibrant décor around her.

“You’re fading”, said her dad, even though it was actually the opposite happening.

“Dawn is breaking. I’ll be back, though. Next year, perhaps… and every time you’ll think of me in between. I’ll wait for the rips. I’ll come say hi…”

He clenched his jaw. “You should leave me alone. This is all in the past now, all done, no possible remedies. It’s too late. Let me have my peace.”

“I don’t make that choice”, she told him. “I don’t control the rips. You do. You’re the one who’s not letting this go.” She got up, touched his chest right in the middle “There’s too much regret in here. I can feel it, you know? It weighs on me just as it does you. I’m your very own ghost, I suppose. The shadow of a letter written years ago by your daughter… and now it’s just you and me. A ghost and a lost man.” She smiled up at him, at his fading features. “My name is Sacha. Call me Sacha, please.”

She could see the denial and anger flaring up in his eyes even as the grey started overwhelming everything. The night abandoned her, the special feeling, the magical air in her lungs. She felt sad and small all of a sudden, terrified to spend eternity in that lifeless endless grey, that big immensity of nothing at all.

If he did let that last regret finally go, if he forgot about the letter and little human Sacha and the path that he once could have taken… what would become of her? Little ghost Sacha in her thin paper dress, with the ink dripping on her skin… would she die as well? Or would she stay forever if her own little grey universe, running in circles, memorizing the same words over and over again, chanting them on and on until the end of times?

She reached out at the last second, cupped his jaw with her small, ink-stained hand. “Don’t forget me”, she whispered as he faded out into nothingness. “Please, Dad.”