Demons to Rest
Dana Quell

It is well into the eleventh minute when she gathers the courage to 
finally state the purpose of her visit.  It isn't as if she doesn't 
know what to say -- the words flow readily enough in emotion-laden 
sentences for her hesitation to be all about an inability to express 
herself.

No, she knows what to say and how to say it.  But she has struggled 
with the whys of it all; she has remained silent until now, when she 
has finally figured out what is the cause of her hesitation.  

Her hair blows around her, the long blonde strands whipping random 
patterns across her face, and her small hands keep pushing them behind 
her ear as she begins to speak.  "Hey.  This, uh, probably doesn't mean 
too much, but, um... I'm here.  It took me three years to work up the 
courage, but I'm here."

The cold November wind accompanies the silence in its reply.  She 
doesn't mind; she doesn't expect a response.  She takes the opportunity 
to gather her resolve, then speaks again.

"They said it would be good for me to come out here and talk to you, 
that it would help me deal with things better.  At first, I thought the 
idea was ridiculous, that there wasn't much point, but now I'm not so 
sure.  The drive wasn't so bad.  It gave me some time to myself to 
think about things.  I only wish it wasn't so cold - the heater broke 
last winter and I still don't have the money to fix it.  It's a long 
drive in the cold."

She pauses for a moment and glances at her reddening hands.  Her right 
hand covers her left in a futile attempt to fend off frostbite, and her 
dominant fingers find the thin gold band that rests on her ring finger. 
 They begin to play with it nervously, twirling it about as if the 
simple movement of it all could generate enough friction to deflect the 
cold.

"I guess I should stop running around the subject.  That's another 
thing they tell me to do, to stop running.  I tried, once, but it was 
hard to break from my training.  Your training.  Even despite the fact 
that you're not physically in my life anymore, you're still present in 
every movement I do, every little unconscious action I might display.  
And, even though you didn't mean to, you taught me to run from 
emotions.  You taught me to be restrained in order to fit into 
your little model of what I should be instead of what I was, and 
instead of learning restraint, I learned repression.

"I know you didn't mean to do any of that on purpose -- they've told me 
that much -- but it's so very hard not to resent you, when I resent 
what I've become and when you've played such an enormous part in that. 
 And the truth is, I don't resent you -- I can't when what I've become 
has prevented me from feeling anything more deeply than irritation 
or slight affection.  But that means I don't love you, either.  That 
I've never loved you if I've never resented you."

And the truth is out, ringing clearly in her ears as it might if it 
were church bells tolling in the crisp air of December.

She looks up from her ring, the little gold symbol that shows that, 
with the help of first her husband and later her therapist, she was 
able to at least partly leave the training behind.  That she was able 
to experience deep and fulfilling emotions, and, most importantly, that 
she was able to love.  And now, she knows that she has succeeded in 
fully burying her troubles, in putting her demons to rest.

She focuses her attention on the glacial gray slab that she has stood 
in front of her for nearly half an hour now, the thin slab of granite 
that marks the beginning and the end of the life of the one demon she's 
known.  And yet, the slab is incorrect. It lists as the end a date 
nearly three years prior, but it hasn't truly come until today.

"Goodbye, Mother."  

There is a finality in those four syllables, a finality that she can 
never remember hearing before.  But it is nothing for her to reflect 
upon -- she has said all she needed to and in doing so resolved 
everything she had to.  To dwell on the finality in those words would 
only serve as reminders of the past, phantom chains that would only 
serve to restrain her newly found freedom.

And so she forgets her words as soon as they stop their dance on her 
tongue and hang in the air above the slab, and turns away to begin her 
long drive home.

-Fin