Never Ever Happily Ever After

banner by heatherdawn

Summary:  Bella’s life suddenly changes and the person that matters to her most won’t speak to her.  Will she find the answers to the questions she need answers?  Submission Entry Sample for the NEHEA Contest.

When The Fog Clears

Bella ~

I felt groggy, like I was just waking from a dream, yet not like that at all.  Next to me, Edward slept on his side with his back to me.  We had been like for this for quite some time, how long, I couldn’t remember, but I knew that I had to do my damndest to get him to start talking to me again.

The last few weeks, or maybe it was more, maybe it was less - I can’t really remember -- Edward stopped speaking to me.  Hell, he quit acknowledging me all together.  All I knew was that one minute we were fine, and then bam, it was like he was hit by a car, I was suddenly insignificant to him.  No, I can’t say insignificant; that isn’t fair to him.  He was avoiding me at all costs, and I desperately needed to figure out why.  I felt like he was hiding something from me.

I swung my legs over the side of our bed and noticed that he didn’t budge, his breathing didn’t change.  I was yet again, going unnoticed by him.  Tears burned in my eyes as I felt my heart ache within its confines behind my sternum.  I shuffled into the bathroom, turning on the spray, and stepped under it once undressed.  I stayed until the water ran cold.  Edward tended to shower at night, so I knew that I wouldn’t have to worry about him being pissed off about me hogging all of the hot water.

By the time I emerged from the bathroom, Edward was already dressed and down in the kitchen transferring some steaming hot coffee into his travel thermos.  I padded into the room and simply watched him grab his briefcase, keys and umbrella.

He stood looking at the door that led from our kitchen into the attached garage.

“Have a good day,” I wished him quietly, my voice cluttered with unspoken emotion.

He sighed and walked through the door.

And the tears poured down my cheeks.

When I was finally able to compose myself, I poured my own cup of coffee and moved into the office.  I worked from home as an online consultant for a web design company.  I made good money because I was very good at what I did, and I really liked being able to work from home.

My phone buzzed beside me in vibrate mode, and the display read that I had an incoming call from Alice.

I groaned in frustration and let it go to voicemail.

Alice was a newer friend that I’d met a few months back.  We hit it off right away, and she was one of the sweetest little things I’d ever met.  However as time wore on, Alice started to just...get weird.  She often said cryptic things about fate and death, and she seemed to be a tad on the morbid side.  I started to put her off on several occasions, but I had to give her one thing, she was a persistent little shit.

I began taking fewer and fewer of her calls, and so she started with the text messages.  For a few weeks now, I had completely avoided her.  She continued to call, once a day, no more.  She would leave me a message, then later in the afternoon, she would send me one text message, that was the schedule we had been following for the last three weeks.

I called the police once to find out about putting a restraining order against her, because to be honest, that shit was getting weird, but I’d had a bad connection and the officer that answered couldn’t hear a thing I said.  I’d decided it was just something that I wasn’t supposed to do, so I endured.

I hit the button to call my voicemail and sure enough, there was Alice’s voice, strong for as small of a thing that she was.  All it said was, “You can’t keep avoiding it, Bella, and you can’t keep avoiding me.  It’s time -- time to remember.”

Cryptic, right?  I had no idea what she was talking about or what it was that I needed to remember.  She hadn’t known me for that long, and nothing had happened to me in the short time we had hung out, so I chalked it up to her being slightly off her rocker.

I worked through the day, and by the time I realized how late it had gotten, I heard the garage door opening.  Edward was home, and I hadn’t started supper, hell, I hadn’t even taken a break to eat lunch.  I glanced over at the coffee cup that still sat beside me, full to the brim with never a sip taken out of it.  Weird.

I stood up and stretched my arms over my head.  My back and neck had an eternal crick in them.  They were always causing me problems, but I shrugged them off.  My phone buzzed with a text message on the desk.  I clicked open the message from Alice...of course and on went the cryptic shit.

You never eat.

That was all it said.

I typed back my reply.

Yes I do, and I think that this friendship isn’t working out for me.  You need to leave me alone.  I’m sorry.

I set my phone back down and headed into the kitchen.  Edward was already eating a sandwich as he stood over the sink so it would catch his crumbs.  

We used to eat meals together.  We used to laugh and sip wine and have fun together.  Everything about us had become totally vacant, and I couldn’t take it much longer.

“What is happening to us?” I asked his back as he continued to eat, staring out the kitchen window.

He gave me no reply, no acknowledgement that he’d even heard a word I said.  He washed his hands, grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator, then tramped up the stairs to take his evening shower.

I couldn’t breathe.

I slipped my shoes and jacket on and quickly flew out of the back door of the house, running into the tree line behind our property until I reached the spring that cut through the middle of the forest.  I couldn’t believe what I saw on the other side of it when I got there.  It was a deer, and I knew for a fact that those things spooked easily, but not this one.  This one just lapped at the cool water in front of it.

I moved my foot, snapping a twig on purpose to see if it would run off.  It righted itself, looking directly at me, but seemed to look through me, like I was no cause of concern, then bent its head to drink again.

Amazing.

It finished its drink and sauntered off quickly, after my noise making, and I watched it go.

The next day was much the same routine with Edward.  He continued to pretend I wasn’t even there; my heart continued to break even further, but some things started to change.  Alice called twice, left me two messages, both saying pretty much the same things she’d said yesterday.  Her text message read:

You never drink

By this time in the day, it was getting close to late afternoon, and I started to type my reply:

Yes I do

When I looked at my coffee cup, it was untouched, once again.  I loved my coffee; what was going on with me?  I chalked it up to depression.  I was changing because of this horrible rift between us.  I had to fix it, but I had no clue how to do that.

I decided that I would write him a letter, plead with him that I was sorry for whatever it was that I had done, and tell him that I wanted to fix it.  Whatever it was, we had to fix it.

I wrote several letters to him, left him in places that I knew he’d find.  If he wouldn’t listen to me, speak to me, I had to hope he would at least read my letters and somehow find a way to come back to me, to talk to me.  Hell, a letter would have done!  I needed something from him.  Recognition.  Anything.

I wrote the letters.  Three of them, and I placed them throughout our home.  One went into his car just to be on the safe side.  Then I waited.

I waited for him to speak to me, to look at me, to acknowledge me, but there was nothing.

Nothing.

How could he do this to us?

I began to feel like I never slept.  I would lie in bed beside him, tossing and turning for hours until finally, I just laid completely still.  My body shook with silent sobs, and I wanted to both scream and cry all at once.  I sat up in bed, watching him sleep.  Sometimes he talked, and I craved those times when I could hear his voice, since he never used it to communicate with me.  He whimpered in his sleep, cried out, asked why, why was this happening to him.

I wanted to hold him, but I knew he’d shy away if I did.  I wanted to tell him that this didn’t have to happen, we could be whole again.

I began to get these intense headaches.  They were odd with tidbits and flashes of pictures I could see in my head but only for seconds at a time, never long enough to recognize anything.  I grew worried.  Something had to be wrong with me, and I wanted to tell him that he needed to take me to the doctor.  I couldn’t go by myself, but he didn’t come home for one day.  Two days.  Three days.

When he finally did, I felt so broken, so furious, so lost, that I launched myself at him, screaming.  If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought I’d gone straight through him, but he must have side stepped very quickly.  I fell to the floor, cracking my head on the corner of the door frame where the kitchen meets the living area.  Pain seared through my head, and I instantly felt another headache come on, this one far worse than any of the others.

More pictures flashed in my head, and I worried that I must have had a brain tumor, it was the only explanation.

He quickly moved from the room, and I heard him walk down the hall into the office, shutting the door behind him.  I walked into the kitchen and saw that he was making a call, so I picked up the receiver and slammed it back down.

How dare he.  Did he want me to die?

He didn’t try on the land line again, but I knew he easily could have been using his cell in there.

He slipped out of the house earlier than usual the next day.  I was still in the shower, and he was gone by the time I made it to the kitchen for the coffee I probably wouldn’t drink.  I poured the glass anyway.

My phone beeped.

I gave you your chance

What the fuck was that supposed to mean?  Alice was psycho.  Maybe I should have gone forward with the restraining order.

I worked the day away, fearing the headache that had been lasting for the last two days until I heard the garage door open.  We were going to talk whether he wanted to or not.  I couldn’t do it anymore.

He walked in and was followed by...Alice.

That fucking bitch.  I’d kill her.

Her eyes locked on mine as she walked into the kitchen.  She quickly moved into the living room, walking around like she owned the place.  Edward followed her, and I followed him.  She walked around, touching only my items, and I wondered how she knew that those items were specifically mine, not Edward’s.

Why the hell was Alice in my home?  Had she met Edward a long time ago?  Started a relationship with him and then befriended me to get some sadistic kick out of friending the wife of the man she was having an affair with.

I realized they were speaking.  Their conversation obviously picked up from a previous one.

“Something happened last night.  Before, I thought it was just me, but now.  Now, I know it can’t just be me,” Edward told her.

“This is a difficult situation, Edward.  She’s confused, sad, desperate,” Alice said, lightly touching him on the arm.

“Oh, well this is nice.  Let’s just pretend that I’m not standing right fucking here and talk about me.  I can’t believe this!”  I seethed.

I stalked around the room while they stayed mostly in one place.  I moved to stand in between them, looking my husband in the eyes, my love for...several years.  Why couldn’t I remember how many years?

Seven?  Four?  “FUCK!” I screamed.

Edward flinched.  It was the first time I’d seen him to react to me in so very long.  He looked around the room like he’d seen a ghost.

Alice nodded her head, and said, “Yes, Bella.  Now, you’re getting somewhere.”

As she addressed me Edward snapped his eyes to her face so quickly that I thought he might’ve snapped his own neck

“Bella?” he asked.

Oh God, he said my name. “Say it again,” I pleaded, but he didn’t.

He sat down on the couch then, rested his elbows on his knees and cradled his head in his hands.  He looked disheveled, broken, and at a total loss for this situation.

“She can’t let go,” Alice announced.

“Of course I can’t!  Why the hell would I let go of my husband?” I screamed.

“She thinks you’re married,” she told him, closing her eyes for just a second.

I began to circle them.  What were they doing?  What kind of game were they playing?  This was the most fucked, sadistic thing,this game they played.

“What happened to her?” Edward asked Alice.

“Car accident.  She wasn’t quite ten years old,” she replied.

I circled.

I circled.

“How is that possible?  I’m thirty-three.” Edward said, looking thoroughly confused.

Alice took a step toward me, then said, “She’s projected herself older.  It’s kind of like a coping mechanism.  She doesn’t remember what happened, and she’s blocked it all out.  She still looks ten, but to her, she looks thirty.”

“Thirty-two bitch.  I’m thirty-two, and I’m not fucking pretending to be.”

Alice blanched at my name calling.  “She hates what we’re saying.  She won’t accept it because she refuses the memories.”

I felt a shot of pain scream through my head, and with the newest headache, I heard a god-awful sound, like metal being twisted and scraped along pavement.  My hands rose to cover my ears.

“Some of her memories are starting to come back, but she is fighting against them.”  Alice took another step towards me.

“SHUT UP!”  I screamed at her, my voice trembling in the high octave.  It burned my throat.

Another crippling pain shot through my head and with it, the image of a face.  It looked familiar; I knew I was supposed to recognize it, but I was having a hard time remembering.  

I could feel this squirming at the edge of my memory.  There was something there.  It was like this blurry, odd shape, dancing in my vision and taunting me.  Something about it seemed familiar, yet it was so foreign.  I was both scared of and intrigued by it.  A silvery line of tinsel danced across my vision, and the room began to pulse around me.

“Alice?”  I was scared, and I was no longer to stubborn to admit it.

I raced from the room, not paying attention to whether the other two of them followed behind me.  I felt oddly drawn down to the basement, and my feet descended the stairs so quickly that I felt as though I was floating down them.  I ran to the back corner, where there was a little nook that was closed off.  There was an old furnace room here that we no longer used, and I got down on my hands and knees, crawling into the very small space.  

I used to fit in here.

A memory flooded through my brain.  Me hiding from my brother while we played hide and seek.  He used to come in here with me until he grew too tall.  It was our secret spot, our fortress.  I saw a picture of the two of us in my mind, hiding out and playing a wilderness game.  I could see his face perfectly, but mine was a blur.

I felt Alice and Edward behind me.

“Go away,” I whispered.

I crawled in even further -- all the way in, and I was cramped, rolled up in a tight ball because there was a box taking up residence beside me.

I heard the metal on metal sound in my head again.  It screamed in my head, pulsed, vibrated, and I cried out as I saw her face.

I recognized it this time.

“Mom,” I rasped out.

“Yes, Bella.  That’s right.”  Alice encouraged this horror that was going on behind my eyes, in my head.

I shook my head.  “No.  NO!”

I looked deeper in.  I saw the car, and van coming straight at it.  “No!  Move!  Please move!”

I looked at the other passengers in the car.  Grandma, Grandpa, Dad, and...me.

No!  Not me.  I was going to go to school that day.  I went to school that day!  Mom said I had to go to school because I had just missed two days from being sick.  I went to school.

“I WENT TO SCHOOL!  No, no, no.  I went to school.  I went to school, Edward.  Alice, please!  Tell him I went to school.”

Alice hushed over me.

Alice then said in a very low voice, “Bella, sweetie.  You don’t know Edward.  He doesn’t know you.  Bella...you’re dead, baby.  You were in the car.  You went with them.”

I wailed, I shook.  It couldn’t be true.  It couldn’t.  She lied.  This was a twisted fucking game!

I cried, and after some time, they finally left me alone.  I lay down on the floor, still curled in a ball, and drifted.  Not to sleep, but to somewhere.  There were patterns, and swirls, and when I saw a dim light, I jolted back to myself.  

I sat up, felt something stuck to my face and pried away a piece of paper.  I slowly crawled out, clutching the paper, and moved on hands and knees up the stairs to the main floor of the house.  I finally stood up on my feet again in the kitchen, but for some reason, I felt smaller, like I’d shrunk a couple of feet.

Moving each of my legs felt like walking through thick sludge, it seemed to take forever to get there.  I found both Alice and Edward asleep, one on the couch, and one on the chair by the fireplace.  I slowly walked over the hearth, collapsing in front of it, and held my hands up in front of me, looking at the piece of paper that had been stuck to my face when I woke up.

R.I.P.

Isabella Marie Swan

September 13, 2001- March 12, 2010

Sweet Daughter

And then, I faded into the light.

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