Fade Away

“I hate you!”

Poppy spat the words out at her mother. If she had been a foot closer she would have lashed out with her hand too. She wanted to hurt her mother. Her mother deserved it.

The words were said and then she was stomping off up the stairs to her bedroom.

Poppy had never said those three little words before. Those words were a culmination of a whole host of other words. Words that she drew to her and nurtured until they were dark and sharp enough to be thrown at her parents to hurt them as much as was possible.

Her parents were to blame, it was their fault. 

All of the pain and the anger.

All their fault.

Poppy had had just about enough of them. Their very presence was stifling. The walls of this house were closing in around her. Even her bedroom was not the refuge that it had once been. It was tainted by what lay beyond it.

They called this home, but it wasn’t, it was a prison and they were her gaolers.

None of it was fair.

They said they wanted the best for her, but Poppy knew different. She saw how it really was. She saw how things really were and she had to fight them. She had to keep her wits about her and never, ever give in. 

They wanted to control her and make her into something that she could never be. She would not be their play thing. She would not allow herself to be nothing more than their puppet.

Well, she was on to them and she had a way of keeping them at bay. She knew how to hurt them and as every day passed she thought of new ways to launch into them. Adding to her words and forging and sharpening them. Brooding and thinking was a full time occupation. The battles were all consuming. 

They would never win.

She would rather take herself out of the game than let that happen.

Listening for footsteps on the stairs or the familiar creak of someone lingering on the landing and hearing nothing to give her cause for concern, she took the knife from one of her secret places and unfolded it. The blade was sharp and the way it caught the light was almost hypnotic.

“I wish I could just disappear,” she said to her distorted reflection in the blade, “they’d see then. I’d make them see. And I’d make them pay. For all of it.”

She said this and imagined the pain and anguish she could cause them, and it pleased her. She felt that familiar surge that made it all worthwhile, and she knew that that was the ultimate weapon. That one day she was going to go all the way and there would be no coming back from that. 

She smiled at that reflection. It felt good to know that they could never win. That she had more in her armoury than they could ever know. That she outgunned them. That she was always going to be the winner.

“I’d like to see the look on their faces when I disappeared” she said to her blade-twin, “I want them to hurt like I do.”

She twisted the knife this way and that in the air before her, always keeping her eyes on her reflection in the blade, “disappear me, disappear me, disappear me!”

She ran her finger along the blade for something like dramatic effect.

It hurt.

She hadn’t meant to do that, it had just happened. It were as though her finger was magnetised and the blade was drawn to it. And that blade was hungry.

It hurt. It hurt more than it should have. It hurt like hell.

She turned her finger around and stared at the pad. She expected blood, but there was none, instead there was a gaping wound that looked like a small mouth opening to say a surprised oh!  

Inside the mouth was a strange darkness and as she looked at that finger of hers, the darkness leaked out. It was not blood. It was shadow and it slowly enveloped her finger and as it did, the pain of that cut spread. A cold and dread sensation spreading with the shadow.

Now her hand was a glove of darkness and the darkness rose up her forearm.

The sight of it froze her to the spot and silenced her. Somewhere deep within her there was a silent scream that would never be given voice. Her anger and hatred receded and all that was left was fear.

She felt tiny and insignificant in that fear.

She could feel the darkness inexorably rising both outside her and within. Transforming her.  Consuming her. And now it was at her neck and there was no way it was going to stop. The darkness crept up her neck and over her chin, up over her mouth, suffocating her where she stood. She stood like a statue, drowning silently in that darkness, and when it was done with her there was a faint sound like a sad sigh and the knife fell to the rug beneath her and she was no more.

For a while there was such complete nothingness and the enormity of that nothingness threatened to undo her, but then she was there, in her room. Only she wasn’t.

Not anymore.

“Dave! She’s not here!”

That was her Mum’s voice, but different somehow. Distorted.

“What?!” 

That was her Dad’s voice, further away.

Then he was there and she could see them, but as with their voices, they were distorted as though they were trapped in a reflection. 

“Where the bloody hell can she have gone?” her Dad was looking around the room as though she was hiding there in plain sight.

He strode to the window, checking it and finding it locked. She’d never considered leaving her room via the window. She’d missed a trick there.

“Oh Dave! Where could she be?” her Mum wailed, her voice threatening to break and as it broke there would be tears. 

Poppy watched dispassionately. She’d seen it all before. Those tears were crocodile tears. Her Mum summoned them at will and they meant nothing. This was a play and they were pathetic actors. It was painful to watch them in this charade of theirs.

“What’s that?” said her Dad, concern filling those words and matched by the expression on his face.

He bent down and filled Poppy’s vision, “where’d she get a knife?”

He lifted the knife and examined it and as he did, Poppy saw both him and her Mum. Closer now. 

They can’t see me, she thought as she observed them, they really think that I have disappeared.

“Oh Dave! What’s happened to our little girl?! Where can she have gone?”

Poppy watched as her Mum collapsed into her Dad’s arms and he held her tight as she sobbed her heart out. Then she saw fat tears falling down her Dad’s face too.

That was when it dawned on her.

This couldn’t be an act.

She wasn’t there.

This wasn’t for her benefit.

This was real.

They were really crying.

This meant something.

A snake of doubt slithered within her. This was different. She was seeing her parents differently. This wasn’t how she had ever seen things. She had convinced herself that they were liars for so long, that all of this was an act and that they had wanted to subdue and control her. But now this.

She had believed that they wanted to hurt her, so she got her hits in first. She always struck first. Their war had been going on for so long that she knew nothing else. She’d never had the time or the opportunity to stop and to consider what it all meant beyond that hurt and anger of hers. All she’d known was to keep going, to keep fighting.

Then it went dark.

Her Dad had folded the knife and put it in his pocket.

The passage of time was bewildering and disconcerting. It were as though she were being presented with episodes of a TV series. 

Switched on again and able to see, she was in the kitchen.

Her Mum and Dad were seated at the kitchen table. Someone was with them. As Poppy focused in on them, she felt a chill pass over her and through her. The woman was a stranger, but her uniform identified her as a police officer.

Her parents looked tired and haggard. Older somehow, but she somehow knew that only a short period of time had elapsed.

“Has she ever done anything like this before?” asked the police officer.

“No, not really,” said her Mum.

“Not really?” said the woman.

It was her Dad that answered, “she’s sometimes got incredibly angry and stormed off.”

“Angry?” asked the police officer.

Her Mum nodded, “she’s had some issues. Been seeing a therapist. Fought us every step of the way as though we were the enemy or the cause of her anger and bad thoughts. We thought she was responding to the therapist. She… the therapist… she talked about them making progress. But now this…”

“I’ll need the details of the therapist,” the police officer said.

Her Dad duly obliged and her Mum broke down into tears again. In front of the police officer.

“She was in her bedroom,” her Dad was saying, “we don’t know how she could have got out of the house without us seeing her. It’s impossible really.”

“Window?” asked the police officer.

“Closed, so there’s no way…” said her Dad.

The police officer was taking notes as they talked. She asked about places Poppy might have gone. Poppy was surprised when they listed all of the places she would have. She didn’t think they listened to her, but maybe they had been listening all along.

When they had finished talking, Dad saw the police officer out, and after they left the room Poppy watched as her Mum disintegrated. This was crying that Poppy had never seen before. It was brutal and difficult to watch, but Poppy could not look away. 

She felt something she hadn’t felt before.

The scene faded.

Next time, both her parents looked so much older. Thinner too. They didn’t move like they once had. It was like their energy had been sucked out of them and they were partial husks. Shadows of their former selves.

It pained Poppy to see them like this.

They looked so much closer to death.

Fragile.

She watched as they shuffled to the sofa and sat down heavily and despondently. Together and yet not together. The distance between them was a matter of inches, but it was also infinite.

Their hearts were broken and their relationship fractured beyond repair. Poppy could see that and she could see a future that wasn’t much of a future at all.

Not anymore.

A terrible and thick silence lay between them and neither rushed to do anything about it.

Eventually her Dad spoke, “she had the world at her feet…”

Her Mum nodded, a tear falling from her left eye.

“We’d have done anything for her, but she pushed us away. Why did she do that, Jane?”

Her Mum shook her head, “I don’t think she saw the world the way it really was. She withdrew from it. She rejected it and she rejected us.”

“I always thought she’d wake up to what she was doing,” her Dad said, “I thought she’d hug us one day and all that fighting and waste of time and energy would end. I thought she’d go out into the world and be something amazing. She was something amazing wasn’t she?”

Her Mum nodded, biting her lip and fighting back the tears, “she was very special. I just wish she knew how much she meant to us. How much she meant to everyone who knew her.”

“I just wish we knew what happened…” her Dad said, looking into the middle distance as though there were clues there as to what had become of his beloved daughter.

“Me too,” her Mum said, her voice cracking with emotion.

“I’d do anything to have her back you know?” her Dad slumped forward, his head in his hands, “trade places with her in a heartbeat. Give my life for hers. I hope she didn’t… I can’t bear to think of her being hurt…”

“I know,” her Mum said.

“The therapist…” 

“Don’t,” her Mum warned, darkly.

“I just don’t know why she gave up on us, but worse still on herself. I want to know what we could have done to save our little girl. Why us? Why did we lose her? Weren’t we enough?”

“No,” her Mum said shaking her head, the word bearing a crushing finality that hit Poppy like a truck.

The room faded out of view.

The next time Poppy saw the home that she had devalued and changed into a battle ground, there was only one of her parents remaining. Her Mum sat slumped at the kitchen table, a forgotten and cold mug of tea at her elbow. 

Of her Dad, there was no sign. 

Poppy knew that he was gone, but whether he had moved out or died, she did not know. That he was broken was a certainty, and it all amounted to the same. That her Mum was never the same again was evident from the way she lay her head on that table. She had nothing left.

There was nothing and no more than that.

Poppy had been more than she had ever known. She had squandered the lot, and in so doing she had taken so much from both of her parents.

She had given them nothing but pain and anguish and she had taken everything from them.

They would have done anything for me, she thought as she looked upon her Mum, they’d have given me everything and been there for me come what may. They still are. I never cared. None of this mattered. I didn’t matter. They didn’t matter. None of it meant anything to me, other than hurting them. That was all I did. Hurt them over and over…

As she gazed upon her distraught mother, Poppy realised that she had been selfish and sacrificed everything, and for what? 

This.

That was when she began to cry.

That was when she wished with all her heart that she could take it back.

She didn’t want to disappear.

Not really.

She wanted to go back.

She wanted to go back home.

To the one place she had belonged.

She wanted to live.

She wanted to love.

She wanted to be Poppy, and she didn’t want to miss a single moment. She didn’t want to waste a precious second of her life and she wanted to repay the love and faith that her parents had always had in her.

Why had she never seen that?

How had she been so blind?

I wish I hadn’t disappeared, she thought, I wish was there for my Mum right now. I wish I’d been there all along, instead of hiding myself away in my anger. 

Poppy had thought she had been in pain before she disappeared. This now was a whole other level of pain.

Can I go back? 

That thought hung in the air before her.

But sometimes there is a point of no return. Most of us know that, or at least we sense it, and we never dare step off the path and dance in the darkness and court pain and anger, allowing them to enter us and possess us and take from us everything that we hold dear, including our very souls. 

Sometimes the lost remain lost, and there is no going back and no taking it back.

Better not to risk everything in the pursuit of nothingness.

The blade of the knife catches the last, dying rays of the setting sun and then it dulls as darkness falls, never to shine so brightly again. A tiny bead of moisture seems to ooze from the metal of the blade as though the knife itself is crying, and then that unnoticed and unremarked impossibility is gone.

Forever.