Prologue

this is a wip

After her mother died, everything changed.

She used to tell Sydney how cute she was, hopping around the room like a bunny. Her room. The hospital room 1314.

No one tells her how cute she is anymore. No one calls her bunny, either.

Her father was never there, of course, and she couldn’t care less. He was the one who ran away when he knew her mother was pregnant with her. He was the one who ran away from her. He was a stranger, and better yet, one she had no intention of ever meeting.

Her once bright and cheerful grandmother turned dull, still, and rid of all emotions. She used to be the happiest person Sydney knew of. She used to be the one with the heartiest laughs. She used to be the one with the most passionate talks. Now, she was left with nothing but tired, empty smiles.

Her once calm, gentle, and smiley grandfather was also gone. Isolated, kept to himself, stuck in his own world. They haven’t uttered a word to each other since first grade.

Her whole house---once loud and fun---now turned silent. Still. As if everything was still stuck in time, because everyone was still stuck in time. Stuck on that day, specifically, of her kindergarten graduation. The day her mum had died.

Sydney didn’t like to believe it, but she knew she too had changed. She was no longer the six-year-old little girl hopping around the hospital room with crayons in her hands, drawing on every single surface she could find: her palms, her legs, her sick mum’s hands. She was no longer that little bunny who got sent to the library every time her grandparents and the doctor had to have ‘adult talk’; she was no longer that same little girl who spent her whole childhood in the hospital, waiting for her mum to get better, waiting for her to finally come home too, because there was no longer a reason to hope in those depressing, white walls: the reason was dead.

Sydney was now the girl who stayed curled up in her bedroom watching shows, trying to escape what was waiting for her downstairs. She was the girl who devoured all the books in the library like a madwoman, clinging onto the words of fictional characters that she knows she will never hear herself. She was the girl who aced every test, every spelling quiz, every assignment, but it wasn’t for herself. No, not at all.

She was also the girl who had every creaky step and wood panel in her house committed to memory, and for the most part, those small creaks and groans were the only sounds she hears every day. She would rather focus on those than the soft, ushering noises coming from everywhere else.

She would rather focus on how the wind blew at their curtains rather than the way the kitchen was always buzzing with movement---slow, sluggish movements---because her grandmother never stopped cooking now that her mother was gone.

She would rather focus on the way her chair in the dining room lets out a squeak every time she sits on it rather than the way their living room was always dim and unlit, secluded and intended just for her grandfather who sat, silently meditating in a corner, shunned from the outside world. She used to sit there, believe it or not, right next to him, watching his shoulders go up and down with his breath, anticipating, waiting for him to notice her.

He never did.

And she stopped sitting there. She stopped waiting, hoping for him to finally see her because it would never happen.

This house was once a dream, now it was starting to feel more like a nightmare.

She was the girl who lived with the dead, and she always has been, for eight years now.

Dinner was one of those times Sydney dreaded the most. It was the time her grandmother would load their tiny dining table with every single dish and delicacy she had cooked up, trying to fit all the plates and bowls on it until it couldn’t fit on the wooden table even if they tried. They would have to stuff majority of it into the fridge instead, all the while with that same look in her grandmother’s eyes; fragile like glass, about to shatter with every step.

Dinner was also the time when everyone was together, and that was when the silence was the most deafening.

Like she said, after her mum died, everything changed, because her mother was worth everything and Sydney was worth nothing.

Her grandmother would always usher her gently, tiredly, like it wasn’t even her who was talking but her mouth, for Sydney to eat. More and more, more and more, and Sydney does. She eats until her stomach is hurting, until she can’t stuff anything else into her mouth, in hopes that maybe her grandmother would finally look at her, and see that she was doing what was asked. She was eating her food. Doesn't she see? She was eating it just like her mother had. She was eating the food meant for her mother, for Gods’ sake, her dead mother. Sydney didn’t like to admit it, but deep down she knew her grandmother was cooking for the daughter she used to have, not the granddaughter she has now.

Never the granddaughter she has now.

And her mother haunts her still, even after death, sucking all the love that they used to share.

What was it that her mother used to say? What was it that she used to tell her every night, every day, and every waking moment?

“Your father leaving only means that all that love I felt for him can now be given to you instead, bunny.”

Oh but, mum, now that you left, why is there no love left for me?

Author's Note

written: July 2024