Cursed Ground

In front of the sofa resided a long unfinished coffee table, ruined by the blood that had been shed during the chaos. Near the window in front of her also sat a small writing desk which would have normally held her attention, but the tragedy set before her made that impossible. Although creative expression was as much a part of her life as breathing, it was far from her mind today.

She dropped to her knees and began scrubbing, pushing back the threat of emotion. Her mind willed her not to think. She understood that if she thought too much about what happened, then this time she might not find her way back to reality. In no way did she find reality any less formidable than the edge of insanity, but at least she could trust what was in front of her, whereas insanity was full of phantoms and illusions, and nothing seen, heard or felt there could be trusted to be real. So for hours she simply scrubbed, clearing the blood from the floor.

It was two o’clock in the morning when she realized the stain on the floor would never fully disappear. She’d hidden the reminder by cloaking the coffee table with a table cloth that had previously been a white floral sheet meant for a bed. However, the floor wasn’t easily disguised. In truth, there were too many stains and some were too large to disguise with the little they had available to them. Sadly, this meant that every time she was in the room and she looked at it she’d remember. She didn’t want to think about how difficult that would be, so she didn’t.

She stood to her feet and gathered the bloody clothes together and placed them in a large black garbage bag. It was in no way comparable to knowing that a grave inhibited part of her son’s remains, but a body within the earth was a symbolic gesture anyway. Yet, if it was that simple it wouldn’t have mattered if her son had been cremated and his remains floated somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean as long as she knew he’d died a conceivable death.

She didn’t need to stand over a lifeless grave and speak to him, as if he stood in front of her, to feel at ease. It wasn’t the gesture that mattered. It was how he’d died. Although she’d seen it with her very own eyes, his death was inconceivable, it was abhorrent and his missing body was a reminder of that. So the loss she’d feel would always be harder to bear than it would have been if she’d known he felt peace when the end came. But he hadn’t, instead he felt nothing but terror and pain, and she wondered if she’d ever be able to bear the thought of that.