My Worst Fear

“The dog days are over,” Florence and the Machine belted through my earbuds. As I leapt over snowbanks to the upbeat tune I thought, maybe the bad days are all behind me.

“Out of the way, fucker!” the truck narrowly missed me, spraying gray sludge over my running tights.

I stifled a scream and kept running. The sidewalks were under three feet of snow and impossible to navigate. The only place to run was the middle of the street with the Boston drivers.

I began to pass by a graveyard. If I keep running out here on the street, I will end up in a tomb myself. I turned around and ran towards the gate.

“I’m closing up for the day,” grunted a man adding a lock to the chain, “It’s getting dark.”

“But please!” I nearly shouted, “It is the only safe place I can go running. Could I please come in?”

“Fine.” He opened the gate just enough for me to enter. I felt elated. Part cemetery, part sculpture park, Forest Hills was beautiful under the freshly fallen snow and the soft shades of dusk. The road had been plowed recently making for easy running. There was a pause in my music between songs. It was all quiet, clean, and safe.

From behind me I heard the lock clang against the chain. I’m locked in. I was untroubled by the thought. I was safer inside than out and I had heard of a hole in the fence on the west side of the perimeter, near a side street.  I’ll just keep a look out for it on my jog, I thought.

“I’m so heavy in your arms,” the next song was a somber one. As I plodded through the shallow snow on the plowed road I looked at the tombs sleeping under snowy blankets. What would happen if the truck hadn’t swerved? Would my family bring me to a place like this? Plant me like peonies and hope to see me again some distant spring? But I knew all the graves around me were filled with rot, no such thing as a soul among the remains. I pictured all the families of the grave dwellers going through their process of burying, mourning, and forgetting.

I missed my family.

I’ll call my sister. I reached to pull out my phone, tears already sprung to my eyes, anticipating the relief of confiding my loneliness. I paused, phone in my hand. She would probably want to pray for me. I would have to feel the shame that I could not believe. I would have to hear her fear that I would be going to hell.

The music stopped. I looked at my phone.  The screen had turned black: battery killed by cold.

I sniffled and put the phone back in my bra, it chilled between my breasts against my heart.

I looked up. Above me loomed an angel, her face covered with snow. It was easy to imagine she were real, that she was soon to burst forth from her chilly covering. I could not look away. Snow began to fall into my eyes. Still I looked up frozen in place.

A gust of wind whipped through the trees, ripping the snow from her left eye. The marble was shockingly filthy against the snow. The pale pupil seared with accusations.

It is good you did not call her. How many times have you called her crying this week. You are a burden on your family.

I sprinted away from the statue. My leggings sagged down from snow-laden cuffs, allowing my thighs to slap together.

You are parasite on your family, a parasite on the earth. You fatten off others like a grub.

Frantic and panting, I took a sharp left on towards an unplowed path.

Something grabbed my foot. I was pulled backwards and fell face forward in the snow. “Jesus Christ!” I screamed.

How dare you say his name. You don’t believe in anything. 

I kneeled and dug into the snow, ice crust cutting my bare hands. I would face what had tried to pull me down. My hands were throbbing towards numb as I unburied a low-lying tomb. I must have left the path and trod upon the plots themselves. I swept the snow off its top to see the skull and crossbones. Was that not how they used to mark those who died from suicide?

You should have finished what you started.

The snow was burning my knees. I could not get up.

Admit it. The truck should have hit you. That’s what you want. Your recklessness is passive suicide.

“Shut up!” I screamed.

The sun had gone down and whatever ghoulish blue light coming up from the snow was soon to extinguish. I need to find a way out while I can still see.

The fence was off the trail. I had to cross the grave plots themselves. The snow had blown up in thick plumes. Snow was falling so hard now I felt like I was swimming, encapsulated both by the deep snow below and the thick pour of it above. I tried to breathe through my nose to avoid having the icy snowflakes fill my mouth and throat. Ice cut my ankles. My hand burned as I felt along the fence, groping in the darkness for the opening.

My ears filled with laughter, it boomed and echoed from the graves.

I turned. In the copse of trees to my right, three people were standing. But they could not be standing, they were too tall for that. They were floating, from the tree. Their arms were outstretched.  A trinity. I had prayed so much for a vision when I was younger: was this it?  So overdue it had arrived long after I’d ceased to hope?

“No.” I blinked back the snow from my eyes, but they were still there. I felt neither warmth nor reassurance. This wasn’t a vision, it had to be a cruel illusion.

You are all alone, you matter to nobody.

Tears ran down my eyes, freezing in the clumps of snow stuck to my lashes. I was just so tired.

It would be better for everybody if you were gone.

I wondered how long it would take for the cold to get to me, for death to have me. Freezing to death wasn’t so bad, I’d heard. It was like going to sleep.

Lights streaked across my face from distant headlights. The road could not be far. I closed my eyes and listened to the distant cars, wondered where the people were going. Where they with loved ones? Were they happy? Could I be like that again? 

I stumbled along the fence three more steps and fell through the opening, rolling down the steep hill on the other side. Snow filled my shoes and shirt, but I was unhurt.

The street was silent as I ran home.

Was my warm apartment, filled with light a comfort? Did I feel better after going back to the graveyard the next day, seeing that the trinity was merely an art installation: suits of armor suspended from trees?

It was a small relief. But the chill had seeped into me that day. The realization that I am alone. And that the voice was my own.