Parasite

With a heavy breath, she exhaled. Laying prostrate in the overgrown grass on her parent's front lawn, an oak tree looming over her with its Spanish moss dripping from its limbs, she closed her eyes and breathed. The sky clouded over to a somber gray and, in a garbled voice, bellowed in discontent. Soon enough, the rain followed suit, and in a codependent venture of melancholy, it stormed. All the while, the girl lay still. With each luke-warm drop of rain, she seemed to melt into the grass, into the dirt. To melt would be a fine thing to do, but she'd settle for the simulation.

From the window, her mother rapped on the glass with a fist clenched white and matching stricken facial expression. The girl lolled her head to the side and squinted to meet her mother's finger pointed to the sky that had now turned a grueling black.

The wind mimicked the mood and picked up its pace, taking with it the rain, but not the girl. No. She stayed, faced her head away from the window, closed her eyes, and breathed.

Would that it were easier than this, to feel something, something other than the past. The past has its way of clawing back to the surface with heavy hands of tar, sticking to and polluting the present. The same hands that gripped her thighs, covered her mouth and refused her breath. The same hands that ruled her body not her own, but something other to be used, licked, prodded, ravaged. But it wasn't just her body these hands reached. Her mind, too, was compromised, tainted in the same way. The fingers, like parasites, worked their way into her brain, burrowed and fed until there was nothing left but the memory.

"Lola!" Her mother shouted, now standing in the front doorway. "Get in here!"

The wind whipped the rain, leaves, and grass into a whirlwind of debris while the girl lay still as each element slashed at her exposed skin. The sky roared and hissed with lightning, but she buried her fingers into the dirt and clenched to hold her body down. Frantically, the trees and shrubs grabbed for their leaves, snapping away in a futile effort. In fear, the moss flew from the trees only for the wind to rip it to shreds.

"Lola, please," Her mother whined, agitated.

"Lola doesn't exist anymore," the girl whispered to herself as she squeezed her eyes shut and her lips into a thin line. "I can't remember if she ever did."