Felicia
By Marsha Steed 12/2003
http://Chantaclair.com
It wasn't what she had pictured, this thing they called death.
Felicia could see the tattered remains of her physical form, and that of her fiancée, only a few yards further away.
Somehow Devin's and her own demise cast a sort of odd detachment over her senses. A surrealistic facade' of dreamlike existence hovered over her.
She knew it was not a dream and even could recall the last agony in its minutest detail.
Yet the aloofness allowed her to look over things with a detective like appraisal.
She could see the path where the bikes had suddenly veered off.
She could feel the scratching of winter branches against her shins.
She could still hear Devin's scream to "Watch Out!" echoing through her subconscious.
His voice was as distinguishable as the pain she could still taste when her body crumpled against the stone wall.
Thoughts of her mother, long gone, and her father just recently departed nudged at her mind. Other loved ones vied for a place in her conscious by face and name.
It was as if a parade of dead loved-ones were marching in formation to be noticed first.
"Odd the things one deems important now." She murmured to herself.
No, actually she hadn't made a sound.
Apparently communication was different on this side of the veil as well, besides, who did she think would hear her anyway?
Suddenly and without even a conscious movement from her, Felicia was seeing a woman.
Amanda, the sister that always acted as mother, materialized before her eyes. There she was, perched on a bicycle, one foot on the ground to steady her, speaking to someone laying on the ground.
"Just like her, trying to help someone, always the do-gooder. . ."
Felicia allowed herself a laugh, but found again that no sound came from her lips.
The touch of her hand on them offered no more of a solid manifestation then did the silence she was encased in.
She looked back to the scene as she searched around the immediate area for signs that Devin too, has survived into this place on the other side of life, but she found none.
Nothing but that eerie silence swelling with sounds.
"Devin?"
She whispered, and then shouted, "Devin!"
But nothing happened.
Not a sound disturbed the thick cotton quiet.
She turned back to Amanda; it was like watching a silent film.
She could hear sounds only in a secondary fashion, almost as if she was imagining them, yet she knew she was making no effort to do so.
Something also told her that she was sensing the sounds accurately, even though she heard nothing.
What she knew, was that Amanda would not take her passing well.
There was just the two of them now, and though Amanda had always been 'the little mother', Felicia had felt since she was about eight, that she truly was the one who made all the decisions.
Amanda was off her bike now, removing her helmet, of course she never road without one, and kneeling b'side the twisted form half on and half off the wooded path.
Felicia was almost bored by it all, and turned away until a flash of emerald caught her attention.
The light made the pin on the leather sparkle happily.
The contrast was almost laughable.
Why Amanda was burying her face against the battered body and sobbing as if . . .
...
( to be continued )
