And it all comes tumbling down. Against our wills, without our consent, it all falls apart. Our relationship, gone. Silence becomes our only friend. We're left alone.

It happened with a scream, a bang, a flash of bright lights. She was lying on the floor and we were afraid. She came tumbling down. 

I ran to her side. I was so shocked I laughed, laughed so hard and loud that it felt like the paintings on the walls were judging me. I knelt by her side, checked her pulse. Nothing. Nothing. And my world came tumbling down. 

I called an ambulance. Or maybe I didn’t. I don't know. I don't remember. All I really remember is regret. Laughter and regret. And then my life came tumbling down. 

I told her I hated her. It seemed so easy to say then, but I would give up a thousand lifetimes to take it back. I told her go by herself, follow her stupid dreams to some back alley where she'd get herself killed. And she did. She came tumbling down. 

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. And my tears come tumbling down. 
 

She stared at the light at the surface. It was so pretty, it soothed her. When she opened her eyes and stared at it from below, she felt her floating body instantly relax. She stopped fighting the cold that was taking over her body, stabbing her like a million tiny needles until her nerves shorted out and went numb.

   She knew her body was screaming at her to do something, but the shouting was muffled by the intense calm she felt washing her body. The burning in her lungs was nothing more than a dull ache. Bubbles drifted by her face and the yelling got louder.

  Loud enough to draw her attention.

  She tried to draw in a breath but that ended when her lungs caught on fire. Sophie struggled and screamed, swimming to the surface, trying to find the hole she fell through. Slamming her hands onto the ice, her punches got weaker and weaker, until she just couldn’t fight anymore.

  Sophie floated on her back, staring at the dimming light at the surface. As she began to close her eyes a hand broke through the water and grabbed her. Saving her from the black water that consumed her.

If the darkest room means being oblivious to the outside world, then I am living in the darkest room in the darkest world.

Everyone around me goes about their day like everything is perfectly fine, but I see all the minuscule inconsistencies in the life going by in a rush. I see the men hiding behind their newspapers because they’re afraid, perhaps of what's happening in the world. I see the women in the high-end shops trying to paste a plastic smile on their face as they walk through the aisles of dresses that are on a pedestal out of reach. I watch the children hiding behind trash cans with their younger siblings for fear of being put into a system that will be ten times more cruel than a life of hiding.

Everyday, I walk past these same people who watch, fake, and hide from their reality. They all have one thing in common: they all know the truth, and they fear it.

I am living in the darkest room in the darkest world.

What happens after you die?

I lay in bed, unable to sleep. The moonlight glares through my window and casts strange shadows across my room. When I can’t sleep, I think. And thinking at this hour, when I should be of in some wondrous dream world, is dangerous.

But I can’t stop thinking about it. That question. What does happen when you die?

Do you get reborn as a baby again? That’s what I use to think a lot. In that case, I your mind completely and totally wiped of all memories of your past life? Is that why I get déjà vu sometimes? Is it my mind trying to remember past experiences?

Will I go to Heaven based on my actions? Or simply mu beliefs? What will it be like?

Why does God take good people away from their family and the ones they love?

Is there an answer to that question?

No. Simply put, there’s really no way to know. People can believe what they choose, and I’m comfortable with that, but as far as I’m concerned, I just want to live the best life possible. With the ones I love.

I can fall asleep with that thought…

Mother always said not to go into the basement but why? Why couldn't I?. My dad left when I was only 11, and that's when she really started to say I couldn't go down there, now 5 years later I still can’t. I guess that's just the way it was. I walked into the house and saw her go down there. She shut the door quickly”. I wait for her to walk back up the stairs and into the living room. And I see the big door and the tiny handle and reach for it like it was my destiny to find out what it was inside. I wake up and gasp. “Was it real?’ I said”.” It was just a dream, but was it really?”. I run to the basement when I get to the bottom I see the concrete floor and turn my head to the left and a breeze of this stench came from under the stairwell it smelled like something I never smelled before, I had to plug my nose it was so bad. I walk toward the stench and saw a hand in a bag. I gasp and feel a tear trickling down my cheek.

The hair was wispy and ice blond: a thin, fluffy ducktail at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were closed: a collection of deep folds framing a snubby nose. Soft skin growing cold in my hands, I decided to cover her in the soft blanket I’d picked out months before. It matched her tiny pink mouth, frozen in an eternal silent scream. She came at 1:23 PM, on February 14.

After it was all over, I had her in my lap, and we saw a couple walking past my door, then stopping; their bodies warped by the cloudy, plastic window separating us. The boy handed the girl a flat pink box. She opened it, revealing a jeweled heart on a slim silver chain.

I had given my own love her own necklace, though not as sparkly: it was raw and angry around her neck, red in holiday spirit.

After thanking him with a passionate kiss, the teenage girl took something from her pocket: I heard the crinkle of paper: a card, perhaps. “Roses are red,” the girl began, smiling self consciously.

But my Rose was blue.

The crane was a little one, my sister’s fingers having carefully creased the red paper. The paper was sparkly, a bit like flame, like a sister active and alive and well. Like a sister folding origami, believing in the future, in something better.

Another crane watched bitterly, looking too hard at the red crane’s sparkles, of the attention it got as it fell in the fireplace. There, it disintegrated, grey, a mini mushroom-shaped cloud. The fire slowly burned out, sputtering, struggling, the light disappearing.

Innocents  screamed and senseless deaths melted, radiating into the air and sky and sea. Guilt was a river, and the other crane drowned.

I miss you, Sadako.

Do you hear that?

The sound of the birds. They’re quietly humming outside, their wings spinning in circles as they look down on the miniscule huts. You’re running downstairs without flinching like you used to. You’ve been there so often. You’re trapped in that basement because there’s no escape, and you know it.

No? Hah! You’re definitely lying. I can tell.

You’re scared. You’re scared of what happened to your family, of how still they were while lying on your frozen body. You’re scared of the hum and how they come closer to you everyday. You’re scared of the stories that you hear: that they’d burn you, torture you, take out your still-beating heart, and watch as you writhed and your guts slowly poured out. You know they drop pain and create uncertainty: where do people go once the birds take them? You don’t want to find out.

But listen closer to the electric birds. Relish in their drone, their peaceful hum. Close your eyes and sway to the gentle music they create, and think: about Ma and Pa, about little Sami, about me. They’re not as scary as they sound, sister.

They’ll bring you home. I promise.

She’s walked so far down the trail that she can no longer hear the hum of the freeway she left behind. Above, the sky is green with branches, so thick that the sun is a distant memory. She continues on, boots soft and muddy.

She stops at an old redwood tree, its bark shaggy. It’s the kind of tree that feels like it’s been around forever. She places a hand on it’s trunk, waiting for a response. Nothing comes from the tree itself, but the wind rustling through the leaves and the distant birdsong is enough of an answer for her.

Satisfied, she continues on her trek, because even while a tree is not able to speak, the forest can sing.

     You can try to cram a puzzle piece into a puzzle it was not originally from, but no matter how much you poke, prod, and wish it would, it will never fit like it is supposed to. It was never intended to be moved; it was not meant to be able to fit anywhere but the place it was—and has been—all this time.

     So why would you think the same would not apply to me?