𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐤, 𝐁𝐮𝐠

Soon, Shiloh would be gone.

A young lady stood in the slant of mid-morning sunlight; New York City was bathed in a glow of golden luminance as if the gods cut their palms open to cleanse it. Her red-rimmed eyes were closed to avoid a nasty sting, but they began to creep open. Sunspots performed a graceful ballet across her vision. She blinked her weighted eyelids, willing the sparks of motley light to dwindle, but they lingered as she gazed out onto the horizon. Out onto the graveyard.

To her, it was a graveyard. But to the souls of the dead, it was a home with bars on the windows. Sorrow was a knife lodged between her ribs, scraping the bones every time she took a breath. Her lithe hand, adorned in esoteric scars, reached underneath her leather jacket. Clumsily, she thumbed over her metaphorical wound — her insides crumpled in on themselves like she pressed a hot iron rod onto raw skin. An acrid taste perfumed the back of her mouth, making it water. She raised that hand to her mouth, before softly running it down her neck, to her collarbone.

She had grown tired of grief making her ill. Her figure showed this. It had only been... what? Three, maybe four days? The girl didn’t trust her exhaustion-addled brain to keep her memories straight, so she counted on her callused fingers to do the job. She flexed her joints until she was holding up four. Four pots of coffee made in the early morning’s doom, four sleepless nights spent watching the scintillating city lights blink her awake... four afternoons where she pretended she was thinking about something other than noosing herself.

It had been four days since it happened.

Her grip tightened on the bouquet she clutched, washing the pigment from her knuckles. A magnetic force was dragging her gaze toward the stone before her. Her sunspots faded perfectly and left her nowhere to hide as she read the name that haunted her. The crick in her neck groaned like tires on gravel, but that was nothing compared to the onslaught of memories echoing through her head.

Bernadette Maye.

She used to call her Birdie; her screams ripped through her ears, sending that knife further into her body. The bottom of her lungs was a breath of fire, but they petered to a smoke signal as she failed to roar her grief. She looked at the flowers, just as renegades of daylight cradled the petals. Purple hyacinths to say goodbye and black roses, to say she was sorry.

She pursed her paper mache lips, forcing them out of a frown. There was no room for cracks on her porcelain facade, though her woeful eyes never obeyed this rule. Spindles of melancholy lived in the ruins of steel, singing a lament in her ghostly irises. A scream of her own burgeoned on the back of her tongue, begging to be released. She swallowed it, and the lump in her throat, back harshly. Birds were chirping delicately, and remnants of morning dew sizzled on the paved walkways that twisted through the graveyard. She tried to listen, but the white noise dissolved into traffic horns blaring.

“Hey honey,” a woman’s voice was accompanied by clicking quarter-inch heels. A shiver ran up the girl’s spine, like an ocean wave lapping over the shoreline. Her shoulders tightened, recognizing that New York lilt that regarded her too kindly. She saw a flash of long, curly hair enter her peripheral vision as the other moved to stand beside her.

“Those flowers are beautiful, Shiloh... different than the ones you normally bring.” Her tone was always a balm to the afflicted. Her voice was the manifestation of a mother’s touch, though now she had no child to hold. The older woman had a way about her, maybe it was how she always seemed to be smiling, or the compassion scribed on her dark features. She captured the essence of fireflies and honey in her animation — before the accident, she always put Shiloh at ease. But since? She could hardly bear to meet her kind eyes.

“They mean something different too,” Shiloh murmured, furrowing her eyebrows slightly. She was a master of changing subjects to avoid topics she didn’t want to talk about, which she was grateful for now. “You don’t normally come on Tuesdays,” she said, lifting her eyes to meet Mrs. Maye. Compassion poetically came to life in her delicately configured expression. “Do you want a moment alone with her?” She nodded to the headstone, marking the place where Mrs. Maye’s daughter was buried.

“No, no,” Mrs. Maye replied easily, batting Shiloh’s marred shoulder gently as if it would break otherwise. “I was actually looking for you today.”

That can’t be good.

Shiloh stayed silent, inviting the woman the finish her thought. In truth, she longed to run away and hide in the darkness... she just couldn’t take another thing. Her dead best friend’s mother seeking her out would almost certainly add another weight to her sinking ship, Shiloh thought to herself.

“I noticed that you haven’t been to church in a while.” Shiloh’s face grew to stone, her flushing cheeks gave her away though. “I was talking to Marcy Scott about it, and she told me you’ve been getting into some trouble,” she continued, skirting her gaze away after giving up trying to read her. Her words carried no judgment, yet it made Shiloh’s heart shrivel up the same.

There were very few people on this earth who she feared disappointing. Most authority figures had loomed over her, and instead of offering a guiding hand, used their palms to inflict pain. They left her abandoned and bruised, while Mrs. Maye had only turned her blue by expressing disapproval at her for letting swear words slip at dinner. “Right,” Shiloh ran her fingers through her mussed dark hair. She resisted the urge to touch her cold hands to her face to soothe the incinerator her skin had become.

Church pews came to mind, the ones at Holy Harmony Church that was adjacent to the graveyard. She tried to block out the memories of the preacher screaming at her — her mother’s harpy cry, banishing strangers to hell for being ‘unholy’. It was too much for her frazzled nerves, it was too much for the unshed tears threatening to spill over. Her mouth was too dry to speak. And really, how could she articulate that she had never believed in God, but clung to faith for her mother? All she could do was avert her stare to Birdie’s name and nod slowly.

“I’m not here to scold you.” Mrs. Maye’s eyebrows tethered together, like hands of prayer for a broken soul. Shiloh shuddered, relief shaking her like a leaf. Her body starved by anxiety could have floated away just as easily. Perhaps sensing the emotions she disguised, she squeezed the teenager’s shoulder gently. “I wanted to check on you...” she trailed off through a knowing frown. “Is everything okay?”

Nothing had been okay for a very long time. She had no intention of disclosing that now, so she nodded again. The gesture thinly veiled her withered being; her neck complained again. “Yeah, Mrs. Maye,” she managed a forced smile. “Everything’s fine as a tune.”

The woman doesn’t look convinced. Luckily for Shiloh, she was too polite to question her further. Instead, she did something one million times worse. “Who is the other bouquet for?” She asked, with her head tilted into cascading sunlight, highlighting the apples of her youthful cheeks. Losing Birdie had aged her inside, providing her with a thousand-year-old soul. Her question cut down to the bones in Shiloh’s rickety frame.

She cast a sidelong glance across the rows and rows of resting souls, then returned her stare. “My mom.” She uttered this like a ghost hollowing the name of their killer- yet, her raspy chords also melted together with forgiveness, like a parent forgiving their child. Mrs. Maye’s eyes widened, a short gasp leaving her, and Shiloh’s jaw tightened.

“Your mother passed?”

Shiloh gulped down the grief of someone much older than her sixteen years. Hearing yet another person repeat those words was a record scratch she hadn’t been able to silence for four days. She rubbed that place on her ribs again, desperately searching for silent, hidden comfort.

“We buried her a couple of days ago,” she confirmed nonchalantly, shrugging softly.

“Oh, honey... I am so so sorry.” Mrs. Maye spoke through her fingers that were clutched over her mouth. Shiloh wondered if she meant that. She wondered if there was any reason to be sorry that she died. “I had no idea,” she added in disbelief. “What happened?”

“She overdosed.” That was the first time Shiloh had been able to say that without her voice cracking. The first time her hands weren’t shaking, for a reason other than the tremors from her old injury. Just because she could say it aloud didn’t mean it didn’t make her want to vomit. The taste of salt filled her mouth, images enveloping her head cruelly. A pill bottle with Shiloh’s name on it was clutched in her mother’s seizing hands, her red lipstick smudged by the froth pooling around her teeth. A 9-1-1 operator coached her through CPR in a monosyllabic drawl... Shiloh’s breath hitched. She could practically feel her mother’s ribs breaking beneath her hands again.

Shiloh didn’t realize she’d been clutching that spot on her ribs in a vice grip until she shook her head, bringing herself back to the present.

Mrs. Maye looked lost. She shook her head, lifting her eyebrows up and down twice before she managed some words. “What are you going to do? Do you have family that’ll take you in?” She questioned urgently. “Our door is always open-”

“I’m moving in with my uncle.” She couldn’t possibly take another thing from the Mayes, certainly not space in their home.

“You have an uncle?”

“It came as a shock to me too,” Shiloh tried for a joking tone, though her words were true. She hadn’t known he existed until after her mother died... she sensed there was a story there, but in the few conversations they’d had, it hadn’t come up yet. “Apparently he lives in Washington,” she trailed off hollowly. “He agreed to take me in, so I guess I’m moving.” It was a struggle to keep the skepticism out of her voice, to shield Mrs. Maye from her worry.

“Have you met him?” She sighed delicately, barely making a sound at all. She didn’t give the girl time to answer. “Is he kind? Trustworthy enough to move to a new state with? What’s his name?”

For the first time in days, Shiloh genuinely smiled. Mirth teased her eyes, nearly coming to fruition in the grey. “His name is Jonah Austen.” Her smile dwindled to a smirk. “As far as estranged relatives I’ve barely talked to go, I think he’s a pretty decent guy.” She hoped, at least.

Mrs. Maye stepped forward, her heels clicking with the quiet wind. She stationed herself front and center in Shiloh’s vision and did something that took her by surprise. She pulled her into a warm embrace, making the touch-starved girl tense up before relaxing into her lilac-perfumed hug. “My door is always open sweet girl, it never closed,” she whispered tenderly.

Shiloh’s heavy heart became lighter in that fleeting moment when she truly allowed herself to be comforted. She closed her eyes tiredly, held her breath, and rested for a second until Mrs. Maye pulled her to arm’s length. “You don’t use it enough Shiloh,” she added, subtly glancing at Birdie’s grave.

“Mrs. Maye,” her voice swelled at the ends of her words like a curl of cigarette smoke. “How could I possibly ask anything of you when I’m standing here, alive and Birdie is gone?” She smiled like she was about to cry and shook her head, once again feeling like this world was just too much for her. “I can’t even bring myself to ask for your forgiveness.”

“You don’t need to ask for my forgiveness,” Mrs. Maye replied fiercely, whipping her head from side to side. “The drunken idiot who crashed into your car needs to beg God for forgiveness, and God needs to ask for my forgiveness for taking my baby girl,” she stated matter-of-factly before her eyes softened once more. “But not you. I don’t need to forgive you for being alive.” The atmosphere turned heavy, like a thick blanket of snow across a collapsing roof.

Shiloh cleared her throat. A voice in her head yelled the opposite, a banshee screaming inside the confines of her mind. It was her fault. She had been the one driving - maybe if she had pulled over sooner, or swerved at the right time... guilt festered under her skin, an infection that poisoned her blood itself. And how many times had her mother made her feel that same guilt? Guilt for being alive. “I should go, Mrs. Mae,” she said abruptly, though her heavy feet felt anchored to the ground. She twisted the bouquet stems between her hands shakily. “I have a lot to do before I leave the city tonight.”

Mrs. Maye murmured something more that sounded like static to her. That had happened a lot recently. She bid Shiloh a final farewell, hugging her again and making sure she still knew her number, before walking back to her car. It wasn’t a special goodbye, it ended in hollow words akin to funeral drums, but she was glad she had seen her before she left. That meant there would be three goodbyes in this graveyard.

Shiloh stooped down, brushing dirt off Birdie’s name before adjusting the flowers to sit prettily. “I’ll see you again, Birdie,” she whispered, thumbing over her name once more like she used to do to her best friend’s cheek. Dread plummeted in her soul when she stood and trekked past the ghosts, to her mother’s plot. On the small walk, she found herself pondering the afterlife for the fifth time that day. She didn’t believe in heaven, but she found herself trying to for the sake of her mother. Her terrible, cruel mother who prayed with the same hands she hit Shiloh with, believed in a higher paradise. At the end of the day, Shiloh hoped her mom was right and she had found a peace she never knew in life, in death.

She squeezed the flower stems, looking them over for any flaws but finding none. The black and purple petals were perfectly nestled together, and in the middle was a bright pink peony. She bent down, scooping up the day-old bouquet, trying to avoid her mom’s name. A saying her mother used to use often when Shiloh was little came to mind. Before piano recitals, or when her father was angry with her, even when she was trying something new. And this was all new to her, which must have been why Rhea Vitello’s aged voice came to mind, saying:

Good luck, bug.

Inhaling a shaky breath, she pressed a kiss on the top of the headstone. Her dark hair fell across her face, masking the tears in her eyes from the world. This was a private moment, this was a moment burdened as the second between heartbeats. Shiloh set the flowers down. Purple hyacinths to say goodbye, black roses to say she was sorry, and a single pink peony that symbolized good luck.

October 10th, 1994, Shiloh Vitello said goodbye.

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—-—• What do you think of Shiloh so far?

Hello lovely readers! It has been so long since I’ve written an original fiction! I really hope you enjoyed it and that it isn’t obvious I’m out of practice! That said, whether you liked it or think it could be improved, please let me know your thoughts and perhaps vote if you’re so inclined! Thank you so much for reading, and have a wonderful day or night!