The In Between

The darkness swallows my silent screams because I am mist, I am shadow, I am nothing.

These are my ugly truths and my reality.

Every day I have ached to feel the comfort of a warm hand braced against my shoulder, the stinging salt of the ocean’s spray against my face, a whispered breath snaking across my lips before a passionate kiss, the buttery sweetness of caramel bursting along the buds of my tongue, the tightness of his strong arms wrapped around my back after time apart, velvety soft petals brushing my nose as I breath in their floral scent, and the intertwining of his fingers clutching mine on a warm summer day.

While I can no longer sleep given my cursed state, these are the things I dream of now with eyes wide open.

I claw at my body. My hands dissolve into the formless mist at each attempt.

I slash at my face before I release a scream into the void. No sound comes out despite the air and force I expel.

I scream into the darkness again but it remains silent like my voice.

Dropping my chin to my chest, no sensation at the touch, and take a deep breath in. It’s easy to want to simply rage into the darkness, like a prisoner trying to free themselves from solitary.

Temptation pulls me toward insanity and despair on a daily basis, but I have channeled my restlessness toward a singular goal.

Raising my chin, I take a step forward with my goal in mind. It’s kept me going for a long time.

I want to see every part of the world that I can. The impressive sights and different cultures and vibrant people have reminded me that life remains, even if I cannot experience it myself. Grayson would want me to remember what it means to live, so I walk — forever looking for his glacier blue eyes among the living.

Propelling forward, mist billows with each movement.

My eyes trace the pathway as I walk in darkness. It’s dark and fluid, like ink, with ashen highlights that reflect in the ripples of its moving patterns beneath my feet. My feet push onto the path without resistance or wetness so I continue on the route that may be new or one I’ve walked before. There is really no way to know.

The pathway laps against obsidian walls that shimmer like dark tinted stone. I reach out to trace the glimmers that appear like silver, it's hard beneath my touch but neither warm nor cool.

The route I walk doesn’t change in direction, or color, or design.

I swear that some days I can hear the echoes of his heavy steps behind me. But every time I look over my shoulder, all I see is darkness.

Others, cursed like I am, sweep past me. We are suspended between worlds and time drifting on invisible pathways. This place is a dark and hazy void where all color has been drained away, desaturating all within it to a lifeless black and gray state. The only life we can still see is on the other side of the looking glasses placed along the paths we roam. It is vibrant, alive, and free while we are stuck in this in between slate world as forever spectators. Seeing but never seen.

A millennia ago my people, then called The Shades, were cursed by a raging queen who destroyed our lives. She is now long dead but her fury echoes on the silent paths we are forced to endure.

I never knew what caused her ire or why a whole people were inflicted with her wrath, but it matters little to me as I accepted long ago that I will forever live in the In Between without hope of ever escaping it.

My people and I have not aged, we have not grown in numbers, and we are wanderers.

This simply is, nothing will ever change that.

I doubt many of my people feel the same. I’ve noticed them over the decades watching the generations of her offspring in what I assume are useless hopes of one day enacting their vengeance. Their hungry stares at the living haunt me every time I remember them.

Moving past the wayward souls of my people and several looking glasses that don’t interest me, I see one ahead that shines a little brighter than the others. The bright silver of its plated edges is illuminated in the darkness.

While I call it a looking glass, there is no actual glass held within the silver frames littered randomly throughout the In Between. They resemble very large mirrors. The kind where three people could stand shoulder to shoulder and it would still be slightly wider and taller than them.

I approach this particular one and hold my breath as I raise a singular finger to meet it. Maybe this one will be different from the others.

I push and meet misty resistance that ripples the image I can see on the other side.

My hand falls limp at my side. As the image reforms, my breath catches at the majestic sight. A rising sun is cresting a horizon of snow-capped mountains behind a grassy hill where a white stone city stands.

My fists tighten just as a pang hits my chest. The sight before me is so beautiful despite all the color leached from it on this side of the In Between. What I would give to see the colors of dawn one more time.

Movement from the gates of the keep catches my eye. Two figures, hand in hand, walk into the grassy fields with a basket in tow. They walk down the grassy hill to an area shaded by trees before sitting underneath its protection. The man's actions are so similar to Grayson’s on the many picnics we had growing up.

My shoulders slump and I look away.

Turning my body, I walk away from the looking glass in the direction I had been going.

My eyes begin to sting as images burn through my mind: a yellow flowered field with grass swaying with the breeze, a red blanket under a warm sun, and the glacier blue eyes that crinkled when he laughed.

The midnight air gets heavier as the images flooding my mind get brighter.

I’m forced to stop as my chest heaves with each new image I recall behind clenched eyes.

I had lived in a city like that once. It’s homes built from clay bricks colored burnt orange from the beating sun. Small dwellings for people with big hearts who lived harmoniously with the land it sat upon. Never taking more than what it gave, and returning it to create a cycle for life to thrive. A blue river ran through the middle of the city that led to a plain covered in yellow flowers where the children would play and lovers would lay as they gazed up at the rolling clouds.

The same field where I met Grayson as a child during a game where one child chased all the others to catch one and then that child would repeat the process.

I had been chasing all the children one day, but my short legs wouldn’t go fast enough no matter how hard I pumped them. The other kids were faster so I couldn’t catch anyone. The moment I realized this, tears had streamed down my face for all to see as I kept running. Grayson looked over his shoulder in laughter as he ran away from me, but once his blue eyes saw my tears he began to slow down and allowed me to catch him. We were together every day after that. First as the closest of friends, he constantly looked out for me and I always made him laugh when things got hard. As we got older, that love grew deeper and more passionate.

The day that the Queen cursed us was the same day he had left me a note on my pillow to meet him in that field at sunset so he could ask me a question.

I never got to hear what it was.

I’ve thought long and hard on what it could have been but I’ll never know.

And he is dead now.

He has to be.

I open my eyes and suck in a deep breath to calm my shaking limbs. I have to keep moving or I will end up a heap on the murky floor never to get up again.

Pressing onward, I keep walking despite my slow and heavy steps.

I pass the healer who once mended my broken arm in one of the coldest winters our city ever endured. She smiles but I only nod before continuing on.

After a while in the darkness I pass a looking glass with a view of a ship bobbing in the rocking waves of the sea. I rush past it not wanting to consider how blue the water is and wonder if it matches Grayson's eyes.

I near another looking glass before I realize it, this one deep in a forest with no creature in sight as rain pelts the leaves and branches, soaking everything into a soggy mess.

A while later I come across a group of Shades looking in all different directions and gesturing wildly to each other.

Only seeing them and the immense darkness, I choose to ignore it and continue on. Ambling down pathways haphazardly as I don’t have an end in sight nor in mind.

I’ve seen lifetimes pass by in the looking glasses I’ve looked through. Each looking glass is always set to the same scene, but the life within that setting always continues onwards even while I am stuck in this frozen state.

One season I stood in front of one particular looking glass and watched the lives of a singular family day after day. I saw a husband build a home from his bare hands. He later carried his wife in a splendid wedding dress through the door.

They soon became pregnant with a son who was born in the home and who they followed outside as he took his first steps. Soon a sister joined them and another after that. Finally a brother came last of all, screaming and rosy cheeked into the world. I saw their first steps, their games, their growth and change.

I witnessed young love bloom and carry them each away until just the husband and his wife remained. Their skin wrinkled and hair changed colors and became weaker until finally the home was empty.

I sat in front of the looking glass watching their dark home for days. I studied the marks that had changed the surface of the table the husband had carved. I noticed the wear on the floorboards where six pairs of feet had tread and danced and stomped. I saw cobwebs form in corners and over chipped mugs and hand-sewn blankets dulling with dust.

After a while of watching the nothingness of a home left behind, I finally walked away and haven’t been back since.

I might no longer feel the hard support of the floor beneath my feet, or feel hands gripping mine as they swing me in a dance, but I can still be reminded of all the life I did live when I see it behind the looking glasses. That family showed me I could.

On most days, this is a comfort, but today is not one of those days. Instead, I am just reminded of how much was stolen from me that they can experience but I cannot. How much life I did not get to experience with Grayson that I had so desperately wanted to have.

Aimlessly moving forward, I sort through the memories, longings, and emotions churning within me.

Looking up to gauge where I am, I realize I’m not sure how much time has passed or where exactly I am. There are no looking glasses in my line of sight to figure that out.

I had a lot of them memorized by now.

The onyx atmosphere surrounding me takes on an eerie stillness as the swirling blackness stops and the misty haze brings particles to a suspended halt midair.

My brows pinch together as I glance around at the change.

This had never happened before.

I push a shaking hand through the haze of particles not expecting much but as my hand glides through the cold air, the haze moves as I push it away and not through it like I had anticipated.

My eyes widened at the sudden shift I had been able to create.

I turn in the darkness and it moves with me.

My breath catches.

I don’t know what is happening.

A spark of light bursts through the obsidian wall opposite of me, forcing me to cover my eyes as it grows brighter and brighter until I am entirely immersed in whiteness.

I keep my eyes shut tight against the brightness until I feel it fade to a steady light within the space I stand in.

Slowly peeking open one eye, the other follows suit quickly as a gasp escapes me.

The In Between has changed into a white and airy space that was a black and murky place before.

I blink slowly. Did I go somewhere else? Did something happen to change the In Between? Did I do something to make this happen? I quickly recall my steps and the path I had taken but nothing stands out as different today from the days before.

“Are you a ghost?” the whispered words cleave like a battle axe through the stark silence behind me.

Is this madness or reality? Has insanity finally pulled me into her clutches?

I can no longer tell.

The familiar voice brings a chill up my back at its resounding deepness that pulls memories of whispered words made under starry nights and behind cupped hands to my mind.

I will my shaking legs to turn around so I can face the direction of the sound and understand if I truly am insane or if I really did hear him.

My heart begins beating fiercely against my ribs as I slowly turn around.

I lift a hand to my mouth as a gasp escapes my lips. The sound echoing in the whiteness I stand in.

His wide, glacier blue eyes hook on mine as his lips curve up the longer I stare at him.

He lifts a tanned hand toward my face and I hold my breath. The In Between is a place without contact, his hand will go through me like so many others. His touch won’t be felt like so many attempts previously to feel something in this place.

His finger brushes a strand of my ebony hair away before landing softly to cup my cheek.

“It really is you.”

A sob wrecks through me. He pulls me into his warmth, placing his strong arms around my back. The first touch I’ve had in a millennia.

“Grayson?”