Building 31 “The Returned”

“Have you ever lost something precious to you. Something so important, that the idea of being without it seems like an impossibility. Something indispensable to who you are and who you wish to become. Losing something like that could cause anyone to do terrible things, just to get it back.

But I implore you to not let yourself fall into the hole. Don't let yourself whisper to the dark.

The dark whispers back, and what it will say will break your heart.

What it will ask, in order to return to you what you love, isn't worth the price.

I lost my daughter. She was just six years old. I tried to not let it hurt me, to be strong for the rest of my family who had been affected, but I just couldn't get myself to stop thinking about it. Every second that I spent without her felt like a lifetime of pain, and it wasn't long until I started drinking just to make sure I could sleep.

Alcohol is a terrible way to pass the time, and I lost so much more because of it.

I have more one month coins than I would like to admit to, and I have never been able to make it a year without a drink. Without something to deaden me a little. Maybe medication would do the trick, but I doubt anyone would be willing to give me anything, just so I wouldn't have to think about what I did.

The other day she said her first words since her return. They were lies, or things I hope were lies. The dark can't bring back the dead. Not really. Had I known that....I likely wouldn't have done any different if I am being truthful.

She lost a lot along the way, and if I am being honest I think the only thing that returned was the body. Whatever was in her before is gone now. I don't believe in the soul, or heaven or even hell. I don't believe there is anything after this.

All I know is that she doesn't smile like she used to, an edge always chipped off the corner of every laugh and every hug.

Carol doesn't know. We haven't talked in so long, and I simply can't bring myself to admit what I did to her. Maybe she would be thrilled to have our baby back. Maybe she would be horrified. I am not sure which of those two reactions would be worse.

So please. Pleasure is fleeting, and that is the way it should be. We were never meant to hold the things we treasure forever. The cost of such ownership is far worse than the sense of loss. Because as time passes, those things we love can become those things that hurt us most.

I should know.

I brought back my little girl, but now its worse than before.

I knew the cost to me, but I never considered the cost to her.

One day, perhaps already, the dark will whisper to you when you are most vulnerable. When it does, do not take action. Sit in your pain and let it pass. Because the things you will do in your grief will not be able to be undone. The things that lurk, the things with the means to give us what we want...

They don't know how to help us find a better way. It is in their nature to find the wrong way.

Just as it is our nature to give in to the temptation.

Don't be like me.

Let you be you.

Let that be enough.

I have what I thought I wanted, and now I will never feel whole again.”

` On days like these, when it is cold, I end up thinking about my mom. There are a lot of reasons why the winter season is hard on me. Holidays bring about all the obvious ones, but the cold itself haunts me.

Black ice haunts me.

Ever since she was murdered.

My mother's body was found in the large sinkhole in the middle of the cemetery. Whoever killed her I think meant to weigh her down, to break the ice and hide her until the thaw. But they did a poor job of it. They didn't take into account the bloat of a body.

It was the fact she floated that allowed those who found her to see her.

Some ice skater nearly fell over her hand.

They didn't look where they were going.

So when they called me...when the told me I would have to identify the body, I was told that I needed to prepare myself for what I would have to see. They first tried to contact my dad, but he simply didn't have it in him at that point to handle it.

So I went to the morgue and I looked upon her body. Black ice had yet to thaw, gripping at her face and limbs.

Even with what rot had already occurred, there was a bit of noticeable evidence that was hard to miss. Most of all was the state of her neck, thick bruising that was starting to split ran along both sides. Normally that can be helpful, as it can give an indication of the size and shape of the perpetrators hands, a possible understanding of their strength and their position when they committed the act.

But it was too late.

The skin was damaged by the water, and instead of the cold retaining information, it instead destroyed it as the ice and the water broke it apart.

But I knew it was her though.

Her jaw had locked in the struggle. I could see her teeth.

Her gold fillings always reminded me of her, forever locking her in my memory as forty something going on something else...something about it simply made her timeless to me, even when her hair started to gray.

It was a closed casket funeral.

I managed to keep dad together long enough to get through it, but after that...

Well.

You know what happened after that.

I wish I could spare you the heavy stuff, but today I don't feel much like pretending to be okay. There is nothing wrong with not feeling great, and if anything it is those people who don't have bad days that you should be worried about.

Things can be buried, but things always will rise in one form or another.

You just have to wait, and endure the cold till the thaw arrives.

I am glad you finally heard back from your parents. I know you have been worried.

I got the heart from the cat examined, and it was as I expected it would be.

The hearts state of decomposition suggested the cat had been dead for months.