There was a time before the woman lived alone, a time before the color drained from her cheeks and her rosemary shrubs withered, never to bloom again. To the world, the woman was nobody, and to her town, she was a recluse. She was usually home by day, shut up behind a set of ebony doors and a veil of tightly-drawn curtains. She was rarely home at night, gone when the lights flickered on in her neighbors’ homes. Sometimes, people reported seeing her, a pale, thin-lipped woman with bloodshot eyes, drifting through the town’s streets.
How did she come to be this way? they would sometimes ask each other. No one knew; after all, it was easy for people to forget when no one cared to remember.
It was a late-summer night when the woman found herself sitting in the toddler swings at the park. Her limbs hung from the swing like those of a marionette, a toy the world had wrung the life out of and discarded. She did not know why she was in the toddler swings; she only knew that the swings felt a few years too tight, knew that there was no one to swing her this time.
She did not know how long she sat there before the sun began to rise. She hated the sun, hated how it snuffed out the stars, hated how it gave everything a shadow and woke everyone up.
Soon the people came. They blurred into one another like ghosts—or was she the ghost? She did not know; she seemed to be the invisible one, after all….
Sometimes, a child came to play on the swings. She felt their wide eyes watching her, and once, she heard a small voice ask, “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she would somehow manage to say. “I am fine, thank you, perfectly fine….”
The sun grew hotter against her skin. She was not accustomed to the sun, and it made her feel sick. Her skin seemed to be steaming in the heat, and sweat trickled down her cheeks as she shivered uncontrollably. She tried to free herself from the swings’ confines, but they would not let her go. Perspiration beaded against her forehead as the sun burned higher in the sky, so high she was afraid it would precipitate from its perch and shatter in its excess. Her breaths became shallow as her lungs burned from the acrid, stinging stink of the bleeding sky; its lurid blue oozed off of its canvas, pressing its burning fingers into her skin as it dripped down on her like molten wax. She cried out, but the people around her only glanced at her before quickly looking away.
It seemed that no one other than her noticed when the sky—her sky—finally came crashing down; it seemed that the catastrophe was inside of her, and she alone would burn when her world caved in. She let loose the noise that had been building up inside her throat, the whimper that quickly became a blood-curdling scream. She writhed, trying to escape, but she could not. She had no legs—they were numb, trapped in swings that felt a few years too tight. A man with his phone to his ear looked at her strangely; his lips were moving, but she could not make out his words. And then she saw the police, felt their arms jerking her out of the swings, dragging her across the field as she kicked and screamed.
All she caught was a glimpse of the crowd. She saw their eyes, pair after pair, looking upon her as if from behind a dark screen—
“Someone help me,” she sobbed. But no one did. No one ever did.
. . .
The sea was calm that night. Waves hissed as they rolled out onto the beach, sweeping away the woman’s footprints as she waded into the water. She loved the sea, loved how it stretched on and on until it became one with the night. And maybe, just maybe, if it swept her away, she too could become a part of the night…
She wouldn’t look back this time. There was no one left who cared, no one left for her to hold on to. She didn’t know what it was that she longed for, but it felt close, drawing her into the dark. She pushed on, her legs fighting against the current as the water rose to her waist.
Nothing would change when the sun rose again. The world would go on turning, and the people would go on forgetting. She waded deeper and deeper into the dark as the sharp pain from the icy sea throbbed into numbness. The water was up to her chest now, and she felt the thrill of the waves beating against her heart. She had never felt so awake, so alive…
The moon was the last to see her that night. Its silvery glow caressed her pallid face as she tilted her head towards the stars; it kissed her papery skin one last time before the water slipped over her head, consuming her in its darkness.