Artby @Mori_art_ti

Challenge: Toy

Rubber duck

@mere_inkslinger
You'rea parent who returns to your child's grave to find someone else there.

mere_inkslinger

I traced the letters with my fingers.

Emily Danielle Manson.

"I miss you." I whispered, studying deep into the headstone.

"I wish I had been there." there were footsteps behind me. I turned my head and pulled my long hair out of my eyes to see.

"...um, were you a friend of Emily?" He asked. I knew who the boy was. His name was Jeremiah Radcliffe.

I smiled. "Yeah." I whispered to him. "We were best friends."

He nodded politely, and then he grazed over and sat down beside me, back to the headstone. He didn't seem to mind the fresh dirt under his pants, either.

"She was my girlfriend." He confessed, not turning his head to me.

Of course I knew that. I knew because I didn't approve of you.

"She talked about you all the time." I tried to smile.

He grinned wider than I thought you could when you were crying. He brushed his hands over his eyes, and rested one of them over his mouth.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, until we heard someone walking toward us in the from behind the stone. Of all people, turning the corner was Red Jackson. Red Jackson never liked Emily. He even told her a few times.

Looking up at him, curiously, he spoke.

"May I?"

We shifted apart. He sat down in the middle.

"I wish I could have told her..." He mumbled to no one in particular. Red didn't have many particular friends. He had a sort of "squad" of fellow volleyball players that followed him around, but he didn't have someone that people always associated with him, like I had Emily before the accident.
To my surprise, Jeremiah put his arm around Red. They seemed like they weren't done grieving. I wasn't either, but I was further along than then they were. I had cried all my tears in bed every night for the past two weeks. I was done with that part. But they weren't.

I rested my head on Red's shoulder, to let him know I was there, too. He took each of our hands, and he stared at the ground.

I still have a handful of soil in my palm. I guess he does now, too.

I opened my eyes when I felt Red move.

There was a man in a grey sweat shirt who looked like he hadn't shaved in a week. I had never seen such eyes. I couldn't think of a word for them for a while.

Desperate. His eyes are desperate.

There was a woman there, also, who apeared to be his wife.  Her hair was a mess, and she looked quite frightened by the three resting teenagers lying on the fresh dirt.

"Were you all... friends of Emily?" the husband asked.

We looked at each other.  We nodded.

He nodded, too.

"She was our only daughter." the wife told us.

There was an awkward silence, as we all watched the dirt.

"She was my best friend." I spoke up.

I felt that this was all that needed saying, because being a human, I am selfish, and, for a split second, I thought that I was the only victim.  But everyone was hit.  Emily was the just the one who died.  I wanted to be the only victim.  I wanted to sit and be comforted by these people who I don't even know.  I humanly wanted the attention, because for the past three weeks, Emily had all the attention.  There was a picture of her in the newspaper and a short article about the man that hit her with his car.  There was a picture of him, too, and I remember touching his face and asking him why he hadn't called a cab that night he decided to drive himself home, why he had been so selfish like the human he was, and like the human we all are, and I wanted to be the only one that cried, and sometimes, I wanted to be the only one that was hit by that Godforsaken drunk.

"She was my girlfriend." Jeremiah muttered.

The watched him and looked on him with pity as a tear fell from his eye, as he wiped it away almost fefore I noticed.

"I never got to apoligize." Red admitted, concentrating on the dirt in his hand.  "I'm so, so sorry."

And being the selfish humans that we all are, the parents came over and sat with us, and we mourned together, because humans are selfish, social creatures.

minipage

Kaitlyn was never born.

And it was for that reason that her mother life was falling apart.

Cierra Carson was the spitting image of success: great husband, better job, and no student loans to pay off. 

She had a major in business and started a candle company in St. Louis which took off, causing it to go international within the small space of a year.

The only thing missing from the Carson's life was, well, life.

It was only the matter of getting pregnant that was the problem.

Cierra and her husband tried for months until she finally found out she was pregnant.

She put her business on hold and spent her days preparing the perfect Pinterest nursery and watching her diet carefully, planning out the day's calories days before she would ever consume them.

She strived for perfection.

And perhaps she attained it.

But sometimes perfection isn't enough. 

And in the case of Cierra Carson, perfection wasn't enough.

After seven months of falling in love with a child she had never actually held, a routine ultrasound revealed a lack of movement. Then it was a lack of sound. A lack of heartbeat.

She gave birth to the still born child a month later.

There was nothing they could do.

But she didn't mourn this child. 

She got to work again, getting pregnant only weeks later, pushing her doctor's advice to the limit.

It was the second still born child that she mourned.

She spent hours at the baby girl's graveside which was right along her brother's.

She read books. She played classical music.

She did everything in her power to somehow resurrect her babies.

Outside of the cemetary, however, life wasn't as hopeful. Her husband moved out. Her friends stopped trying to talk her out of this madness. She didn't return her mother's worried calls. Her rent went unpaid. Candles went unmade.

Everyone gave up hope with Cierra, predicting that she'd spend every morning at the graveside of her children and every evening drinking away the pain.

It was one day in winter that the routine changed.

A figure with their back to Cierra, stood in front of the graves of her child. 

He was wearing a long coat, with the collar turned up to protect his face from the wind and snow.

When he heard her feet crunching across the icy ground, his head turned to see her.

"What are you doing here?" she whispered, fiercely.

"We have to end this," the man said. His voice was so familar.

She stood quite a distance from him.

"I can't," she said. Tears were welling in her eyes and the tiny, miniscule drops that escaped immediatly froze to her face.

"Yes, you can," he said. "You just have to move on."

"How?" Cierra wanted to say that she tried but she really hadn't.

His body turned revealing a bundle in his arms.

"I want us to be together again," he said. The little bundle squirmed. "Plus, I adopted a child I have no idea how to take care of."

She gasped and rushed forward, taking the tiny infant in her arms.

She rocked the baby back and forth.

The maternal instinct that she had read so much about but never got to practice, kicked in.

She pulled down on the blanket to reveal the child's little features.

"Cierra, I just want us to be together again," her husband said. She felt his warm hand against her face.

"Okay," she whispered, a quiet agreement. 

She didn't care anymore.

She had a child.