Death is no Dream (prose)

This was an A-Level English project when I was in Sixth Form College, i.e. my last two years of high school, so I would have been 17 or 18 when I wrote it.  We had to take one genre/style of text and turn it into something different.  I chose the song Gloomy Sunday and decided to make it into a story.  I got an A.

I was actually dealing with depression and anxiety myself at the time so, despite posting this on DeviantArt and now here, I have never been able to re-read it. 

TW: SUICIDE


The pale light filtering through the blinds told Anna that it was daybreak. She had lain there all night, just like that, just the way she’d fallen upon returning to her flat the previous evening. She still wore the same old-fashioned, knee-length black dress, with its lace patterns now firmly engraved into the skin where it met her pale arms and legs. Her high-heeled shoes, unbuckled, hung motionless from her feet as her legs dangled off the bed. Her tangled hair eclipsed half of her face, falling down into her slightly open mouth. Through the blonde strands stared bloodshot eyes from which her mascara had fled and congealed on her cheeks. You could have believed her to be dead if it weren’t for the distant flicker in her eyes and the blink as she returned from the reception with its sympathetic guests and condolences to the gloominess of her room. Anna realised how long she’d been there. Twelve sleepless hours.

Anna sat up, resembling a mannequin that had been hastily forced into its position by a careless shopkeeper. As if realising this, she slowly reached up and pushed her bra strap back out of sight, slipped her feet into her shoes and brushed some of her hair away from her face. In doing so she caught sight of her reflection in the dusty mirror on the opposite wall; she scowled at the sight of the dark circles around her eyes and the lines on her forehead. The black streaks down her face didn’t bother her, but she raised a hand to wipe off her lipstick, leaving a dark pink smear across her left cheek and the back of her hand.

As Anna stood up, she smoothed down her crumpled dress before ungracefully stumbling towards the bedroom door. She stepped out of her room uneasily, like someone testing the water, and felt her way along the hallway. The lights were out. Chinks of light shone through the curtains, cutting through dense shadows and showing up the dust in the air. Anna went into the kitchen. She picked up a packet of cigarettes from the worktop, took one out, lit it and began to smoke, inhaling deeply as she leaned over the sink. She reached out and gingerly fiddled with the blinds on the window in front of her until they let in just a little light which, as it fell onto the kitchen table, betrayed a bouquet of little white flowers. Stargazer lilies.

Anna glimpsed the telltale white and ribbons out of the corner of her eye. She threw her cigarette into the sink, turned and seized the flowers as if they were culprits guilty of some crime. With a sneer she tossed them onto the worktop.

Flowers will never bring him back. Neither, she thought as she picked up the card that had fallen on the floor, will your words of sympathy. Nothing will ever bring him back. He’s gone forever.

As she read the words written on the card, Anna’s sneer turned into a hysterical laugh followed by a brief cry. It was a verse from the Bible.

‘Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the LORD forever.’

Who was the card from, anyway? An old friend of the family whom Anna hadn’t seen for years. An old friend who probably thought that Anna was still a staunch Catholic like the rest of her family. But Anna had lost her faith a long time ago: years of depression and illness had made sure of that. She tore the card into pieces and threw it into the bin along with the flowers.

Although Anna no longer considered herself to be religious, she couldn’t fully let go of the beliefs that had been buried within her mind during her childhood and teenage years. She remembered something her mother had told her when she was about ten years old. We ask God to forgive us for our evil thoughts and evil temper, but rarely, if ever, ask Him to forgive us for our sadness. It was as if people had a duty to always be joyful and never to grieve, as if sadness was a sin. But Anna, so unlike her cold, stoic mother, had never been able to live up to that standard.

Anna glanced around the room. Her mother’s voice was ringing in her head. She had died nearly five years ago but Anna had never really mourned for her death. She felt as though she should. She felt guilty. And yet she knew that she was capable of feeling grief, because she was grieving right now over the loss of her husband. She was in inconsolable despair, in fact.

Anna could feel the walls closing in and the panic starting to rise in her chest. She was hyperventilating. This was a feeling she hadn’t had in a long time. She’d almost forgotten how to deal with it. Barely in control of herself, Anna threw open the medicine cabinet and searched it clumsily with trembling hands. She knew that she wouldn’t find what she was looking for: she’d thrown out her medication a long time ago. She could even remember doing it. Thomas had told her not to but as usual, she hadn’t listened to him. She’d smiled and said,

“Baby, I’m okay now. I don’t need these anymore. You’re all I need.”

And the Paxil had gone down the sink.

Gripping the table tightly, Anna shakily sat down into a chair. She put a hand to her chest and waited for the feeling to pass. When it left, she was in tears.

This day was a reflection of how her life was to be from now on. Thomas had been her rock, her strength, and now he was gone. He had brought her out of her darkest times. Meeting him had been like stepping into sunlight for the first time; suddenly her life had been filled with warmth and light. But the light had died on that saddest of days only two weeks ago. Thomas had been on a business trip over the weekend. He was supposed to have been coming home. But he never made it back. The police had said that the roads were bad and that he’d lost control of the car.

It was a cold winter; it had become colder still. Anna could feel the darkness catching up with her. Without Thomas, she couldn’t go forward. From now on there would be nothing but the shadows of her past to keep her company. She couldn’t live like that.

In her heart, Anna knew what she wanted to do. She knew what she had to do. She had to end it all. It was a last, desperate resort but it was the only option that she had left. She decided that she wouldn’t bother to leave a note. Her reasons would be obvious. Her family would be upset, of course, but they would eventually come to understand that she had chosen her own fate and that she was only too glad to leave. All the same, she did feel a little sorry for the people she was leaving behind, but it was just a small thought somewhere in the back of her mind. They would have to go through what she had just been through, although not quite, because she loved Thomas more than they loved her. But it would all be the same thing, the candles and flowers and the sad prayers. Although she knew that it was probably a vain wish, Anna hoped that they wouldn’t cry for her. She neither wanted nor deserved tears.

Of course, Anna knew all too well what her mother would have said. Suicide was a sin. If that was true, Anna was going to hell. But that was a risk she was willing to take. In her mind, she was not expecting judgement and punishment but instead a peaceful escape.

Returning to her room, Anna passed the calendar that hung above the table in the hallway. She paused, picked up a pen from beside the phone and scribbled out the date for that day. Sunday 13th December. Exactly two rows above it she had already drawn a cross. The box for the previous day read ‘funeral’. She scribbled that out, too.

Anna walked back into her room slowly, focusing only on the full-length window in front of her. As she reached the window, she stepped out of her shoes. She undid the latch on the window. For a moment, she hesitated. She stepped back. A breeze blew against the window, pushing it open slightly and whistling as it did so. It was like a call of encouragement.

Anna’s mind went blank. She took hold of the window frame and stepped up onto the ledge. She leaned forward. She closed her eyes, feeling the wind in her face. She let the air fill her lungs before breathing it out in a final prayer, not for herself but for the one who had gone before her, the one whom she would soon be with. Then she uncurled her fingers and relaxed her grip; her hands left the window frame and she fell.

As Anna hit the ground with a jolt, her eyes flew open, but she couldn’t see anything. Colours were dancing in her vision, obscuring everything else. For a few seconds, her heart thundered as she waited for the pain to hit her or for darkness to come over her eyes. But neither came.

Anna realised that she was not where she thought she was. She couldn’t feel the hard chill of the snowy ground beneath her nor see the sky above her. Instead, she felt the softness of her mattress and saw the patterned ceiling of her room. She was back in her bed. And as she rolled over, she realised something else.

She was not alone.

Thomas was lying beside her. He was asleep, but nevertheless he was there. Relief came over her like a powerful tide of water, washing away the gloom and the shadows in her mind. It had all been a dream. As Anna watched her husband sleeping and she gently ran her hand through her hair, she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever dreamt something similar. Surely it was a sign of love to have nightmares about losing someone. It was the subconscious giving a reminder of that underlying fear that haunts everyone: the fear that one day, death will separate us from the ones we love.

But not yet. Not now. And I thank God for that.

Anna tried to go back to sleep. But she couldn’t. There was a continuous banging noise coming from somewhere. Anna raised her head from the pillow and saw that the large window at the other side of the room was fully open and one of the shutters was drumming out a sombre rhythm on the wall. The white curtains were billowing in the wind and the carpet was sprinkled with snow. I must have left the latch off, she thought.

Although she was reluctant to do so, Anna dragged herself out of the warmth of the bed. The icy cold of her air hit her immediately. Anna thought that it was like being in a freezer. She was surprised that she couldn’t see her own breath. Shivering, she pulled her dressing gown around herself more tightly and went to close the window. Then she saw something that made her blood freeze in her veins.

Lying on the pavement below underneath ad thin covering of snow that looked like ashes and dust...her own lifeless body.