Loss

Based on You Left Me by Angela He.

The Garland and the Collar. Art by Slop4U.

21st March, 2022. 0600 Hours.

You awake to the sound of a rhythmic piano jingle, stirring you from your deep slumber. You sluggishly get out of bed and shamble into your bathroom to tidy up before breakfast.

When all is said and done, you pack your bags and prepare to set out for class at your university, with hope that study and work will numb you for the time being.

21st March, 2022. 0630 Hours.

The ride on the train begins. It is eerily silent as usual, and is the only place where you get any kind of solace from the tedium of what is now your meaningless life. You weave and turn around every corner in your old neighborhood on instinct, passing innocuous places where you once held dear in your memory, now resigned to irrelevance in your cold, fetid heart.

The silence however, feeds into the chaos and turmoil that stirs in your mind, never giving you a moment’s rest as you contemplate all that you’ve wrought. That contemplation is only broken 15 minutes later when you arrive at your destination and you disembark.

So begins the soulless business of the day.

21st March, 2022. 1730 Hours.

Your arduous day at class ends. You pack your bags and leave the classroom, collecting your meagre belongings from your locker on the way out.

You attempt to socialize with your course mates, but it falls flat as usual. It always falls flat, and you never connect with any of them meaningfully bar the scant few you barely run into. Your exhaustion and their banter amongst themselves did little to ease your mind, as well as your ailing body.

You board the train back home, and after a brief moment settling in, you begin the journey home. It is equally quiet as in the morning, but it is no more peaceful and comforting than before. You ponder where you would’ve been and what could have been different as the scenery races past you beneath the din of rattling tracks.

21st March, 2022. 1800 Hours.

You return home, your strength utterly spent and your will sapped, your siblings barely recognizing your presence. You only have 3 hours of free time awake, of which a third of that you spend on enjoying a hearty meal and clean up thereafter, another third on assignments, and the last third on side projects that never go anywhere, mere distractions for your addled mind.

But those distractions would not bring you peace, and your attempts to bury your feelings end up amplifying the entropy in your mind. It would only go away when you forcefully shut it out and retire for the night.

You close your eyes, and everything goes dark.

22nd March, 2022. 0500 Hou —

WAKE UP.

A young man stirs from his slumber, and drowsily pulls himself upright on his bed. His head buzzes furiously like static, as if it had infiltrated his insides and deafened him to most of his senses bar his sight, and he glances around expecting the familiar scent of lime and teak. But around him was a great void beneath his feet, and a starry sky illuminated by a Crimson Moon, its eerie red glow blanketing his bed as it floats precariously above thin clouds, a gentle breeze drifting past him with his pet cat laying peacefully beside him.

It was a different world entirely.

What the hell? Where am I?

Why am I here?

As he laid eyes on the Moon itself, it stirs, the letters XII snapping into existence and the hand of a clock begins ticking down ominously; a shadowy hand reaches out of the void, cradling his bed as it continues to drift. A memorial plaque manifests itself alongside his bed, its details familiar yet detached from him, while his phone drifts beside him with a gentle glow emanating from its screen, and a cable with no end tethering it in place.

What would happen when night falls, and time runs out?

How does he get out of here before then?

Questions he has no answer for as he continues hovering precariously above the clouds, his feet dangling from the edge. Strangely, there was no perceptible vertigo despite the void being literal inches away from him, though it would be difficult for him to feel anything as he is. Tempting as it was to plunge into the infinite darkness, he resisted it, preferring to get his bearings first before he acts.

His phone comes to mind: It’s the first thing he always looks to the moment he awakes, the mindless scrolling on social media for however long he does, looking for something that might pique his interest. News. Events. People. Anything that could make him feel they way he did in years past, but nothing ever comes of it.

And when he boots up his usual messaging app, he notices the following in his archive section:

99+ unseen texts.

He tries to bring himself to viewing the messages, all that history buried beneath the surface, all those precious memories it bears. But something within resists, never allowing them to see the light of day ever again. A terrible weight on his chest that he could not lift, suffocating him bit by bit. It could not bare to look at what once was and what has become of all he held dear. The app closes with an audible click as he turns away from those memories, overwhelming as they were.

He wants to forget them, like all else he did, and he tosses away his phone with all the might he could muster.

It is sent flying at first, flung into the starry darkness above with its illuminated screen being the only beacon of its existence, shrinking bit by little bit until it disappears out of sight. However, the cable pulls taut, and the phone is sent hurtling back, its light drawing closer and closer until it comes to a screeching halt. Again he would toss it, and again it would return to him, always back in the exact spot where it started.

Looks like it’ll never leave him.

Suddenly, the Moon rumbles to life, and the void rattles with it. It stirs to consciousness and the young man hears its thoughts within his head:

Wanna hear a joke?

There is uncertainty at first. He is apparently stuck in Dark Oblivion Wonderland with no clue how he got there and how he’ll get out, and he is surrounded by random things from his lifetime. There is no guarantee of escape from this, so perhaps something to humor him and pass the time ain’t all that bad.

The Moon however, doesn’t wait for an answer before it continues.

How do you round up 37 sheep?

Huh? What the hell are you talking about?

Round up to 40.

Not funny.

Again, the moon stirs.

Did you take a shower today?

Obviously not —

Don’t forget to return it!

Really? Can we not do this again?

He grows tired of the jokes. He has been for a long time since what happened…

And the Moon, sensing apprehension makes a request.

Come now, just one more.

No.

Please???

There is a brief silence before he give his answer.

Ugh, fine. One more.

How many opticians does it take to change a light bulb?

How many?

Is it one or two?

One… or two?

One, obviously —

Wait a bloody minute…

He remembers that he is incredibly short-sighted and practically blind without eyewear. He is so amused he almost lets a faint chuckle escape his lips.

Almost.

Hardy har har, buddy. You got me.

The Moon giggles at its own joke heartily, glad that it had finally gotten a satisfactory reaction out of him, but the light-hearted moment could not last, and the mood shifts. The Moon senses the shift, rumbling uncomfortably in the distance.

You’ve forgotten so much, haven’t you?

…That I have.

What did you forget?

Who did you forget?

I thought I knew, but I’m not sure anymore.

What happened to them?

I……

Those words send a shiver through his entire being, every last fiber within him constricting in an instant and leaving him paralyzed and suffocating. His mind floods with an avalanche of thoughts, and becomes but a static blur that he can neither pierce through nor brute force his way out of. He remains frozen for what feels like forever when the Moon snaps him out of his trance.

Do you feel alone?

He hesitates, having regained his train of thought briefly and was unable to muster anything beyond melancholic laconicism.

…I do.

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you.

I know it’s been difficult since it happened, and I know you want to give up.

But you can’t. You must stay strong.

For her.

For her? Who was she? Was she someone important? Where is she now? And what happened to her?

Questions overwhelm his mind, and again he is suffocated. It feels as if a throbbing mass grows within and threatens to implode his skull from within as he attempts to recall what he had forgotten so long ago, who he had forgotten, deep within the darkest halls of his consciousness. Pushing through the pain, hope seems to have all but faded when a name finally surfaces from the depths.

Lizzy.

On instinct, he turns to his cat, seated peacefully on the sheets with a gentle purr. She is a calico, a mosaic of black and grey stripes spread out over the soft white canvas that is her fur, and her eyes were heterochromic, being a vibrant sea blue and bright emerald respectively. He reaches out to caress her, and the purring grows ever louder.

At least there’s something familiar that is of comfort in this void, but it is a cold comfort, for there is something about her that feels… off. As if she was not all there, a mere shade of what was once joy to him snuffed out by the the natural order of all things.

“So, my furry little friend…

What are you doing on my bed? Pretty sure you’re not supposed to be up here.”

He continues with caressing her, his fingers running through soft, delicate fur and parting it as his hand drifts along her body. The little one purrs ever louder unto the point it becomes deafening as it begins to echo across the void. She rolls into his thigh and leaning her body against it, her head resting upon his left leg while she tucked her paws in.

She seems content to rest where she lays, her purrs continuing on into the night as it were.

“…Alright, you can stay for now, girlie. I’ll get us outta here.

Just gotta — OW.”

As he pats her head one last time, something strikes him in the rear of his head. It makes an audible clang as it makes contact and drifts into view from above.

“The hell?…”

It was the memorial plaque from before, somehow drifted into him while he was distracted. It was of Far Eastern make, a beautiful porcelain plate with an intricate gold pattern all along the outer rim encompassing what is presumably an image of someone engraved into the center of the plaque, but as before, he could not make out to whom it was dedicated to. Something is holding him back, a mental block trying to shut out a memory of that someone he once held dear. Seconds ticked by, then seconds turned to minutes, and minutes turned into an hour before it finally struck him.

“Wait…”

The plaque was dedicated to someone, that was for certain. But that someone was rather… feline in nature.

“Lizzy?!”

In that instant, the purring stops, echoing its last into the void.

In a panic, he turns back to his cat in the hope that she would still be there, but naught but an imprint of her loafing body was left behind. Dread fills his mind as he desperately searches for any sign of her.

“Lizzy! Where are ya?

LIZZY!”

His cries are met with silence.

Realizing he wouldn’t get anywhere screaming into the void, he lifts himself off his bed and onto his feet despite said void being a rather inconvenient and slightly lethal obstacle. The moment his foot lands on something solid however, he found himself someplace different.

“Shit, what now?”

He now finds himself in a vast open field sparsely populated by trees. The sky was vibrant and beautiful, thin clouds drift by in the breeze, which itself was cool and comforting, but as before, it was bitterly dark, and he could not see much beyond the moon.

Strange. The moon is… no longer bloody crimson? It’s gone back to being a serene white, bathing the land in its gentle white glow.

His eyes dart from end to end, trying to make out anything on the horizon, but all he sees are moonlit grass and the stars, silhouetted by the outline of the trees blocking their vibrantly twinkling light, almost as if they’re overjoyed at their newfound freedom.

She would’ve liked this.

“Sigh. At least I’m out of purgatory. Now where the bloody hell is Lizzy?”

A long search would begin, and the field seemed endless as he traversed for hours trying to ascertain where she went, but everywhere he’s gone, there was nothing. Neither a trace of a pawprint, nor a tuft of her fur could be found, and it never will, for he would stumble upon a small earthen mound with a wooden post planted in the ground on the far end, wreathed in a garland of white flowers. Like the memorial plaque from before, something about that post seemed familiar to him.

And then he sees it. A small red collar at the base of the wooden post.

It was Lizzy’s. Neither the post nor the mound were there by accident. He remembers why.

He slumps to his knees, a terrible migraine overtaking him as flashes of his past begin to overwhelm his mind; Joyful memories of the first time he carried her home; The quiet nights of solitude spent in his beloved feline’s company; And their last moments together as she drew her last breath in his embrace. He remembers now, everything he had forgotten, that he had kept in the darkest depths of his consciousness, now revealing itself beneath a land blanketed in beautiful moonlight.

She had passed long ago, and he could not accept it for the longest time. But such is the way of Mother Nature herself, for she is both cruel and kind to us all.

Finally, you’ve remembered what you’ve denied for so long.

That I have.

It’s not what I’ve wanted for you.

I know.

So what will you do now?

He ponders that question for a brief moment. It’s one he’s asked himself many times since then, but still without answers for. He had lived a fantasy for so long he’d forgotten what it means to live for himself. A deafening silence pervades itself as he knelt motionless, but it does not last, for he would give a simple answer.

I will live on, and I will cherish all that you gifted me.

Without you.

Goodbye, Lizzy.

7th May, 2026. 1800 Hours.

You return home, disembarking from your car after a long drive. You cast off your personal effects in your living room before returning outside, stepping onto the gentle grass tuft that blankets your yard.

You stop to pick some flowers from the potted plants your mother left you and fashion a small garland with them before approaching a wooden post serving as a simple headstone, laying the garland atop it before uttering these words:

Hey, Lizzy. I’m home.

Where she lies. Art by Slop4U.

In memory of beloved pets Jess and Snow.