April Showers by phoenixtears (good book recommendations TXT) 📖

April Showers
The trees are bare, their naked, bony arms jutting out like grotesque, gnarled claws, painted a dull gray in the dim half light seeping out from behind great, swollen clouds. I am in a small clearing in a large wood, a place I know well. But today it looks different, sinister and hungry. A thick, crackling shard of lightning bursts into life, illuminating the ground beneath me. There are patches of darkness, grooves cut into the uneven floor, water pooling in the depressions that the thick, heavy rain drops have created. The damp will make my job easier, I think, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing about this will be easy. Nothing about this should be easy.
Another tongue of lightning forks through the bruised, threatening sky, pale blue, striking and deadly, and in the fractured, occasional bursts of light, I begin to see how the storm has ravaged the once beautiful spot.
Flash.
The flowers are gone, in their place, a few stems, brown, bent and beaten by the oncoming torrent, drooping and wilting, barely withstanding the gusts that try to tear them from their roots. Beneath them lay remnants of what were once delicate flowers, now thin, ripped, muddied petals, torn apart by the rain, crushed and scattered.
Flash.
Where there was once a gentle, glittering stream, lively and clear, there is now a rushing cascade of sludge, forcing its way between the banks, foaming and furious, its tips a steely grey.
Flash.
The spaces between the mighty, thick trees are dark. Empty. Foreboding. A lingering threat; abysses into the unknown, terrifying and black.
There is a sudden increase in sound as the rain begins to beat out a faster tattoo against the ground, bits of rock, twigs and debris being torn up and flung into the air as they are dislodged by the invasive water. The sky begins to rumble, a deep, angry sound.
My hair and my clothes are sodden and heavy, and my burden is becoming too much to bear. Carefully, gently, I set her down, fighting the urge to shudder as her weight leaves my arms. As she lies on the floor, water running down her face, over her body, I can almost imagine she is sleeping. Almost.
Her dark, raven hair fans out around her head, darker even then the wet ground she is on, and her face is smooth and relaxed, her eyes shut, black lashes resting lightly on pale white skin, the usual happy pink flush gone, replaced by a ghostly, bloodless sheen. Her lips are slightly parted, though I know that no breath can escape then, nor ever will. Not again. The April I knew is gone. This empty shell is not her, I know that as certainly as I know that I will never again hear her laugh, or see her smile, but looking at her, I feel as though she is still here. As though she will get up, grin, giggle. But she will not, and it is my fault. My doing.
Shaking myself, I return to the task at hand. I do it with my fingers, having neglected to bring the necessary tools. I dig at the mud, pulling at it, digging franticly, scrabbling against the earth. I don’t know how long for- it could be an hour, it could be ten. The rain does not let up, and the murky river has begun to spray in my direction, adding to the wetness of the rain. What little light remaining fades and still, I dig, until there is a heap of dirt piled next to me, blocking the skeletal trees from view, being slowly eroded by the shattering drops, specks of it peppering my face and my neck as they are dislodged. And still I dig, until my nails are cracked and ripped and bloody and my hands are catching on rocks and I can go no farther. Only then do I stop, rocking back onto my heels, surveying the wide, gaping hole I have made. The grave. Her grave. April’s.
I do not want to do it, but I have long since resigned myself to my terrible task. I never wanted to kill her; this isn’t the way it is meant to be. But I did, she is gone, and there is nothing I can do to change that. Thunder booms as I climb out of the hole I have made, filthy and drenched, as pathetic as the small, young trees that line the clearing, felled by the storm, entangled, cracked and broken, while the forest itself stands strong.
I bend, and lift April into my arms once more, only this time, she is not slapping me playfully, or shrieking for me to put her down- she is silent, and cold, and dead. I lower her carefully into the hole, my fingers tracing lightly over the purple, blue marks on her neck, the marks I made. I do not let myself say good bye. I do not deserve it.
Putting the clumped, soaking, earth back is arduous, each handful heavier than the last, each breath I take harder to complete. But I finish my task. I smooth out the mud and it is done. I stand for a moment, rain running in rivulets down my face, dripping from my eyes onto my lips, salty on my tongue. I do not know what to do, where to go. Without April, I am nothing. I have nowhere.
I drop to my knees. Look at my hands. The hands of a monster. The hands of a murder. The hands that killed April. A sound escapes me, a pitiful, sobbing bark, and suddenly I am crying, yelling, tearing at my own hair. I breathe huge, wracking breaths as I feel myself shattering, and I throw my head back and stare up at the sky just as it is lit with a fierce, electric glow, and I scream, drowning out the rain, the thunder, the world. I scream the only thing that matters, the only thing that will ever matter. I scream,
‘April.’

Publication Date: 05-29-2012

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