What is considered normal to some may become anomalous to others. No one truly knows how others live.
For Edward Schreiber, he did not know how others coped with loss. To him, Eileen was still there, like a whisper in his ear, constantly following him. Constantly threatening him. And he missed her dearly.
His life without Eileen felt utterly alien and wrong. He still refused to believe it. Their time together was short yet impactful, like torture, leaving him with scars yet wanting more. He sought answers only she could deliver—the whys and whats of the intent behind her every mysterious manipulation. He had only shreds of a life left to piece together, and no one to instruct him on what they expected. He was alone and unprepared for it.
Eileen knew that, which is why she persisted in tormenting him even after death. He'd seen her body at the morgue and the funeral home, witnessing the disappointment, suspicion, and malice in her relatives when he arrived. He saw all the same from his own family, from whom he'd spent so long away—all because of her. He saw her lifeless and immobile, without her trickster's smile or scheming gleam in her eye. Those images only existed in his mind, vivid and lucid, imposed upon him as if a phantom were haunting him.
She was there.
Around town, he saw her. Sometimes a woman would resemble her, one with the same golden cascade of hair and piercing eyes. It took him a few moments to readjust and see someone else. Then Eileen would be even closer, sneering at him with curled lips.
"Is it all right for you to move on?" she would say.
"At least find a girl who doesn't look so close to me. It's creepy." Then she would laugh in her impish way and flit off into the distance. Sometimes he gave chase, only to find a dead-end alley or an empty room he was not allowed to enter, where she couldn't escape, nor could she be found.
Edward was truly lost to the world. He was insane. Thankfully, there was no one around him to be hurt by it. His family had abandoned him. They had no reason to support him, so long as the shadow she cast still influenced him. They considered him lost to her whims and delusions, set to carry out some nefarious scheme against them even after she was gone. Her conspiracies in life tore the Schreiber family asunder, and the tool she wielded to undo their bonds was their son.
He tried to hate her, he wanted to. It made sense to hate her after all she did. Edward sat in the silence of his stripped-down apartment, the last resort of sanctuary he could afford after Eileen took over their former sanctuary and stole it all for herself. He hunched forward with hands clasped and wished to please hate her, to burn down what he built up, so he could step out and find redemption.
Eileen heard his prayers and sat next to him, off to his side, facing the other way. "You dope," she said. "What God has enough pity to help you? It's his job to grant love, not hate. In his eyes, you're doing what you are supposed to. You are tending to a love, eternal. One you swore to me."
"…" Edward had nothing to say. She wasn't real - he knew that. She felt real when her cold hand traced across his eyebrow to part his growing bangs, but she wasn't. It was just a stiff wind from the malfunctioning air conditioner. Her breathing wasn't real, nor was her sultry, mocking laughter. It was just the sound of bugs and mice in the floorboards sifting through the built-up dust. All the beauty she once had was replaced by the world's most awful functions, matching her real self in a way.
"Oh, come now," she chided. "You're too spoiled. You're waiting for someone to save you, even now. And I can't do it, can I? How long will you wait, I wonder? How long will you suffer before you decide to just be happy? Didn't I tell you how easy it was? Didn't I show you?"
Edward tried not to remember, but memories were the one place he felt safe. In there, he was not alone anymore. He got to be together in the times when there was joy. All the falsehood and pretence that his former life became was drained away on his reflection. He remembered the good times when he believed he was happy, and it worked. When he opened his eyes, Eileen wasn't there.
He looked out the window.
She was across the street, waving at him, waiting for him. She always had somewhere to go. She was always just in the corner of his eye, floating away like a leaf in the wind, then right in his face when all the wind died down. When there was nothing to occupy his thoughts, that was when she appeared to fill the void.
The longer he stayed in his fixed conundrum, the more Edward thought about following her in earnest. She only led him astray when he chased her down. If he followed and was diligent the way he did when she was alive, it might work. He might reach something. There could be something only she could show him. Some stray fact buried beneath his grief that escaped his daily sight, only to be unearthed by the same spectre of grief which plagued him. He had no other options. None he cared to explore. Medicine, counselling - those things did their part in ruining him. He did not need them anymore.
⁂
One day, while Edward was out just to breathe real air between bouts of rain, he saw Eileen on a park bench. He approached her sincerely and sat down next to her, not sure if he was alone or intruding on an unwitting stranger. The titillating laugh and sly smirk told him he was in the right place, with the right woman.
"So, you're interested now? It just took this much effort to pry you away from your hovel? You know I'm only looking out for you. To make you smile. To teach you how to have fun." Sweet lies he liked to hear. The promise was hollow, but its shell still made him grin.
Eileen reached for him. He reached up, but his hand couldn't touch her. She wouldn't let him. She withdrew her hand as if trying to keep it from getting wet. He stood up and followed her, three steps behind as usual. She took charge and led him through town, heading right up the road, one turn away from the main route to the woods.
He once admitted to her that he was afraid of the woods. Germanic woods were the stuff of horror stories for children of all eras. He believed in the fairy tales and fables his grandma taught him until he was a teen. His innocent dogma shifted into rational scepticism as he got older. He wasn't afraid of the woods for their mystical connection to the fae and the foul folk of the dark, but more for the real dangers those stories represented. The fear made him spineless. It cost him friends. It only connected him to Eileen, who delighted in tormenting him until his fear of her outweighed his fear of being lost in the woods.
"Come on," she called. She was among the trees. She walked behind one and appeared behind a different one, retreating ever inward toward the imperceptible distance. An afternoon fog blocked Edward's vision some dozen meters away. He saw Eileen slip into it and become nothing but a shade, one of many shifting silhouettes in the forest. Her absence brought his apprehension back. He did not follow. His instincts told him not to. Self-preservation once more kept him from his love.
Despite all the weight of emotion Eileen brought into Edward's life, he still loved her. His love was redoubled into a deep regret over what he could have had with her. There were opportunities that he knew could have been born through shared effort. She may not have made a sincere attempt to redeem herself before the end, but if the end did not come, she could have. He could have won a round of their psychological tug of war, eventually, and made her follow in his steps. Or he could have found more satisfaction in his role as her less-than-equal partner. He could have learned to love his life, as long as it was with her.
Eileen Doyle was successful. Despite being only 22, just out of University like Edward was when they met, she was a powerful magnate for many social connections. Her Machiavellian nature and delight in the suffering of others was misinterpreted — or, truthfully, better known - as the makings of a CEO. She boasted of being a future minister or chancellor, if she only directed herself towards civic duties. She built up her own network of liars and miscreants in high positions. She set up many strands of mutually assured destruction with them, trading terrible secrets in exchange for power.
It was little wonder she died. Her death was mysterious, another guilt that added weight to Edward's burdened mind. It was less of an incident and more of a quiet murder. Her family allowed the authorities to handle it all. They wanted nothing to do with her after she died. The funeral was the only place they could connect over her demise. No one mourned her except for Edward at the funeral, making him the odd man out once more.
If someone did kill her, he did not know what to think. He had never wished harm upon anyone and had no desire for revenge
"That's why they did it," Eileen told him. "They saw what lay between me and them ⎼ you ⎼ and went for it. Because what would you do to stop them? They only assumed you would not assist them because they knew how loyal you were to me. They knew you would never betray me."
He wasn't even sure it was murder. The official cause was accidental suicide. She mixed her medications with something, and it killed her. Simple chemistry. He couldn't take out whatever anger he stored on professors or common metals. It was a sad, avoidable yet fated event. If anything else was supposed to happen to him, with his guilt alleviated and his life repaired, those consequences were on a long delay.
Once again, he went home and endured a night of ceaseless distress. She came to him again, always taunting him, just in the corner past where the light could reach, in a tauntingly svelte silhouette. Her natural curves were exposed, the thing he lost his rationality to, his mind, and his inhibitions, just out of sight. What he saw instead were her eyes, like polished nail-heads protruding from the walls.
"Look at you. Are you warm under there? You'll never be warmer than when you were next to me. Everybody you touch from now on will be as cold as a corpse. To remind you of whom you should be with."
He turned around and faced the wall. She was there, just her head, peeking up from a ruffle in the covers, which extended into nothing. It was as if her head and severed neck were all that shared the bed with him.
"Even if you stood in a fire, you would be stung by the cold before you burned from the heat. So - why not embrace the chill? If you can find it. You'll be happy if you grow as cold as me."
She used to say the same thing in life. The secret to her happiness, the opposition she held to his moroseness, was in her nature. She faced the harshness of the world with a glacial temperament. No one could overwhelm her. She was strong. That was why he loved her. She was everything he wasn't, and after he met her, what he aspired to be. He wanted to release himself from care and concern like she did, to cast aside the rules of emotional engagement. He tried when he left his family, his friends, and his life behind. But his caring heart still beat with hot blood. He could not become like her in life.
He could be colder in a different way.
⁂
That morning, just as the sun rose, he left his apartment behind. Everything in it was no longer his. He took only the clothes she had picked out for him, which he kept as his only wardrobe, and set off to find her. She appeared again, but was more distant. She stayed a fair distance away, even as he followed her all around town. He stopped at one point and thought she might catch up, but she didn't. She waited for him to follow, then led him from afar.
They arrived at the woods. The forest was aglow with a golden aura. It was unlike how he ever saw it before, almost otherworldly. Eileen stood by at a threshold between two trees, rocking back on her heels impatiently. Edward approached her but did not cross the line she guarded. She smirked at his hesitation.
"If you could do this all over again, just to get back to this spot right here, would you do it?"
Edward thought of his answer, but even a moment to think — to breathe — was too long for her to wait. She ran away. Edward watched her, and saw the leaves below kick up from her steps. He saw her hair blow in the wind as it passed, and he smelled her familiar scent of ash and heather from downwind. He reached out for her, just to see if she would take his hand and force him along as always. She returned to his side and, for once, obliged him.
Her hand was warm. As warm as it always was. As real as it always was. Edward looked around. He thought it was all a dream.
He touched the tree as they passed through it to the forest proper, and it was real. It was solid and dry and just a little cold. Every sense he possessed told him what happened around him was real, and that she was real.
The golden light enveloped them both. Eileen disappeared into the bright flash, but Edward held her hand the whole time. He called after her, but the rush of sudden sound from all around him drowned his voice out. He felt his hand slip from her grip as he fell forward unexpectedly.
No one ever looked for Edward, so he was never seen again. If they tried to, it would make no difference. Edward vanished into the woods just like the fairy tales said, leaving only a trail of footprints that suddenly stopped between two tall trees…