Hollow Heart

I shouldn’t be spending Halloween like this.

Milling around, seeing all, but not being seen.

I’ve been dead for a year now, trapped in my wooden cage. Tonight will be the first time that I have left it since my soul was entrapped here. It would be the first Halloween that I would spend without my family. I had died in a car accident, it was instant on impact. I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to my boyfriend, or my family.

Finally, the sun went down and I heard the click of the lock on the coffin. I floated out and into the open air. I knew that the crisp air should’ve made me shiver, but I felt nothing, no cold, no warm.

Nothing.

I made my way to the city square, I knew how to get there by heart, but it was easier when you could drift above the town. I got there in under a minute. I saw a bunch of people walking around to the different booths that were set up. The way they always were.

They weren’t here yet.

I turned and stopped at a big pine tree, hovering over a long branch that sprouted from the side of the tall trunk.

“Ebony!”

I turned and laughed at Jason struggling to reach me,

“C’mon slow poke!”

He stuck his tongue out at me but eventually climbed up to my level. He sighed and sat next to me, grabbing my hand and wrapping his calloused fingers around my small and dainty ones. He smiled at me, telling me he loved me with his eyes.

I moved away from that tree as fast as I could. I thought it would hurt to have to remember him so vividly, but there was nothing. No sadness, no pain. I was nothing but a hollow vessel. A soul with nothing inside. I moved on, stopping yet again, this time in front of the old ice cream shop.

I screeched, Jason had smashed his ice cream into my face. I ran after him and tackled him, wiping the melting ice cream off of my face and onto his.

Nothing here either, I needed to feel something, anything. Whether it was the feeling of hot or cold, or an actual feeling. Even pain would be better than this, this numbness.

I saw thousands of other spots that I could remember him at. I could remember the one time that we pushed each other into the fountain in front of the library. Screaming and laughing with happiness as we got drenched. His eyes, blue, almost grey, like the ocean. His smile, the way it lit up his face. The way he looked at me, like I was the only person in the world.

My face remained blank. I decided to go back to the square, they were bound to be there by now. I was right. My mother and my little sister Hana were at the bouncy houses. I floated in the air above them, watching her jump around. Mom was smiling at her, but there was sadness in her eyes, the same sadness that I would be wearing if I had been the one who survived the crash. If I had experienced the loss that they had, instead of being pulled from the battle of life and into a peaceful endless sleep.

I would do anything to feel again, anything to just see them again.

Anything just to say goodbye.

That’s when I heard it, it was soft, quiet, barely audible, but it was there.

Someone was crying.

I drifted around, trying to find the source of it. It wasn’t long before I did.

Jason was curled up on a bench, hugging his knees. His shoulders were shaking, soft sobs escaping his mouth. Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. We always did something special together on this day, but now, I was gone. Forever. Barely able to recognize that I used to feel this pain and sorrow.

We had planned to go to Vermont this year, stay at a hotel, go to this really famous haunted house. I could never have imagined that this was how it turned out. How we turned out. I was hoping he’d have forgotten about me by now, it seemed that that wasn’t the case.

I set myself down beside him, listening to his cries, his breath shaky. Suddenly, he looked up, his face pointed to the sky,

“There isn’t a day that goes by when I’m not thinking about you. I miss you so much Eb, why’d you have to leave?”

His voice broke and he curled back up. His pain louder now. We had been dating for three years, it was my eighteenth birthday and I was on my way to his house to celebrate. My mom and sister were with me. We didn’t make it to his house. We hit a patch of sand on the road and spun out. Flipping over the guardrail and rolling into a ditch, I whiplashed forward and my neck broke. I was gone long before the paramedics arrived.

When I died, my soul left my body, that was before I lost all feelings. I remember screaming for them, for myself. Trying to hold my sister in my arms, only to pass right through her. After they had cleared everyone from the site, including my corpse, I was pulled backwards. Locked in a graveyard. Eventually, locked in a coffin.

After two months of pounding on the lid, screaming for my family, for Jason. I lost all the fight in me. I became empty, hollow. A void of nothing but blank thoughts and mindless thinking.

He turned so he was sideways next to me, I heard him whisper to himself in a low pained voice. Like speaking physically hurt him,

“I love you.”

I turned and wrapped my arms around him, my head resting on his shoulder, holding him from behind, giving him comfort that he would never know was there. He couldn't hear me, and he couldn't feel me, but I needed one last word.

“I love you more.”

That’s when I felt it, something I hadn’t felt in months. Something that I thought I would never feel again.

Warmth.