TRIGGER WARNING: Blood, graphic, suicide, death
There’s so much blood.
It’s everywhere, splashing. I use present tense, because when I entered that room, I felt as though I were reliving it.
I’d tell you what the doctors said, but none of that matters.
Ted never stopped grieving. In fact, I think his life ended when hers did.
Our divorce came two years afterwards. Now, I spend my days running. I run to ease the pain. I enjoy the burning sensation in my lungs, and knowing that in that moment, nothing else matters. I run to forget what happened.
When I close my eyes, sometimes it all feels peaceful. Tranquil, even. It isn’t until I’m I stop running that the memories come flooding in.
Just run it out, Pam. Run away. Push it away.
It was my mantra. I took things day by day. One mile at a time. When her face would linger, I’d drown it with the whiskey Ted had stashed under the kitchen sink. His final gift. At first, the taste made me gag. Eventually I trained myself to accept it, to enjoy it. It tastes of water now.
Let it burn, baby. Burn, burn, burn.
The day it happened, Ted and I were fighting about something trivial—tax returns, I think. We’d gone out for a drink at the local country club. The evening was cut short, which seemed to be happening more often than usual.
Abra was supposed to be out with whatever boy she’d been seeing back then. I think his name was Tom. After a while, we lost track. We’d always tried to keep our marital problems under the radar, but Abra had seemingly developed a similarly pessimistic approach to love.
I remember pulling up to the driveway. We had bickered the whole way home, and I was eager to change and put the night behind me.
When we pulled up, I noticed the front lights. For some reason, all I kept thinking about were the lights.
I’d told Abra a thousand damn times to shut those lights off.
She’d left her car in the driveway, to ease the suspicion, I suppose. I guess she wanted to disguise her presence, cloak the inevitability that was waiting for us inside.
Seems a bit selfish, sadistic even.
She’d fooled us. In that moment things were normal. The horror hadn’t been actualized, or at least for us it hadn’t.
I unlocked the door. Weird, the alarm it isn’t on. I’m sure she forgot—she always forgets those kinds of things.
I could hear Buddy, our cocker spaniel, scratching on a door upstairs. Please don’t let it be the bathroom, please God. Don’t be silly, Pam, I’m sure he’s just found some scraps, he’s just scrummaging for food.
Buddy rarely made his way upstairs. If he did, it was certainly not to hover outside the bathroom. He hated water, and he rarely ventured upstairs in when the house was unoccupied. He knew the rules, and he almost always obeyed them.
“Pam, quit running the tap, you’re wasting good water!” Ted hollered from the master bedroom, where he’d already turned on the local sports channel. He wasn’t much of an intellectual, Mother had warned me about that.
Why would Abra leave the tap running? Forget it, I’m sure she just forgot. After all, she’s very forgetful. National Geographic says that teens always forget the most crucial things, on account of their hyperactive brains.
But she didn’t forget.
Ted was the one who found her. I’d gone out for a smoke. Part of me didn’t want to be the one to open that door. Part of me regrets it. Part of me doesn’t.
In that moment, I knew something was off, all of my instincts as a mother had gone off. I just couldn’t open the door. If I opened the door, the nightmare wouldn’t be a nightmare, but the truth.
Everything is fine, Pam. Everything is alright. You’re just being dramatic.
I came in to his screams.
“Pam! Pam! Come quick! Help her! Oh God! Please HELP HER!”
I didn’t rush. I remember feeling dizzy and hyper-focused all at once. My legs began to shake. I couldn’t move. All I could hear were his endless pleas, “Pam, please! Pam, for fuck’s sake!”
I eventually made it up the stairs and to the bathroom.
There she was. My baby. She lay there. She was in the tub. Her face was bloated and purple. Gone forever.
I don’t remember much else.
The rest remains a frightful nightmare. All I know is she’s gone. Sometimes I see her reflecting back at me in the mirror, or smiling outside the window on my drives to work.
She’s never really there. I know that. But seeing her and pretending she is makes me wonder. Wonder what life would be like if she had stayed here.
Photo by Jasmine Foong
