All Unwritten Prompt 1366- On the Ground
Disclaimer:
So I tried to avoid the Casey Anthony trial as long as I could. I honestly didn't want to know. What I had gathered from the rampant media coverage was enough: three years ago a young mother, almost beyond even a shadow of doubt, murdered her own 2 year old child. I teach. Two of my best friends have beautiful, amazing small children. That is more than enough for me to be too disturbed to want to know anything about such a case, despite it being almost everywhere I turned for the past month or so. Hearing about murders, especially of the very young or very old, makes me feel angry and helpless.
Then the verdict came out, my facebook and twitter exploded, and I couldn't avoid it anymore. I heard the defendant had been judged innocent, and I shared in the anger of millions across the country. But I didn't want to do it in ignorance. Maybe I was wrong, maybe the media had portrayed the woman in question unfairly. So I researched the case last night- and found that it will haunt my sleep for many evenings to come. Even the jury didn't seem to think she was innocent; they just didn't feel the prosecution provided enough hard evidence to convict her. I went into my research hoping that there might be something to validate the verdict and came out of it believing more than ever that the exact opposite of justice had been served. A self-centered young woman most likely committed the ultimate atrocity with minimal consequences, and is in a position to even possibly benefit from it in terms of financials and attention.
This is incredibly judgmental of me, I know; but like so many others, I thought of little Caylee Anthony's tortured last moments, DNA evidence that would have been enough for any crime drama, and the utter lack of grief displayed by the child's mother. I read the chilling diary entry thought to have been written not long after Caylee was last seen, and I was furious. This story is a result of that anger, and the desire to give a voice to murder victims. As such, it is darker and more grim than what I ordinarily write, and does contain detailed imagery of death.
"People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead.
But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest.
Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right."
- The Crow
She crawled up, thrashing out of the water, limbs stiff from . . . what. She hadn’t been gasping for air beneath the surface; this was disconcerting . . . wasn’t there something she was forgetting to do? Her body hit the shore with a dull thunk, and she lay there, shuddering. On the ground, damp but solid, not slowly sinking deeper into the mud.
And she knew.
Yes, she knew now, and wanted to scream, but she’d forgotten how. She remembered other things, though, and wished she’d embraced ignorance while she had the chance . . .
Lying on the bottom of the lakebed, weeds in her mouth, suffocating for so long, so long, the recollection of all of it would drive her mad. Slowly rotting into the layers of sediment, the soft, pliant sand receiving her soft, pliant flesh as it sloughed off her bones. The only comfort was sight, existing beyond common sense when her eyes were already eaten by the fishes, staring endlessly up at the distant surface. The light waxed and waned, shimmered golden and then silvered at night, painted a thousand different masterpieces of sun and moon and stars and clouds, all through the translucent canvas of water.
It distracted her from the constant agony of drowning forever. Amazing, that one even could be distracted from agony; but the pain was only in her mind. Not even her brain, just her soul, all that was left. The body was beyond her by this point. A sharp blow to the back of the head, the blossoming ache, the struggle to stay conscious as lungs burned. Her pretty dress, so light in the summer air but so heavy in the dark water, dragging her down. The inevitable terror of surrender, never to feel the precious breeze on her face again, never to breathe it in again.
And everything that came after.
Memories of death seemed to mercifully melt away into the firm ground like a waking from a long nightmare that the dreamer is certain is real whilst dreaming. But nothing rushed in to fill the void; she knew she had smiled once, but could not remember why. She knew she must have had birthdays and Christmases, parents and a prom, friends and classes in school. But while tattered snatches of sights and sounds darted in and out of her consciousness, the emotions associated with them remained elusive. Other feelings consumed her though- the utter ecstasy of the wind on her new skin, the light of moon and stars no longer diffused by water, but soaking into every fiber of her being.
In the miracle of these sensations, she recalled other things. A body next to hers on the lakebed, against all reason alive and warm and heart rendingly beautiful. Hair the color of reedy pools of algae and eyes a thousand shades of blue and green. They stared up at the fluid infusion of the sky upon the water for what seemed like lifetimes. When she slept, this sweet warm one, she draped an arm over the poor sinking bones beside her, and twined fingers in the dead girl’s fading hair.
“Siobhan,” she whispered with a kiss one day, and the dead girl came back to life. With caresses, her maker reshaped her and soothed her until she was no longer drowning. In the unfathomable embrace of her savior, the dead girl was reborn. Her name was forgotten. It didn’t matter anymore. Her maker had given her a new one.
“Siobhan,” she croaked, cheek against the ground she never thought she’d touch again.
So I tried to avoid the Casey Anthony trial as long as I could. I honestly didn't want to know. What I had gathered from the rampant media coverage was enough: three years ago a young mother, almost beyond even a shadow of doubt, murdered her own 2 year old child. I teach. Two of my best friends have beautiful, amazing small children. That is more than enough for me to be too disturbed to want to know anything about such a case, despite it being almost everywhere I turned for the past month or so. Hearing about murders, especially of the very young or very old, makes me feel angry and helpless.
Then the verdict came out, my facebook and twitter exploded, and I couldn't avoid it anymore. I heard the defendant had been judged innocent, and I shared in the anger of millions across the country. But I didn't want to do it in ignorance. Maybe I was wrong, maybe the media had portrayed the woman in question unfairly. So I researched the case last night- and found that it will haunt my sleep for many evenings to come. Even the jury didn't seem to think she was innocent; they just didn't feel the prosecution provided enough hard evidence to convict her. I went into my research hoping that there might be something to validate the verdict and came out of it believing more than ever that the exact opposite of justice had been served. A self-centered young woman most likely committed the ultimate atrocity with minimal consequences, and is in a position to even possibly benefit from it in terms of financials and attention.
This is incredibly judgmental of me, I know; but like so many others, I thought of little Caylee Anthony's tortured last moments, DNA evidence that would have been enough for any crime drama, and the utter lack of grief displayed by the child's mother. I read the chilling diary entry thought to have been written not long after Caylee was last seen, and I was furious. This story is a result of that anger, and the desire to give a voice to murder victims. As such, it is darker and more grim than what I ordinarily write, and does contain detailed imagery of death.
"People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead.
But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest.
Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right."
- The Crow
She crawled up, thrashing out of the water, limbs stiff from . . . what. She hadn’t been gasping for air beneath the surface; this was disconcerting . . . wasn’t there something she was forgetting to do? Her body hit the shore with a dull thunk, and she lay there, shuddering. On the ground, damp but solid, not slowly sinking deeper into the mud.
And she knew.
Yes, she knew now, and wanted to scream, but she’d forgotten how. She remembered other things, though, and wished she’d embraced ignorance while she had the chance . . .
Lying on the bottom of the lakebed, weeds in her mouth, suffocating for so long, so long, the recollection of all of it would drive her mad. Slowly rotting into the layers of sediment, the soft, pliant sand receiving her soft, pliant flesh as it sloughed off her bones. The only comfort was sight, existing beyond common sense when her eyes were already eaten by the fishes, staring endlessly up at the distant surface. The light waxed and waned, shimmered golden and then silvered at night, painted a thousand different masterpieces of sun and moon and stars and clouds, all through the translucent canvas of water.
It distracted her from the constant agony of drowning forever. Amazing, that one even could be distracted from agony; but the pain was only in her mind. Not even her brain, just her soul, all that was left. The body was beyond her by this point. A sharp blow to the back of the head, the blossoming ache, the struggle to stay conscious as lungs burned. Her pretty dress, so light in the summer air but so heavy in the dark water, dragging her down. The inevitable terror of surrender, never to feel the precious breeze on her face again, never to breathe it in again.
And everything that came after.
Memories of death seemed to mercifully melt away into the firm ground like a waking from a long nightmare that the dreamer is certain is real whilst dreaming. But nothing rushed in to fill the void; she knew she had smiled once, but could not remember why. She knew she must have had birthdays and Christmases, parents and a prom, friends and classes in school. But while tattered snatches of sights and sounds darted in and out of her consciousness, the emotions associated with them remained elusive. Other feelings consumed her though- the utter ecstasy of the wind on her new skin, the light of moon and stars no longer diffused by water, but soaking into every fiber of her being.
In the miracle of these sensations, she recalled other things. A body next to hers on the lakebed, against all reason alive and warm and heart rendingly beautiful. Hair the color of reedy pools of algae and eyes a thousand shades of blue and green. They stared up at the fluid infusion of the sky upon the water for what seemed like lifetimes. When she slept, this sweet warm one, she draped an arm over the poor sinking bones beside her, and twined fingers in the dead girl’s fading hair.
“Siobhan,” she whispered with a kiss one day, and the dead girl came back to life. With caresses, her maker reshaped her and soothed her until she was no longer drowning. In the unfathomable embrace of her savior, the dead girl was reborn. Her name was forgotten. It didn’t matter anymore. Her maker had given her a new one.
“Siobhan,” she croaked, cheek against the ground she never thought she’d touch again.