A Short Story: The Tragedy of Only Dying Once

    Hello friends! I have been quite busy recently- each year I make Christmas gifts and it has been taking up most of my time and I haven't had much time to write. I re-wrote a short story a month or so ago (you might even recognize it from the first version, the first story I ever posted here - which was earlier this year, in March). It was originally called: The imaginary Journal of Sylvia H. I think re-writing previous work can be quite fun, and it really shows how much improvement can happen in a year.

So, without further adieu, enjoy the story!

 

  The Tragedy of Only Dying Once

The saddest type of forgetting is when it’s one-sided.  When someone holds on to a person so tight

and they tie ropes around their ankles to hold them still, but the other person doesn’t notice and they

snap, hurting only the person who tied them.  

I started tying ropes when I woke up at noon with no one home. It’s been happening more and more recently and I am the only one who notices.

The bottoms of my feet pressed hard into the shards of rocks along the beach but they didn’t hurt, they couldn’t.  I decided to walk around behind the house today, it was cold and looked as if someone painted over the colors of the ocean and trees with mundane browns, greens, and tans. 

My blunt black hair scratched against my shoulders as I shifted down to draw my name in the damp sand: Sylvia.  Each letter had jagged pointy edges and ran together like I was in a hurry; I wasn’t.  I assume Samantha was in a hurry and that’s why she didn’t wake me up that morning, the thought lifted my spirits, she would be back after school and explain everything.  

 Samantha got my name from some of her mother's books.  She’s never read any of them but had noticed her mother doing so many times.  Each time she asked her mother about them she would respond calmly, ‘The author's name is Sylvia Plath, Sammy dear. You might enjoy them when you're older, you might not.  For now, just wait.’  

Sammy listened to her mother and never read a word except for “Sylvia Plath'' which was typed over the covers in crimson ink.  She read that name and soon fell in love with Sylvia Plath.  She fell in love with the name and the writing, even though she had not read a single word.  She knew she would never forget that name so she decided to use it as mine.  

Samantha loves Snow White and that's where she got my hair, hair has such variety and that’s her favorite part.  Her hair is dark red and flows long over her shoulders and down her back, she wanted mine to be starkly different. Her favorite attribute is the flick out she's seen on people who have short bobs.  She had seen people with this favored flick and swore that someday she, or someone she knew, would have a flick at the bottom of theirs.  That would be me.  

I bent down even farther and picked up a rock that was stuck within the line of the letter S.  It’s round and white and reminds me of a pearl.  Sammy loves pearls; every day she wears a long necklace with a single pearl at the bottom.  The first day she created me she draped one over my neck too. Today I did it myself.  

The rocked slipped from my fingers, I stumbled home and spent the rest of the day in silence. 

Three mornings ago was the first time I woke up late and noticed the disheveled bed and no eleven-year-old girl asleep or waking up in it. I looked around and knew she had forgotten.  She has to think about me, or else I will die.  Well, that's not exactly true.  If she doesn't remember me she won’t talk and play with me and that is the same as dying to me.  But she has to, she has to remember me.

I draped a long pearl necklace over my neck and, “Goodbye Mrs. Hartley,” I whispered to Sylvia's mother, even though I knew she could not hear me, and I walked out the door.  The empty halls of Samantha’s school seemed to echo even though there was no one else there.  I skipped a step and soon I was in the lunchroom.  I stood behind her a while, listening to her laugh; the room was cramped with noise and kids stuck in their own bubbles.  I repeatedly imagined her thinking of me.  I willed it to happen, just one thought, one little thought.  Just my name: “Sylvia.”  It swirled in looped cursive with crimson red ink, in large and small, in blocked letters and a dainty dancing script.  I scrunched my brow, squeezed my eyes shut, and forced deep wrinkles in my forehead for one, two, three, four, five seconds.  And then I let it all go.  Looking straight ahead I softened my gaze, and let the wrinkles fall out of my face.  

After a while, I went to sit down in the corner of the room, waited until school was over, and followed her home.  We got home and I continued to wait.  I watched as Samantha fell onto her bed, her arms extending, searching over the rumpled sheets.  And then she whispered: 

“Sylvia.” She saw me and knew I was standing right there.  “I am so sorry Sylvia, I forgot. I forgot to give you your pearl this morning.”  She paused and saw it resting on my white dress.  “I am glad you got it yourself.  Don’t worry, I won’t forget again, I will never forget you again.  But if, if I do just remember I still love you, Sylvia.  And I am very mad at my future self for forgetting the important things.” She said that last quietly and very slowly as I sat next to her on the bed.  

“That’s okay I guess.”  

But how could it be okay? It has been three more days and she has forgotten a little bit more each day.  But I haven’t.    

All I can do is follow her around, seconds away from crying every moment.  Today I tiptoed behind her when she was walking with her friends, they went to a couple of shops and got ice cream, and then Sammy went home.  I followed still.   Not sure why I tiptoed, there is no use. 

I always put so much importance on the small things, the items with meaning.  Memories are the most important but sometimes objects that one can touch bring people back to the times long past.  

Dropping her backpack down hard on her bed caused her dresser to jostle and a little green and blue box fell, a box that one could hold, and warm, and press into their hands as they remember where they got it, what it holds, and why they still have it.  It was in the box that Samantha kept her collection of pearls.   It felt as if the world sped up and slowed down at the same time as I watched pearls fly in every corner of the small room.  Pearls and beads broke off of chains and thin strings and ropes.  They cracked, splintered, and broke and seemed to break again. 

Samantha's mouth fell open, I stumbled backward and pressed my hands into the wall to keep myself from sliding down.  Samatha just stood there with her arm still against her backpack, holding it there so it wouldn't fall.  She doesn’t care anymore I thought as loud, slowly, and painfully as possible.  She doesn’t care that she broke all her pearls, the first item she thought of when creating me, thinking of me, imagining me.  The item she draped over my neck each morning.  All of them, gone.  

She doesn’t care!  I screamed in my head as loud as I could, then out loud.  

“She doesn’t care!” I screamed, to no one in particular, and no one at all. I was fading away, away from Samantha's daily thoughts, day by day, as she got older and older. 

To be truthful, I am not sure how much I care about pearls.  I didn’t care as much as I did scream that day, even though she didn’t hear it. But I care about how Samantha didn’t seem to.  Maybe she did though, maybe she thought of me along with the pearls and didn’t say anything to my enraged, quivering body.  I realized everything that really happened over the last few days and it hit me like a truck, it hurt and made me mad.  The day Samantha broke all her pearls was more of a day of finalization for me.  It had almost nothing to do with pearls.  They just started it.  One might say they started it and ended it. 

I remember a quote Samantha once told me: Each person dies twice: first is when their body dies and their soul floats up to heaven, and the second time, the saddest, is the last time someone says their name.  

“I think that's awfully sad, don’t you Sylvia?” she had said.

“Yes, yes it is.  Let’s not forget each other.  Alright, Samantha?”  

“I never could, Sylvia.  And I never will, don’t worry.” 

I still think of that time, and I think about how, for some people, the ones who were only imagined, truly are alive if the world goes by those rules, but they only die once.    

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Thank you for reading!