guilt

She can't remember her face. Not anymore. The world is photo-bright and faded all at once, voices coming through the air thick and muddled. Distorted and slow. She can't make out the words. The girl is smiling, she knows -- the girl is smiling and laughing and happy -- but she doesn't know exactly who it's for. Or when or how or why, really, because it can't be her. The dead don't do that. The dead don't leave their sisters to cry over pill-ridden bodies or shirts that smelled like her; the dead don't come back just to forgive past grievances or settle stupid arguments. The dead certainly don't reappear night after night, dream after dream -- just to have her finally chase and catch her in the endless field. Dead is dead. So she watches, feet rooted, as the girl constantly plays just out of arm's reach. Laughs at jokes just out of earshot, smiles in that distant way. There's no point to this. The girl isn't real because she killed her, essentially, and so she won't bother humoring the idea.

This is a dream. Dreams end.

It's always the same. The girl realizes she can't bribe her with a voice that sounds like her sister's, or with a body that looks like hers. Realizes she can't make her give chase the way she wants her to. Makes it seizures and breathing tubes and the ICU suddenly, instead of the beautiful field, and paints the walls and linoleum as stark of a white as possible. Plasters third grade essays and sheet music over every inch of the floors, walls, and ceiling; plays chord progressions over the intercom over and over again to a maddening tune.

Look at what you've done to me, her not-sister will seethe, leveling her from across the room. The shaking setting in, fingers curling into the gown. Look at what you've done to us. How could you abandon me like that? How could you leave me to die? How does it feel, knowing you've killed me?

And then she does die. The not-sister dies over and over again, lips blue, while the guilty one stares ahead. It -- she knows this thing is not a person -- glares back with enough anger to distort the room. Asks, over and over again, what it must be like to be her. What it must be like to be a serial killer, what it must be like to have her own sister's blood on her hands. How she could've stopped fighting the battle alongside her, how she could've left her sister in the darkest state she'd ever seen by herself. And her not-sister's face is imperceptible, as always. Even in death the dream does not grant the guilty one a chance to remember.

The morning will come, eventually. And so she sits, stares, and waits.