Angel's Trumpet

M. Mrudhula

Each pill rolled out between my fumbling fingers, skin soaked through with sweat. As I dropped a pill on my tongue, another one dropped onto the heavy wooden floor.  

Click. Click. Click.  

I reached for the hard green pill, my hands shaking as I desperately tried to swallow the green pill in my mouth. A bit of my saliva welled up in my mouth and attempted to help to glide it down my dry throat. But the pill stuck. It twisted once, then twice in my tight throat, releasing the powdery white bitterness from the hard shell, making me gasp for air as I spat it out. My hands were still tapping at the wooden floor to get the other pill back in my grip. I coughed out spittle and little gunks of the white mixture that was filling my world with bitterness. My eyes rolled back in their sockets as I continued to spit out the remnants of the pill. My tongue was coated in a pale green hue that reached back toward my throat, stretching as far as my eyes did.  

I grabbed the pill from the floor and popped it onto my tongue. Searching for water, I found a gray pitcher filled with a clear liquid, brown particles of sand dispersed in it and flushed the pill down my throat, washing it down along with the sickening bitterness. The sand made its way into my bitter throat too; the water tasted salty and felt thick in my mouth.  

The pitcher had been filled with water from the well, the one where a rat had been rotting away since November. But that had been twenty-eight years earlier, when I’d barely turned twenty, September 1962. I’d had long blonde hair, my skin had been smooth as a thin sheet of gold, and my brown eyes had been little glowing jewels.  

I was waiting for Blair to return, and for her almost transparent gray eyes staring at me in love and affection. Blair had the most gorgeous deep-brown hair that fell to her hips, and golden tanned skin that flushed a deep rose in the summer. She had left twenty years earlier but I knew she’d come back.  

Blair would never leave me, Blair loved me, Blair loved winter, and she loved that yellow sweater that I always wore.  

Her sweet voice melted into my ears, staying in my memory the way it had twenty years before, the voice that called my name “Harla” in an almost melodious tune, like a song: it echoed in my still ears devoid of any sound. Her smile was brighter than a row of stars as they gleamed like sparkling diamonds. No, it was better than diamonds, as it filled me with light, love and life, which a diamond could never do.  

She hated summers, used to say, “I can’t wear jackets cause it’s hot and the darned sun burns my skin.” Unlike her, I loved summers and I hated winters as much as she loved them: “The snow is so pretty, and so are the beautiful landscapes. Winter is the most romantic season.”  

We had gotten married on the cusp of spring. She had worn a long pink dress adorned in a silver net of mesh while I had stuck with the classic white. I could remember every face that had attended our wedding and every present that we had got. Thirteen people, and although it had been against the law for us to get married, some of our close friends and family had supported us and attended the wedding. My mother didn’t and neither did Blair’s father. I remembered her crying and my own eyes misted with tears as the ceremony progressed.  

Andy and Lucas were my brother’s friends from college. They had attended our wedding with my brother, but we hadn’t seen much of each other since five years after. The night Blair was taken from me.  

When Andy ripped off my clothes and clasped his large lips on my own, Blair was there, she was there, with Lucas on top of her, forcing himself onto her, having his way, hurting her.  

Andy pinned me to the wall, his hands all over me, holding me in place as he tore off my clothes—a pink summer dress—with a cruel smirk on his stubbly face. Blair was dragged next to the recliner where he pulled himself onto her, within my blurry line of vision, I could see everything he did to her as I cried out for them to stop, dragging myself closer as I lunged to reach Blair, knowing that I was too late.  

They didn’t leave until we had both passed out. We were left disrobed and thrown aside, covered in blood and bruises.  

Blair left that night, she never came back, ever.  

But I stayed, I stayed during the freezing winters and scathing summers. I stayed after Andy and Lucas had left and I stayed even after Blair had left, rooted to the same spot by the window, holding a piece of pale blue yarn and looking out until my neck was sore, reeking of spoiled milk and old wine, wearing the same yellow sweater that I had on weeks and years earlier and thinking about the same things that I’d thought of for twenty years.  

Will Blair be back today?  

Will I ever get to see her clear gray eyes and soft pink lips?  

Will I finally get to touch her and hold her close to me, never letting go again?  

Will I get to be with her again, love her, to care for her and protect her, this time, just one more chance?  

He was almost sipping and lapping at her bloody lips as if to drink her blood. She gasped for air each time he closed his lips around hers; as he bit and pulled at her fading self, she cried out in a faint scream, her voice screechy and dying.  

But Blair never dies.  

Afterwards, she looked as if the light had been ripped away from her, and I guess it had.  

Her gray glass eyes were open, staring at nothing and everything, her face was bloody with bruises, skin scratched down to a long wound at the curve of her nose, flesh peeking out the tear, bloodless. Her rosy cheeks were a pallid yellow, pink lips split down the middle as blood slipped out, and her long brown hair, a tumbled mess behind her limp body, sticky with blood and sweat. She still smelled like roses but now it was mixed with his scent—a reek of rotting grass and sweat—creating something horrible, something that will forever be etched in my memory.  

But Blair never dies.  

She never will. And even when I sat on my bed in the ward with the emergency doctor saying “No pulse rate. She passed away three hours ago,” I didn’t believe a word he was saying. I saw Blair walking and telling me she was okay.  

 I remember her yellow dress at the hospital, her lips as rosy as they had always been and the light restored to her shining silver eyes. She looked alive and she was. She still is, I know that. I never went to the funeral with the people who believed that she had passed away. I saw her, so why would I ever believe what others say, when my own Blair says otherwise?  

As I stood there, her memory running in a loop as it always did, looking out the door, body still as I saw a shadow stare back at my form. Clutching my yarn, I stared at the figure as it became clear as daylight; I knew who it was. It was Blair. I got up, my feet aching, and walked over to the door where Blair was standing in the same yellow summer dress. Her eyes were as sparkling as ever as she glanced at me, biting her petal-pink lips and smiling. She looked as she had twenty years ago; she hadn’t aged a day. I smiled back and grabbed her wrist, pulling her into the house.  

She called out my name, “Harla,” and her voice sounded as it did all those years earlier. I felt like I was alive, like my light had been restored. It had been. 

She looked around at the house where she had once spent her days and nights. I said, “Blair, why didn’t you ever come back in all these years? How could you do this to me?” Her smile faded away as I saw tears well up in her eyes. She shook her head as she whispered, “They hurt me, Harla. They really did.” I nodded and pulled her in close for an embrace. The embrace was warm and familiar, the scent of sweet roses—her scent—coating my skin. It was a wonderful feeling to be able to touch her again. I had so many questions, but I couldn’t ask them. I just wanted to stay like this forever.  

We pulled away, and she smiled though the tears that drenched her gorgeous face. She said, “Let’s go.” I asked, still in a daze, “Where?” She grabbed a knife from the table next to her and cut herself on the wrist. Once and then, again, going deeper. I said, “No. No. Blair, what are you doing?” She smiled as blood pooled out of her slit wrists, and muttered, “Let’s go, we can be together.” She handed me the blood-soaked knife. I stared at her, not knowing what to say as she thrust the knife into my trembling hands. I shook my head. “Can’t you stay with me?” 

“No, we need to leave,” she replied. “You can’t live. Like me.” Her smile widened as she stared at me. I slowly nodded, my heavy head moving over my slender neck.  

Clutching the bloody knife in my trembling hands, I took one last breath and made a cut. The cut wasn’t deep, but then I plunged the knife deep into my wrist, almost pushing it out through the other side.  

My vision was as red as the color of an Angel’s Trumpet that had turned crimson as I faded away. My hands on her waist and hers on mine, her blood soaking into my dress and mine into hers, our smiles never fading and our tears ever growing. I shut my eyes and never opened them again. Just like Blair.  

Mrudhula is a queer writer primarily focused on fiction and poetry. They’re a literary apprentice at BreakBread Literacy Project and was the guest editor for Inlandia Journal’s volume XII teen issue. They’ve been writing since they were six and they absolutely love reading. Time that they don’t spend reading and writing usually goes toward them poring over history books. You can find them at www.mrudhula.com.