The Risen: Courage by Marie F Crow

my smile and I take his hand in mine as we watch the children play. “You look happy,” he tells me, returning my smile.
    “When was the last time you laughed like that?” I ask him, my eyes roaming the children with my twist of sad thoughts.
    “It hasn’t always been so bad.”
    “It hasn’t always been so good.”
    He pulls on my hand and I follow the motion to stand facing him. His eyes stare at me with confusion and pity. He tells me, “It’s not about the bad, Helena. You always cling to the worst, letting it over shadow any hope or good. When you look at the world, you don’t see the sunshine. You cling to the rain. You think that makes you strong. You think this obsession of yours with the dark will spare you any misery. The truth is, Sweetheart, you cause your misery. You cling to it. You have to learn to let it go. Whatever it is you think you are hiding from, it won’t go away until you let it go.”
    I look back to the children playing so innocently with their laughter and ignorance of suffering. “Marxx, you have no idea.” I watch a girl’s red pigtails hover in the air weightless as she spins in circles. She is dressed in the same white dress as her friends and it expands around her ankles as she spins. Conroy had called her Margaret. To me, she is the embodiment of my sins.
    “You killed them.” Marxx whispers it to me like a sinner exposed. He’s right. I am.
    “I had to.”
    “Did you?”
    “It’s not my fault. They would have killed me. They killed Ashley. They had Conroy.” I am whispering, confessing the transgression like a sacrament my heart has repeated every day since it happened.
    “…and what of Lilly? Where is Lilly, Helena?”
    “Carol killed her.”
    “Where is Carol?’
    “I killed her.”
    “You killed them all. If you hadn’t been running late, you might have been able to be there to stop it. You know that.”
    My heart is punctured with the words I have not been strong enough to string together. The same words which Marxx now tortures me with.
    He continues his torment, “You were with Lawless and Aimes, avoiding having to return to those kids. The kids having somehow become your responsibility by parents who hated you.” He pulls me to his chest, and forces me to look at his face as it fills with rage. “It was never really about Leslie. You needed a reason to hate him because you hated yourself. You blame them both for your failures. You let them take the fall for what you couldn’t face. It was so easy to crawl into that little hole of self-pity when the world was convinced you were the wronged, but you were really the culprit. You let them all die. Here, to think you labeled Aimes as the traitor when it was you. It’s always been you, bitch!” He is screaming at me. He is screaming the words I have hidden from in my mind. The very words that whisper to me when the sun’s warmth is gone and the dark of the lonely night forces you to face the many truths of your life.
    “I didn’t know…” My voice cradles the guilt and anguish that is as familiar to me as my shadow and it follows me just as closely.
    “If you had, would you have gone home? If you had known what was waiting for you, would have gone to those kids? Would those children be dead now or would they still be alive? Or, would you have stolen those few more hours with Lawless, letting them all fall to your weakness?” He is whispering to me now, daring me to finally see into the cavernous hole of myself.
    My jaw hangs open with the truth I am too ashamed to admit; my secrets that have been the catalyst for it all. I have thought my biggest failure was not saving them, but it wasn’t. My biggest failure was not wanting to and I finally claim it. “No,” I say aloud, letting my secret fly like a caged bird that has been living behind bars for too long. “No.” My body sags with it finally being free.
    Marxx lets me fall with disgust plain on his face and it shatters my already bleeding