Don't Wake Me

His love for her could last forever, even if her life could not.

                I was alone, wasting away; imprisoned in an immortality I was too foolish, too cowardly to dare challenge. True son, do not die. I had all the time in the world, but what good is that when you are alone, aching for just a touch, a set of eyes to greet you in the dawn?

 

                And just at my lowest, there she was. So angelic, so unearthly in her smooth skin, her chocolate curls. She smiled at me from across the room, her painted lips pulled open just perfectly, her brown eyes glittering, cheeks rosy from her wine. The room seemed to melt away as I walked over to her, and she giggled when I had flipped my coattails back before sitting across from her.

 

                Playfully, she told me it was very ungentlemanly of me to sit before a lady with no invitation, let alone no introduction. I received a fuller laugh upon my introduction, and my sloppy apology for joining her with no formal invitation.

 

                “What sort of name is Kieran?” she had asked over her wine glass.

 

                “It means ‘little dark one’,” I told her, and she raised a delicate eyebrow.

 

                “Are you a devious man then, Kieran?” she asked, a glint in her I could not mistake for anything but what it was, a feral playfulness, a sexual hint. I felt as if the air was choking me.

 

                Remembering that choking feeling, I would always wonder if she felt that with every breath, or if I had caused it. “I was the poison, and you were the kiss,” I would whisper to her later, as I sat at the side of her bed, as she breathed in liquid air.

 

                She would not admit that night, or any other night that I knew her, that she had wanted me to come sit with her. She would always lay the blame on me, saying that I had simply imagined her eyes inviting me over, that I must have just been so love struck that I wanted any excuse to be in her presence.

 

                And true, I was love struck upon the sight of her, but she soon seemed to trip a little at least for me. She had invited me for a walk after our conversation, and I remembered the way she wanted to walk along the wall that guided the path, a sturdy thing made of rock and reaching my thighs. She had pretended to protest as I lifted her onto it, and I remember as she walked she teetered to one side, and gripped my hand for support.

 

                I got not so much as a kiss that night, but she was bold enough to whisper as I walked her to her coach that she wanted to see me again. She told me not where she lived, but her name would be enough, finally whispered to me as she leaned down and brushed some of my dark hair from my face.

 

                “Alexa.”

 

                I met her again three nights later, outside her family’s large estate. It had been easy to track her down, knowing she had to be from an elite family, and her name being one I had seldom heard in my many, many years of life. She had come down in the night, a wild glint in her eyes, and was not to least bit surprised to see me.

 

                “I knew you would be waiting,” she had said when my eyes gave away my shock, and she smiled and took my hand, sneaking me onto her family grounds. She walked me through their large garden, explaining her mother’s love of flowers, a love she did not understand, but one her younger brother seemed to have inherited. She claimed the flowers never smelled as sweet as her mother claimed, and where never the rich color her brother bragged about.

 

                Stooping down, I had gently cut some lilac that was growing against the wall, and I held it between us, leaning in close. I gently cupped it near her face and whispered, “Angel, take a breath now.” She obeyed and inhaled, her eyes widening, then slipping shut as the scent intoxicated her. After a moment she reached up, her fingers gently dancing over mine.

 

                “Life has never smelt so sweet,” she whispered with a soft smile. My heart thudded in my chest as her eyes kept a hold of mine, as I felt her breath through the air, thick with an energy I craved so suddenly that my chest stung.

 

                I was gifted with a kiss that night, to remember her by as I walked home. My lips tasted of her the entire night through, of honey and lilac.

 

                We had many nights, so many wondrous things. I kept returning to her, and she I would not dare to miss a night of her presence. She was cocky, and I was foolishly infatuated. We shared nights in the garden, sitting on stone benches whispering to each other about anything and nothing, about life and flowers and the mid spring weather. She was an intelligent girl, a coy thing, and she was so priceless and perfect that the night she had loosened her corset and pressed her breasts to my chest, I had been afraid I would break her.

 

                Still, I may have, and this will forever be on my mind, my conscious. Wise men will tell you of these memories, “This ghost inside you hurts.”

 

                And I never said goodbye.

 

                I remember the first night I noticed she was ill. She was sitting with her brother’s roses, when the air was sucked from her lungs in a violent spasm. She coughed and gasped for so long I feared her lungs would tear, but when I reached for her she simply batted my hand away. When she had calmed, she simply looked at me and said nothing. I knew then, there was a sickness in the roses.

 

                Her illness felt like it had seeped into me, and that night I left her in the arms of the flowers, and wondered the streets with a hungry belly. Through the time I’d spent with her, I’d still been able to bring myself to bewitch the young ladies of the town into my bed, to pressed them into my sheets and just as they were gasping for air to lean over them and suck some of their precious life from their lungs. But this night, despite the hunger, I found I could not rouse even the slightest will to seduce and feed. Instead I crawled between cold sheets and pretended to hold Alexa against my aching ribs, wanting her to hold me and drown within all that was between my bones.

 

                She began disappearing after that, for a few nights every perhaps two weeks. She told me that after a time she needed to rest a spell, to regain what life had taken from her. It was unfortunate, the kiss was too close to see that night, the one she had tried to slip on my lips, but instead got only the corner of my mouth. True son, do cry now. If there was ever a sorrow in my life, something to truly weep about, it was that Alexa was fading, and I knew it, but was just too damned in love to accept it.

 

                Fly away; this is war, my sweet angel.

 

                “Take a breath now,” I began to whisper countless times a night, as she gasped for breath after a fit of coughs. There were nights where she just could not breathe, no matter what. I would sit with her and run my fingers along her back, wishing I could suck the sickness from her body.

 

                That was our last night within the flowers. From then on she never walked outside. I knew, that night, but I refused to speak of it. She did as well. We just sat there, and I held her, and I pretended it was just a cold, and that soon she would be well again, and I would whisk her away in the night and marry her under the stars.

 

                I began sneaking into her home. She left the door unlatched, and I would listen against each door during the late hours until I found hers, that first time.

 

                “Can you stay for a while?” she had asked when I entered, and I sat be her bed and took her hand. Let’s set ourselves on fire, I’d wanted to say. Let’s burn together, so that you can’t suffer, can’t feel yourself fading. And then I won’t be alone.

 

                They say that love is war, but they never tell you the war is only against yourself.

 

                She asked that every night, “Can you stay for a while?” As if I had anywhere else I would be but at her side. Her family and her nurses left her be during those few hours, and I was the one to watch over her as she got so weak she was unable to lift her hand to greet me. Finally, during a night that smelt of rain, she looked at me with empty shells of eyes and whispered in a raspy voice,

 

                “I want to sleep.” She kept my gaze, and I saw a small flick of something within her eyes, something I had seen before, when I’d met her. A knowing in her eyes. I leaned over her, trying to soothe her, but she spoke up again. “I know you can let me sleep. Please, Kieran, don’t let me live like this…”

 

                To this moment, I never knew how she knew what I was; only that she was clever and I was a fool. I kissed her gently, smoothing her damp hair, and told her she wouldn’t feel a thing. Truly, she wouldn’t, and as we kissed and she opened her lips, I felt the breath of life rushing out of her, into me. It should have felt endless, but it was so short it was as if someone had simply choked me. She was gone before I opened my eyes, and I never said goodbye. “Don’t wake up,” I whispered, brushing my fingers over her eyes so they closed, before turning and leaving the room, unable to keep the sting in the corners of my eyes from running down my cheeks.

 

                Now, standing under a grey sky, set back as her family mourns her as she is laid into the Earth, I do not question her love. She knew she was sick, Alexa was a clever woman and I could never believe she did not know. But I refuse to believe she loved me simply because she knew I could end it.

 

                As the men and women began leaving, I was left alone. I walked to her grave and knelt down, brushing me fingers along her name, engraved on her stone. I knew I could not have her forever, but I had not dreamed our time would be so short. Our nights had served to remind me now just how lonely endless time is, how meaningless the minutes become.

 

                “Let’s set ourselves on fire,” I whispered, before straightening and walking away, towards the town. By the night, I would be burning, burning until my fingers could ghost over hers once more. I would not feel nearly the pain I knew she must have carried. In fact, I would not feel at all, except for the anticipation of her lips, of her arms around my neck.

 

                They say that love is war,

 

               

Author's Note

This is based off I Am Ghost's song, "Don't Wake Me," with the lyrics written in as narrative or dialogue. I recommend listening to the song while reading.