Today was a rather busy day at the little dive bar on the edge of town. I’d been serving drinks and snacks non-stop since my shift had started a few hours ago, something I was rather grateful for as it kept my mind off of other, more painful things. It has been a year, but the ghost of that night still haunts me every day. I haven’t been the same since then, life feels empty, and everything feels like it’s obscured and distorted by static, growing worse every day.

  I had just placed down another beer for one of the regulars when someone approached the bar at the edge of my vision. Turning on the best smile I could manage, I turn towards them.

  Seconds pass before I register who is there in front of me, heart rate picking up as realization hits and the room seems to close in on me. I put down my palms on the edge of the counter, fingers digging into the wood as I barely manage to get the words out with a hiss, trying to stay in control. “Markus. You’re not welcome here.”

  He’s dressed immaculately, as always, with the same false smile directed at me that he wore when apologizing for the accident. His voice is loud and clear, making sure others can hear him over the din of the bar. “Oh, Ada, I didn’t know you worked here. Quite the step down, is it not? Though, my dear, why would I not be welcome here? I don’t recall visiting this place before.”

  His voice is grating in my ears as I bite my tongue to keep from saying too much. I couldn’t keep talking to him, the memories were starting to flood back, the screeching of tires, the heat of the fire, the wetness of blood as she bled out in my arms. I take a deep breath, steeling myself as I look just past him, my eyes falling on the woman he was clearly here with, blonde and dainty, the exact opposite of Anya. Did he move on from his obsession after what he did, or was he just here to taunt me? I slowly exhale the breath I had been holding. “You know why you’re not welcome here. Your brother might protect you, but don’t think I’ll ever forget.” My eyes turn towards his, the venom dripping from every word I speak.

  He reaches across the counter and places a hand on mine, the disgusting feeling of his oily skin on my hand makes me want to snatch it away. “Ada, dear, you wound me. Do you really still believe that what happened was on purpose? It was an accident, we both know that, everyone knows that. I am sorry that you lost your dear fiancée, and that you carried so many scars away from it, but… wasn’t it lucky I was there to call the ambulance? Most others would’ve just fled and you’d not be here either.”

  Incensed, I extract my hand from underneath his and lean forward. “You are one sick asshole, you know that? Anya was my wife, NOT my fiancée, and you know that. That’s why you did what you did after all.” My anger drips from my words, and before I can stop myself, my hand flies out and slaps him across the face. His shocked expression is priceless.

  My voice drops to a deep growl as I speak again, loud enough to be heard by the others sitting at the bar, their attention clearly on me. “Leave. Now. Never come back.”

  The woman next to Markus finally speaks, the first time since they got here. Her voice is shrill as she screams at me. “How dare you! Assaulting someone like Markus!” She tugs at his arm as she turns to leave. “Let’s leave this rotten establishment, I am sure there are much better places.” She begins to stride out as Markus scrambles after her, his composure clearly broken.

  I take a deep breath as I survey the bar. It’s quiet now, people are staring. What I did is only now starting to set in, alongside the memories of that night. My eyes widen, the silence is deafening. I need to go somewhere else, away from the people… but I can’t leave the bar. I turn from side to side before finally dashing into the back-room, fishing out my cell phone and making a call to the owner.

  It rings a few moments before Celine picks up. “Hey Ada, everything ok?” Her voice is calm, concerned. I don’t usually call her while on shift.

  I try to speak, but my voice forsakes me as only a pitiful sound escapes me. The line is quiet for a few moments as I try again to find my voice, with little luck. My throat is tight, the taste of smoke in my mouth as I gag a little, unable to breathe.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can, hold on for a few more minutes.” Her voice is reassuring as I respond with a small whimper, she knew what happened a year ago, she was my best friend after all. “Take a few deep breaths and sit down, wait for me.” The line goes silent as she hangs up. I slump to the ground next to the door leading back into the bar. Drawing my legs close to my body, I remind myself to breathe in and out, slow and steady. The quiet din of the bar behind the door has picked up again. It’s not as oppressively silent anymore, though the quiet murmurs remind me of the hospital, all the whispers and the pity in the looks.

  I don’t know how much time passed before I’m pulled back into the here and now by Celine squatting down in front of me, one gloved hand reaching out to me, a small soothing smile on her face. “Hey there.”

  I take another breath and swallow before I manage to speak. “Hey there.” I realize I have been crying, my mouth is dry and my cheeks are wet from the tears.

  “You don’t seem like you’re doing very well, Ada. I shouldn’t have let you work alone, not today of all days. What happened?” She places her hand on my knee and soothes me a little with some gentle strokes.

  I shake my head a little as I stammer out his name. “M-Markus… he was here.”

  Celine’s eyes widen at my words, her other hand tightening into a fist. “I see, you should probably go home, rest a little. Today must’ve been hard. Do you want me to take you? I’ll just have to close up, it won’t take long.”

  Considering her words for a few moments, I eventually shake my head, I don’t want to burden her with my issues, she was already doing so much for me. “I’ll be fine… probably. I might visit her grave before I go home…” I feel the sting in my chest, the heartache still as present as if it were yesterday.

  She considers me for a few moments, before she sighs and nods her head. “Alright, but, please, if you need me, I am just a call away, alright? You don’t need to be alone with this.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  A tight smile is all I can manage. “I know, I’ll try… maybe we can watch a movie together sometime…” Even as I say it, it feels hollow, just like everything does nowadays.

  Celine stands up and holds out a hand to me to help me up. “I’ll take over for the rest of today, please stay safe, and the offer of my therapist is still open, you know? It wouldn’t hurt.”

  I take her hand and let her help me up, but I don’t respond as I ease out the creases on my work clothes before grabbing my coat from the hanger nearby. I turn towards her and give another smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

  She shakes her head as she steps up to the door. “Only if you feel better.” She opens it for me and motions me through, the concern is plain in her eyes, concern for little broken me. I don’t feel like I deserve it, but I don’t tell her as much.

  I make my way out of the bar, avoiding the glances thrown my way, and step out into the chilly night, a slight drizzle coating the road. Pulling up my coat, I start making my way through the little town we live in, to the graveyard where Anya is buried.

  The rain had gotten a bit stronger on my way there, but I don’t mind; It keeps my thoughts from wandering as I make my way through the rows of gravestones, until I finally reach her. Tucked away into a little corner, underneath a willow tree, sits her gravestone, a rather simple one, with her name engraved on it and not much else. She never wanted more than that.

  I squat down in front of it and run my fingers across her name, recalling the good times we had together, how we met in a little bookshop in another town. The travels we went on, our first kiss at a moonlit pond not far from here.

  A small sigh escapes as my recollection continues: the day she proposed, despite our love being so different, our small and lovely wedding, the honeymoon and then, just a few short days later, she died. The accident, which really was anything but. Markus had been stalking and harassing her for a while. We had planned to move to another city soon, as we couldn’t do much about Markus here, with the chief of police being his brother and all. We never expected him to go that far.

  My fingers trail across the contour of a knife fastened to my belt, one I’d been carrying ever since the accident. Anya had gifted it to me for one of our camping trips a few years ago. Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure what I planned to use it for. Clearly not its intended purpose, but maybe vengeance? Probably, though it wasn’t really an option. Maybe as a way out. It was something I’d considered on some days, like today, the ones where it all just seemed hopeless.

  I sit down on the stone, leaning back against the gravestone. “Hey Anya, I hope wherever you are is a better place, if there’s anywhere you are now, that is.” The tears I shed are washed away by the rain as I look into the sky. “I miss you. Today has not been a good day. One of those days I consider joining you. But you wouldn’t want that, you’d want me to try my best to keep living. It’s not easy.”

  The rain drowns out my sobs as I break down into tears, the reality of her loss so fresh on my mind, luckily the rest of the cemetery is empty due to the rain, there’s no one here to disturb me. Eventually, my legs hugged in close, I manage to still myself a little. “I’ll try, my love, even if I am like this sometimes… I just wish you were here with me.”

  My thoughts drift before they are snapped back into focus as something shifts. It’s nothing in my surroundings, at least not anything visible. The static that I’ve been feeling over the past year grows in intensity, washing over my senses, drowning them out for a few moments. I manage to fight through it, though. The static is still there however, it feels almost like it is pushing into me, causing me a little bit of pain, slowly growing in intensity the more the static grows.

  The static doesn’t exactly feel wrong, despite the pain it is causing me, it feels familiar. Familiar in a way that I do not like, in a way that is quickly breaking down barriers I’d built over decades. Barriers shielding me from memories I had long repressed, pushed away into the furthest corners of my mind.

  The first memories that come back to me are from before things turned bad, from when I was still very little. Memories of playing in the backyard, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends or with my mother, each of them happy, each of them ending with the same static as I am experiencing now, just less obscuring, and coming mostly from inside. When my mother is there, the static doesn’t cause pain, she seems to teach me, calls it magic. Similar memories come flooding back, but they quickly turn darker. My mother disappears from them, then my father becomes unpleasant. The static is there in these memories too, it’s always there, hiding me from his ire when he is drunk, its pain is better than that he’d inflict on me. I age in the memories, my happy times turning darker and darker with every passing day, my body feeling more wrong the older I get, the magic slowly fading. Then, there’s the day the magic disappears entirely. That day, my father dies. Spontaneous self combustion the news called it. I knew better, and I knew better than to tell them, I told him, about me, about feeling wrong, about the magic, he called me an abomination. Tried to make me disappear, just like mother. I didn’t let him, burning what little I still had alongside him.

  More memories come and go in a blur, of teenage years living with fear, wanting nothing else but to not be me anymore, to finally be free of that body. Then they stop, as suddenly as the memories came, they are gone again. My consciousness returns to the real world, and I try to shove the memories back into the farthest recesses of my mind. It takes me a long few moments to realize I collapsed entirely to the ground, curled up into a fetal position, still shaking. The rain has drenched me, but I do not care. Instead, I grasp for the static, pulling it into me, the pain spikes alongside it, though its feeling is still familiar, safe despite the pain, and the more I grasp for it, the less obscured the world feels.

  I lay there for minutes, slowly recovering, I can’t tell whether the magic is real, or just a fabrication of my broken mind, but regardless, it helps. Eventually, I manage to sit up, leaning back against Anya’s headstone, and I start giggling. “Magic, Anya. Can you imagine?” My words barely make it out, the giggles quickly replaced by sobs again. “If only it were real. Maybe I could’ve saved you. Or maybe it is, and I failed you.” My mind rages against that idea, if magic is real, and I had known of it, then why is my wife dead? Did I kill her, am I responsible for her death? My mind begins to spiral again, my memories tearing down the walls I am trying to build up again, clawing into me, slowly pulling me under again.

  What saves me is a loud rumbling sound, the thunder of lightning high up in the sky, but more visceral than anything I heard before, pressing into me on an existential level. My eyes are drawn upwards, where a giant black ball of lightning floats, its presence sucking up the light, darkening even the gloom of the storm. A tendril of lightning arcs from it and into the ground somewhere far away, and the rumble repeats, the visceral feeling returns. I have a hard time parsing what is happening, my mind is broken, and the sky broke alongside it. Not just the sky, I belatedly realize. It’s not just the lightning causing the rumble, but the earth itself shifts beneath me, cracking, but not in the way of an earthquake. Like reality is breaking apart.

  My giggles return, it’s the only way I know how to cope with this. With the end of the world. “I guess it doesn’t matter if I failed you, Anya. I am sorry though, I am joining you today after all. I hope you forgive me.” Another rumble passes through me, taking my consciousness with it. The last thing I see is a crack in reality spreading across the graveyard, heading straight for me. I hope death by disintegration still lets me go to where Anya is.