Please note: I have had writer's block forever it feels like now. I wrote this awhile ago and thought I'd edit it before posting, but I'm questioning where the story is going now, so anyways, I'm just posting it.
Part II, chapter two, section one:
The door creaked as we pushed it open. A silence fell around the room of directors, each sitting in their proper black and white suits, watching us with their emotionless eyes. I shut the door behind us and sat at a chair along the wall. John quickly sat down beside me.
The man sitting at the head of the long table stood. He looked around the room at the twenty or so seated people before beginning to speak.
“We have made a decision about Annika McCalden’s case.”
You could have heard a pin drop in the room.
“This is a special case that already was bending rules and following a loose guide.”
The mono tone droned on.
“With this in consideration, we can see how it went wrong and will make sure that it does not occur again.”
There was a dramatic long pause. I twisted my hands into knots.
“However, from what we can understand, we have not simply lost Annika McCalden here, but we have lost her spirit. With consultation with the higher board, we have decided that this case is to be put to rest and the search for Annika McCalden to end.”
I squeezed my eyes closed tight and held my breath, wishing that I was hearing wrong, wishing and hoping and praying they weren’t announcing the end of everything I knew.
“Jake.”
I looked up at the mono tone voiced man, biting my tongue. He looked at me with piercing blue eyes.
“You are dismissed from her case.”
I nodded a long, slow nod, the movement killing me on the inside.
“We can only hope that her spirit can find a world in which she can find peace and rest.”
There was a small murmur of voices but my eyes were shut again.
“You may leave.”
The sound of movement and voices wrapped my body in present time and space, but I wasn’t there. A moment later someone put their hand around mine and I realized I’d been gripping the sides of the chair. I opened my eyes to see John’s deep eyes and red marks on my hands.
“Let’s go, Jake,” John said quietly.
Somehow I made myself stand; somehow I ended up in the elevator. The doors made that annoying “ding” sound as they enclosed me and John into the tight space.
I closed my eyes again.
“Ding.”
“Jake, this is our floor,” I heard John say, but I shook my head.
“I need some air,” I replied.
I opened my eyes to see him step off the elevator and the door close behind him, then shut them again.
What is wrong with me?
“Ding.”
It was the first floor. A lady all in black stepped into the elevator and suddenly there was no more oxygen. Narrowly avoiding the doors, I jogged out of the elevator and they closed behind me.
The first floor....
My feet knew where they were going before I did. I wandered through the bright reception area to the white, hospital-like halls that spread like a maze through this floor. Eventually, I came to the larger-than-life oak doors of the library.
I had read the file, I knew the evidence. Slowly, I wandered the same aisle as I knew she’d been in. There wasn’t a soul in the space, the room echoed with my footsteps. I paused at my drawer. It was closed, and went I opened it, my file was neatly and safely tucked away from sight, but I knew it hadn’t been like this when they had come in this morning, I knew they’d come to find fading photos and crumpled papers littering the ground in a tornado-like mess.
I couldn’t imagine reading the file. I had never touched it; I had always been too scared at what I would find, since I knew it would be the truth, the truth that I hadn’t told Annika. No wonder she’d run from this world: I had scared her away.
The file felt heavy and final in my hands as I picked it up. As I gently opened it, the first image I was met with was one of Sofie.
Suddenly tears threatened my eyes.
When I closed my eyes, I could still see the way hers sparkled when she smiled. When I shut my eyes tight, I could still hear her laugh and the way her curls would cascade down her back. When I squeezed them close, I could feel the soft touch of her hands in mine. I could remember the nights we’d spend making blanket forts and the times we snuck out to go to dances. The years we spent walking to school together still felt like yesterday and the long brush strokes with her smalls hands felt so close that I could swear I was back there again. Except, when she looked up from the painting, it wasn’t Sofie smiling at me, but Annika.
Suddenly my eyes opened wide. The tear that had been waiting fell down my cheeks. My legs gave out beneath me and I slid down the bookshelf to the ground. The photo in my hand smiled up at me like a ghost from another world, and I could see the similarities now clearly. They had almost the same long, blonde hair and both had vibrant blue eyes. The delicate features of Sofie were similar to those of Annika, and then there was their hands, both small and gentle and aching to hold a paintbrush.
I had failed them both.
The minutes ticked by like hours as I cried in the empty library. Once the memories started, they just came flooding back in an avalanche I couldn’t control.
