I want you back

It’s been over a year now.

Over a year, yet you can still hear his sweet voice, you can still see him smiling, you can still feel his warmth against you. Over a year, but your memories of him are so bright and vivid and wonderful he might as well have been gone only since yesterday.

But the emptiness you feel in your heart tells you otherwise. It speaks of the eternity it’s been since you’ve last held him in your arms. It speaks of his gray face in an open casket. It speaks of the future you will never have.

You kneel in the icy grass before all that remains of him: a cold polished stone, shining from what’s left of the daylight. The bouquet you hold shakes in your trembling hands. You bought them especially for him: roses; the biggest, reddest ones they had. Roses had always been his favorite. And today was Valentine’s Day, after all. The second Valentine’s Day you’d spent without him.

Your loved ones had greeted you with smiles and good cheer on this day, but it brought you little comfort. It only reminded you of how much you missed him. You two should have spent the day together, participating in the crass commercialism the holiday always brought. He would buy you candy – your favorite chocolate-covered cherries – wrapped up in a heart-shaped box, and you would buy him multicolored roses in a pretty bouquet with ribbons. You’d celebrate all day long and probably all night, too. You tried very hard not to think of that. But you were no match against the onslaught of memories.

You become aware that you are crying. No matter how many times you wipe the tears away, more always come. You don’t even try stopping them this time. Rather, you hunch your back in defeat and let them flow out and onto the grass. You imagine them leaching down through six feet of dirt to reach his beautiful cold face. He had always been there to comfort you in your times of sadness. But not anymore.

Never anymore. Never again.

Eventually, the tears stop by themselves. Either that or you run out of tears to cry. You wipe the dampness off your face and stare at his grave.

This wasn’t how it was all supposed to end.

You become aware that you just said that out loud.

“This wasn’t how it was all supposed to end,” you repeat, just to talk again to him. You try not to think of how he can no longer answer you, but think instead of how maybe he can at least still hear you.

“Y-you were supposed to love me forever. No matter what,” you accuse. “You said you’d never leave me. W-why, how come you did this, then?” Gingerly, you touch the stone, illuminated now only by moonlight. “How come you let them bury you?”

Clutching his bouquet in your hands, not yet ready to leave, you continue speaking. You speak of how everything’s been since his departure. You tell him how your families are doing. You tell him how everyone misses him – especially you.

Oh, how you’ve missed him.

“Today is Valentine’s Day,” you tell him, in case he hadn’t been keeping track. You hold out the flowers. “I brought these for you. I know you like them a lot. I-I thought – ” you stutter and trail off, painfully aware of all the graves that surround you, and all the flowers that had been left against them, and all the withering petals dropping off all those flowers. Even the roses you hold are already beginning to wilt. Soon, you realize, they’ll look just like all the other gifts of flowers that all those mourners left: dead, dry, crinkled against the cold stones to which they were gifted.

You fall silent. This is wrong. Everything is wrong. You shouldn’t be here, grieving over your lover’s grave. Your sweet lover shouldn’t be rotting away in his wooden prison in the ground. You should both be elsewhere, somewhere happier, somewhere where you can be together. How did this happen? How did it all come to this? This is wrong. This isn’t fair.

“I-It’s hard,” you confess, your voice shaking. “It’s hard without you. You m-made my life complete, you know. You were everything to me, and now. . .” You can’t finish. You can’t now, nor could you ever, bring yourself to say out loud that he’s dead and he’s never coming back.

“Come back,” you plead. You know it’s impossible, but it’s a demand you must make. “Please, I can’t live without you. I love you. I love you so much. Come back. Come back.”

You hug his flowers to your chest as you stare with tired, red-rimmed eyes at the letters engraved into the headstone. Rest In Peace. Rest In Peace. How peaceful can we be without each other? Could he be as restless as I am over our separation? Come back! Come back! We are lost without each other! Please, you have to come back to me, please, please. . .

Your begging is interrupted by a strange sound. It comes, somehow, from underneath you. It’s a weird sort of scratching noise, like some animal is digging a home under your very feet. Under your best friend’s gravestone. Stupid beast! Doesn’t it know not to burrow in such a sacred place? How dare it interrupt this long-overdue conversation between you and your significant other?

The noise gets louder and louder, closer and closer. It grates on your nerves, and your anger rises to near boiling point. You’ve half a mind to stand up and stomp the creature into oblivion, but you don’t want to hurt your dearly departed sweetheart. For there’s no doubt in your mind that he’d feel it too.

But before you can do anything, something pops up out of the ground right in front of you. Terrifically startled, you stumble backwards as quickly as you can possibly move. Your heartbeat quickens as you stare, frozen in shock, as the thing slides further and further up out of the earth.

It’s a hand. A near-skeletal, grayish-green hand, which is followed by an arm, and a head, and a torso, clad in a shredded black suit. You don’t even think to try and help the poor man struggle out of his confines, so taken off guard are you.

The thing pulls itself up out of the ground. It looks like a person, albeit withered and dilapidated. Its ribs are clearly visible, its stomach is concave, and its clothes are weathered and thin. Dirt cascades off its body from the long dig from wherever it came from.

You become aware that you’re staring. It’s utterly fascinating, so much so that you can’t take your eyes off it. It feels familiar to you somehow, but you can’t imagine why, for you’re almost certain you’ve never seen this person before.

But as it starts to rise slowly to its feet, you stand hastily, ready to defend yourself if need be. It makes no move to attack you. Rather, once it’s risen to its full height, it merely rolls its head and looks vacantly up at you.

You stare back, aghast, into the face of your lover.

His eyes, once rich and green but now light and gray, search yours. His jaw works, as though he wishes to speak. You simply stand stock still, unable to believe what’s happening.

Finally, he ambles forward a bit, still gazing into your eyes. You start, but cannot run. Something’s stopping you. Something you can’t name.

He holds his arms out towards you. His fingers are bloody and broken from his laborious climb up out of the grave. His rotted mouth twitches and twists into an odd shape, exposing stained teeth and a lolling tongue. Even from where you are, you can smell him. It’s a warm, sickening stench, like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. He still carries the odor of the obviously ineffective preservatives they treated his corpse with, but there’s a stronger smell that overpowers everything. It’s the smell of his own decomposing, worm-eaten flesh, you realize.

You stumble backwards as he stumbles forwards. You know you must escape. This creature is not your lover. Your lover was pink and healthy and smelled of sweetness. This creature, this terrible thing could never measure up to that.

You are about to run, but the terrible thing utters a long, low noise. It sounds almost like a strangled cry, followed soon after by two clearly discernable words:

“Coooooooooooommmme baaaaaaaaaack.”

You freeze, standing amongst the roses you’d brought along with you. Your own words, the last you’d spoken at this point, echo in your head. Come back. Come back. Come back, my love, come back. Please. Please. Please.

Is this not what you wished so hard for?

The creature – your lover – shambles on towards you, seemingly unaware of your reluctance. Its arms are spread wide – he used to look like that when he was about to engulf you in a bear hug. Its mouth is locked in what you now recognize to be a smile, or at least as close to one as can be managed with such decayed lips. He steps on the roses that lay scattered on the ground, their thorns digging into the flesh of his bare feet. He doesn’t care, and he doesn’t look about to see what’s causing the pain. His eyes are on you, and only you.

This is what you wished for. You begged him to come back, and now he has. He looks fondly upon you now and advances, wanting only to be held in your embrace. You still have time to get away. His muscles are probably so broken down that he wouldn’t be able to keep up with you. But you stand still, caught up in consideration.

He loves you. He has never stopped loving you, even through death. He’s rendered his hands practically useless trying to get back to you. But do you accept him?

A decision has to be made, and quickly. You have mere seconds before he reaches you.

So, how about it? Could you be true to your word that you’d love him forever, no matter what? Would you still stay with him, through thick and thin? Can you appreciate this holiday gift of the one thing you wanted most in this world?

His grimy hands brush your face. This is the moment of truth.

Did you really want him back? Or did you know not of what you were asking for?

Happy Valentine’s Day.