'Tis the Season to Sing of Finals...

SO.
Finals have been going on, and lately, I've been working on my latest one - a ten page short story for my Creative Writing class. It's really rough, I'm not loving it at all, but...

It's a complete story.

THEREFORE,
you are required to suffer as it takes its rightful -ahem- place on the WR page. Bahahaha.

--------

There was a time before the sickness in which people called her Daylen. That was her birth name, the one given to her by her parents as the doctors demanded a name that could be put on a birth certificate, and the name that had driven her parents apart; they had agreed on naming her Beth Marie, after her father’s mother, but at the moment, pressured as her child struggled to hold life, her mother blurted out Daylen – a mixture of the city they were in with her own name, Helen.


Now, however, she was Day to most people. It hadn’t happened on purpose, but after recovering and being stuck in a hospital room for almost a year and a half, the nineteen-year-old was one of the brightest, most fascinating people anyone could ever hope to meet. Daylen wasn’t original enough for her being; therefore, people started calling her Day.

She was pretty enough, with blonde-almost-brunette hair, bright multi-colored streaks dyed into the curled mess, and curious hazel eyes that never stared, always moving about. Tall, though happily shorter than most of the people she dated, she lacked the awkward quality of someone just growing into their height, and had a blessedly proportional body. She wore what she felt, and at this point in time, it was her most holey sweats and the baggiest shirt she could find.

Day leaned over and threw up into the toilet again, spitting to get the remainder of the taste out of her mouth.

The phone, pushed away momentarily, was brought back up to her ear as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Yes… No, Mom… No… No, stop it, I’ll be fine…”

Helen babbled frantically on the other end of the line. Ever since The Sickness, she had been consistently concerned and over-cautious about Day’s health. It seemed stupid, in Day’s contrasting opinion, to go to the ER for a simple stomach flu.

“I know, I know. I promise… Yeah, Mom. I love you, too. See you on break.”

Helen murmured her concerned goodbyes and hung up. Day collapsed on the bathroom floor and sighed, leaning her head against the wall.

A low chuckle echoed through the bathroom. “Good morning, Daylight.”

“Shut up and go away,” she moaned. “I don’t even want to talk to you this morning.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Day saw Luke appear, as if out of nowhere, at the doorway. “Well, that’s too bad, love. You’re stuck with me, remember?”

She sighed and closed her eyes.

Luke was so-called living proof that Day was not just the bright and eccentric girl she seemed on the outside. He was one of the many reminders to her, and when she slipped up, others, of the insanity that had taken her over during her hospital time.

Luke was polite enough; he let her sleep and eat alone, knew when she needed her space, and was determined not to mention anything in his or her past. However, he was also consistently there – he couldn’t not be there. He was omnipresent in her life, and both of them knew that despite the secrets they may have tried, at one time, to keep private, there was nothing secret anymore.

“Luke…?”

“Yes?”

Day paused. This was going to be slightly awkward.

“I was wondering if maybe… Do you remember when Helen was diagnosed with cancer?”

“I do. Very, very well.”

“Do you remember the way you kept showing up when I told you I wanted to be alone?”

“Yes,” he said in his usually wary way, though his expression was almost light, “even if you weren’t grateful for my company at the time.”

She sighed. “I’m always grateful for your company. It’s just… I can’t get over…”

“It doesn’t matter; it’s okay,” he interrupted quickly, the slight smile he’d been trying to push evaporating just as quickly as it had appeared. “No worries.”

They sat there in silence for a minute, before Luke sat down beside her and patted her leg. “Anyway, what about it?”

Day positioned herself, facing him straight-on.

“Lucas, am I sick again?”

He frowned. “Daylen…”

“I know you can tell,” she sighed. “Every time something happens to me or to someone around me, you instantly show up everywhere, and are constantly in this oh-my-God-I-have-to-care-for-her kind of mode. You’re in one now. What’s going on?”

He looked at her blatantly. “I can’t care for you just because I love you?”

“Quit it, Luke. Tell the truth.”

He didn’t move for a minute, as if he were thinking the whole thing over – to tell her, or not to tell her; to let her in on his secret, or to keep her innocent and protected from his complex and complicated world?

The cold floor, or just the lost and distracted stare that Luke was directing at it, sent chills spiraling up Day’s arms.

Luke glanced up at her and cringed at the look on her face. In that moment, he knew that she was only asking in some form of politeness; that in reality, she knew exactly what he would say. She was looking for conformation in the most exact and precise format.

“It’s not… like that…” he ran his hand over his face and sighed, looking up at the ceiling, as if he had a chance of seeing God come down with some kind of answer for him to give the girl.

“Day, I can’t say exactly…”

“It’s back, then.”

“Yes… But I don’t know if it’s as bad, or as timid, or any kind of factor related to it. It could be a single cell or an entire artery...”

His pained expression made her ache, and she reached out for him, mid-sentence. Her arms met each other, and along with his dissipating voice, his eyes were instantly cautious and alert; concerned for her sanity, partially, but also curious as to why she would reach to him…

“Sorry,” Day breathed.

“I… I ought to go,” he said quickly, his voice quiet. The build-up, the impossibility, the millions upon millions of rogue feelings that were piling up in his chest at every move she made lately; all of it resulted in things that strained who he was trying to be and who he was meant to become.

Day watched the tile swirl slightly in front of her as he left, her eyes blurred in retained sadness.



It had almost been three years since Daylen lost Lucas, and a month less than that since she’d gotten him back again. Before he left, he’d been normal Lucas, which, at the time, was a nineteen-year-old neighbor kid that snuck out at night and partied until he couldn’t see straight, sneaking back into his house only when he could stay awake no longer. A drop-out, a rebel, and a failure, people labeled him, but the day he turned nineteen, as he was sitting on the porch of Ms. Kevenski’s condemned, paint-chipped house, a little girl discovered differently.

It was May the seventeenth; the time of year in Alabaster, Alabama where the grass grew tall and sharp, the weeds even taller, and flowers grew wild and unrestrained in random design across the yards of the old houses on the far side of town. Those were the days in which the hazy sunshine called to the children to live outside – the days in which it was impossible to call them back in.

Tabitha, who was twelve at the time, was one of those children.

Tabby was Day’s sister – her only and youngest. Three years separated them, and in the somewhat sweltering heat, remarkably early that year, Day sat out on the porch in her most grungy pair of shorts and a tattered tank top, with a pair of what was supposed to be chic sunglasses covering half of her face, making sure Tabby didn’t take her shoes off or run out in the street.

At fourteen-almost-fifteen-years-old, Day discovered Lucas Kevenski.

He didn’t notice her at first, staring at him from next door through the chain-link fence that divided their yards but she noticed him, and to be honest, was a little intrigued. All of the rumors and stories exchanged between women in the neighborhood, the way her father had warned her mother of letting Tabby or Day associate with him; everything piled up into one small fourteen-almost-fifteen-year-old full of innocent curiosity.

So from her porch, a safe enough distance to avoid all contact with him, Day stared without shame. She watched him take a cigarette from his pocket and play with it aimlessly before lighting it and, never touching it to his lips, flicked it to the ground, letting it smolder there on the concrete.

He reached for another one, but found it difficult to fish out of the pocket of his jeans, so he turned towards the pocket…

Tabby screamed in excitement as one of her friends found her behind the mulberry bush. Almost instantly, Lucas raised his head in that direction, and made eye contact with a fat pair of sunglasses and a mouth open in awe.

He couldn’t help the smile that rose to the corner of his mouth before he waved partially, and looked back to the next cigarette in line for suicide burning.

Day was paralyzed with shock and horror, mingling with feelings on the edge of excitement. He had smiled, he had waved, and he wasn’t even smoking; this was the kind of guy she overheard her mother praying to help her with her children every night before bed, just much, much younger. Quiet, seemingly nice… Why would anyone want to avoid that?

The brave fourteen-almost-fifteen-year-old Daylen worked up the courage, touched her toes together once for luck, and then proceeded to sneak over to Lucas’ yard.

The fence was somewhat of a challenge, but the three scrapes that were deep enough to scar proved to be worthwhile souvenirs when she crept up the back way, onto the porch, and tapped him on the shoulder.

He turned around with a surprised look glittering on his face, before he managed to smile again.

“Hi,” he said easily, in a curious English accent, patting the wood stair next to him. “My name’s Lucas.”

“I’m Daylen. But you can call me Day if you want to be my friend.”

His bubbling laughter was contagious.

She could still recall, years later, the way that he told her thank you for the birthday present, and how, twenty-eight days later, he had showed up at her door with flowers and a gift (a pair of even bigger sunglasses, with rhinestones glued to the edges), and invited her on a fifteenth-birthday picnic.

From that point on, the nineteen-year-old and the fifteen-year-old were best friends.



Day stretched and stood up, aching from the time spent against her bathroom wall already. On her way out, she flipped the switch and, subconsciously, placed her hand over her heart, as if checking to see if it was still actually there.

It was. The Sickness hadn’t taken all of it yet.

She hummed weakly to herself before collapsing onto her own bed and dissolving in tears.



If there were some way to have a breakdown in Heaven, Luke was sure that he would be the one to find the way to make it happen. The crying, the screaming, the blackouts and hallucinations, the breathlessness, the sweating and swearing; it seemed almost needed and crucial, especially in this last week – in this last day, even.

However, he could only sit there and exist. Breathe in, breathe out, apprehension etched across his essence, and the only thing he could do about it was think.

It disgusted him, but he knew it was somewhat of a reward. He couldn’t think negatively about himself if he couldn’t have a breakdown. In any case, he was just happy he wasn’t a true Angel, or else he might find himself without any kind of poignant or detestable emotion at all.

Then again, if he were an actual God-in-Heaven Angel, maybe he could help Day.

Day; he winced at the thought. The same little girl who’d brought him out of a living hell was being reduced to her own and he had done nothing but encourage it, then disappear while she suffocated on her own pain. He couldn’t help it, though; she was going to be the very thing that brought him down if he stayed.

He wanted to hit something hard.

Mostly, he was tempted to blame it on her. Day was stupidly unaware of how much it killed him every time she was upset or frustrated or angry or… or happy even. Happy dragged him down even more sometimes. Her smile and laugh made him ache almost as much as when she was crying and needed someone to lean on, just because, more often than not, he couldn’t be the reason for the expression.

As much as he denied it, he missed her more than life.

The woozy feeling of not being able to cope with his own feelings began to ebb and he became acutely aware of a soul close to him, watching him.

“Breaken,” he sighed.

She directed a happy feeling towards him. “Hello, Luke.”

He fought it off as much as he could, but he knew the effect was overpowering.

“What’s wrong?” Breaken’s voice chimed, sweet and melodious.

Luke felt himself try and scowl. Angel voices were always like honey and silk, even if it had formerly been a person who had actually cut their own throat out. It was just natural, that in Heaven, none of the supreme talked with any kind of lisp or deformity, just in the most beautiful tones possible. Even Luke’s voice had been affected, although he couldn’t hear the difference. Heaven had a strange way of working.

“You know what’s wrong,” Luke finally said softly, the only form of malice he could work up. “Daylen’s sick again, and I have to watch her die.”

Breaken was Luke’s best friend, as far as the ether world was concerned, and she knew all about Day. When Breaken had first been introduced to him, he was an awful wreck, wondering about this girl, and then, given the option to go be a Guardian for her or stick it out as a true Angel, she was there to moderate his emotions and stand by his side as he dove for the obvious choice. Now, she was his mentor and guide when he needed help. Lately, however, she had become more of a spectator.

She nodded at his frank admission. “You knew, though.”

“Yeah, I did, but that doesn’t make it any easier on anyone.”

Breaken emitted the most comforting feelings she could call up. “You have to encourage her, Luke. You have to let her know you’re there for her up until the end, and when she finds out that you can’t do anything about it…”

“She knows, though. She knows that I can’t do anything, and I’m pretty sure she knows that she wasn’t a candidate to have a Guardian just for nothing.”

Breaken radiated understanding. “I see.”

She was quiet for a moment, thoughtful almost, and the comfort began to recede from Luke, bringing back the resentful feelings slightly.

“Maybe…” she started distractedly, “maybe I could arrange something to be done. I mean, no guarantees, of course, and I’d have to get everything approved, but…” she moaned. “Maybe I could go down there and see what’s going on, anyway. Explain things, at least.”

Luke frowned, confused.

Breaken sent out regretful feeling. “If she’s going to have to learn her fate anyway, someone needs to be able to explain why it has to be this way.”

Luke missed the pain of the headache his human self would’ve developed by now, even with the calm and soothing feelings rushing over his sense.

“Anyway, I’ll have to throw the idea up with you-know-who and see how it goes. I feel almost illegal doing this without permission… at least, helping Daylen. It would take a lot to convince Him to let an Angel interfere in view of the fact that we haven’t done so since...”

“…Bible times. I know, I know. But really, Breaken,” Luke’s voice grew ecstatic, “if you could just meet her, that would be all it would take for you to know what you had to do. She’s so caring and sweet and she’s one of those people that…”

He carried on, adorning the human girl with words that could sometimes not even be used to describe the Heavens, unaware how intensely Breaken was aware of his true feelings; how she had stopped all sensation to him, and yet he was still elated beyond recognition.

“I only said maybe, Luke,” she reminded him.

“Well, of course, but…”

Breaken laughed her tinkling laugh, and was gone, leaving Luke with a last sensation that left him tired and contented.

The white abyss that enveloped him was comforting and silencing all at once.



Two weeks and three days later, after working three of the longest Receptionist hours she’d ever punched in her entire life, Day was back in a hospital room, the doctor telling her what she’d already known: yes, it was back, and yes, it was going to be a problem.

Three simple words: Coronary Artery Disease.

He told her that it wouldn’t be sane to estimate the effect or severity of it until more tests were run, and that until then, she should assume that she would be fine, and that it was just a false alarm.

“Sometimes, that’s just what these things are,” he said solemnly. “Only slight scares, nothing more.”

Luke made her promise that no matter what the doctor said, she would take a Taxi home that day, and for good reason. She didn’t cry, not in the hospital or in the Taxi, but the way she felt, like someone had just punched her hard in the stomach, wasn’t likely to help her coordinate her way home.

When she got home, she unlocked the door, swallowing once, and then stood in the doorframe, expressionless.

Luke was waiting for her on the couch.

He motioned for her to join him; to come sit down next to him. Seeing his face, though, in an almost torn state, caused her throat to ache and her heart to throb painfully.

“Daylight,” he whispered, his voice ridden with exhaustion. “Come here.”

She made it halfway across the room before she started to cry. Heaving sobs wracked through her entire body, causing her to trip in her heels, and only barely catch herself in the staggering wobble she was relying on to drive her across the floor.

He stood up as she lay down on the couch, her makeup smearing, hiccupping and wiping at her face. Luke got in between her and the couch on the opposite side, as if he could let her lean against him, although it wasn’t possible that he would ever feel her, or she feel him – one of the many Guardian rules that he had tried in every measure to prove untrue in every way possible.

She lay there and cried until her tears ran down raw and reddened paths on her cheeks. Aching moment upon aching moment they lay there, he in silence and she in resignation, the sadness in the room seeming to overpower both of them to the point of immobility.

Coronary Artery Disease… Coronary Artery Disease…

She had been through it all before, and though the effects would never be as bad as they once were, she had known that she would live with slight symptoms for the rest of her life. The aches and pains in her chest, the stiffness in her right arm, and the fact that a small part of her heart wasn’t even there anymore were all things she had grown to deal with.

It was only because of one artery, that happened to be somewhat vital to her heart and it’s functioning, had become almost completely blocked, eventually invoking a stroke. Her heart had been in such bad condition that the hospital stay was required, surgery upon countless surgery to help her heart function necessary, along with therapy to help her regain most of the movement in her arm.

And now, after almost two years, the blockage was back somewhat, increasing her chances of heart failure, heart attacks, stroke, and potentially, death.

The last one – the dying; that was the one on Luke’s mind.



Luke had died three years ago, on the way to pick Daylen up for one of their dates. It was nothing formal, as usual, but that night… That night it was really a date. She was sixteen, he was twenty, and despite what people may have thought about the age difference, he loved her more than anyone in the world, and knew that she loved him back just as much. It was cheesy, but it was true, and that night, he had intended to truly show it to her. A perfect summer night, spent out at the local amusement park that they had been to at least twenty times in that season alone, yet kept coming back to. You could really lose yourself in an amusement park.

However, none of that happened, because two blocks from the house that he’d first been tapped on the back by a little girl in front of, he was hit and killed by a drunk driver; one of his former friends.

The friend had also been killed.

And then, of course, he had come back. Just in time, too. When he’d been given all the required training and rule-enforcement needed to go see Day, they told him that she was in a much more… different… state then she had been.

He wasn’t expecting to go back to Earth and end up in a hospital room, where at least ten people were rushing around, hooking monitors up to his Daylen, poking her with needles and stitches, and giving blood transfusions. He wasn’t expecting to see Helen outside of the room, sobbing hysterically. He wasn’t ready to hear the officers explain how they had found the girl, in what condition. He wasn’t prepared for the diagnosis that sealed her fate.

He had screamed until his own ears were pounding.

His Daylen, the girl he had been forced to separate from a month earlier under unforeseen circumstances, had almost died before they preformed an angioplasty on her, a surgery that opened up the cursed artery and cleared all of what they called ‘plaque’ out of it – the stuff that had caused her heart attack, which had in turn, landed her in the hospital.

She almost had not survived.



“Day, there’s someone I want you to meet, love.” Luke breathed.

She inhaled sharply and wiped at her face with the hand not tucked under her own head, nodding slightly. Her crying had stopped for the most part, and her heels now lay on the floor, discarded, as if she had only worn them to keep her brave in public.

This girl, though, the one next to him, blubbering and hopeless, crying and messy, was the real Day.

Luke moved away, so she wouldn’t be tempted to reach to him as she sat up. She adjusted herself, looking weak and unkempt, her eyes puffy and her hair messy.

“Hello, Daylen,” a high-pitched voice said. “My name’s Breaken.”

Breaken stepped out from behind the door leading to the kitchen, looking faintly disoriented and partially curious.

Luke stared at her. She really wasn’t how he’d pictured, although that was obviously going to be the case with Angels. Her real form was a young woman, around twenty-five or so, with long, sleek brunette hair and a slight figure. Her eyes were dark green, tinted gold, and sent a shy smile in Luke’s direction. He found himself smiling back slightly, yet raising his arm, to almost shield Day from her.

His subconscious had remembered what his brain hadn’t quite processed; she was still either the impervious bringer of good or bad news – news he hadn’t yet heard.

Breaken’s eyes focused in on Daylen, perfect emotion flowing into them. “I am an Angel, and it’s been requested that I come here and talk to you today.”

Day’s eyes were panicked as she glanced at Luke, but he nodded and motioned for her to go with Breaken, even if he, himself, was more nervous than he had ever been.

He could wait, though. She was the one who mattered.

Breaken held out her hand, and Day accepted it apprehensively, straightening her skirt and casting uneasy looks around the apartment.

Luke didn’t take his eyes off of her until they had gone completely down the hall and disappeared into Day’s bedroom, the door closing behind them.

In the room, the atmosphere was tense.

“Daylen, I have the power and the authority to help you.” Breaken began quietly.

Day sat on the corner of her bed as Breaken paced around the room, staring down at her comforter. At those words, her eyes locked on the Angel.

“You can cure this…?”

“I can.”

Breaken faced the girl, a hard look on her face. “This is going to have to be your decision.”

“I want to be better,” Day blurted, almost frenetic.

Of course,” she said, nodding. “But for me to do that will result in expulsion of every memory, conversation, and feeling an Angel has ever given you.”

The look on Daylen’s face was similar to, but was far more extreme than, horror.

“You will also, then, no longer require Lucas’ service.”



----



When the moment came, three months later, Lucas Kevenski was there, his hand on Daylen’s, his face in the utmost pain, but twisted into a weak smile for her sake.

“It’s time, love.”

“I know… I’m scared,” she whispered, her eyes twitching as her tears burned them. She wouldn’t close her eyes because she was afraid of slipping away in a single blink, although Luke had chokingly managed to laugh and tell her that everything was going to be okay at least twenty times in the last thirty minutes, trying to convince both of them.

In the last three months, Day had been deteriorating. They couldn’t perform an angioplasty because of the closeness of the blockage to her heart, and either way, with or without the surgery, it would only result in one end.

Even though Luke had known what was going to happen, and that he would be the one to sit through her die, every step of the process had brought him to his knees. His Daylen was dying.

Luke had begged with her to let Breaken help; to let her fix everything in only a moment, but Day had been persistent. If this was where her story was meant to end, this is where she wanted it to end, not only because fate existed for a reason, but because of ulterior motives, most of them closely resembling the being lying next to her.

“You don’t have a single reason to be scared,” he said, his voice melodic. “I’ll be right here as long as you need me.”

His voice cracked and she reached up to touch his face, frowning sleepily when her hand went through him.

“What’s it like in Heaven?” she asked.

“It’s the most beautiful thing you can imagine, except even better,” he exhaled, wanting so badly to be able to move her hair out of her face, to kiss her forehead – to do something productive in his mind, even if his even being there was enough of a blessing to Day.

She smiled. “And you’re there.”

The antiseptic smell, almost thick enough to taste, mingled with the sound of machines beeping rapidly, then slowly, speeding and slowing down the time she had left. He hated the idea, he hated the atmosphere, and he hated that he knew why she’d chosen the path she had, but the same time, his entire soul was overjoyed that she didn’t want to be without him.

It was confusing in many ways, but that didn’t matter now. Not much did.

Now if only to spare her from this…

“I told you I’d be right here for always, and I mean it,” he whispered.

“No more pain,” she cooed.

“No more,” he agreed.

She began to close her eyes, but, remembering one final thing, she opened them again, wide and bright in the light.

“To die…” she began, but her voice failed. The heartbeat on the monitors was fading fast, and the first nurses started to show up, messing with plugs and pulling at needles, oblivious to the person in the bed with their patient.

Luke couldn’t help the noise that escaped his throat; that this was her last question almost defined her.

“I promise, love, I’ll be right here. No pain, no sadness, no loneliness, I promise.” She nodded, and he smiled down at her. “I’ll be waiting for you. I love you.”



With one final breath, Daylen closed her eyes.

The hand over hers was warm. Suddenly, everything was okay.