Free Among the Fallen: Resurrection by Ross Shortall, Scott Beadle Page A

becoming somewhat normal. She turned away as her eyes filled with more tears, her black lips quivering uncontrollably as she clasped her new hands to her chest.
    Alex stood up painfully and turned her head towards a marble angel to the left of her monument; a tall and graceful angel on a pedestal with a wing of finely detailed feathers and a face of sorrow. As the angel stared out into the dark world it clearly had no place being in, Alex approached it cautiously, her heart mysteriously drawn to it. The name on the plaque said Sarah Beaumont .
    Her emotions suddenly became overwhelming and too much for her to bare, sobbing at the angel’s unsympathetic feet, crying and weeping under the ruthless barrage of rain. She knew there was nothing she could have done, which in some respects made it unendurably worse. All Alex could think about was ways she could have done that day different, some action that could have altered what happened. As mental images flashed before her of Sarah laying twisted in the road, she felt her heart collapse within her chest; drowned within guilt and torturous agony as she bawled into the night, alone, terrified and with nobody to comfort her.
    “I’m so sorry, Baby” She whispered as she stroked the stone angel’s flawless face. “I miss you so much” she whimpered desperately. “I failed us, I failed you!” she cried, her words snatched heartlessly by the lump in her throat.
    She looked away swiftly, an attempt at hiding her cries from the sad angel, gazing out into the darkness her tears stifled her. She lowered her head solemnly and stared at the monument with her blackened eyes, her tears instantly stolen by the rain. Suddenly, she turned away from the statue and stared down at the waterlogged ground. The angel’s stone eyes suddenly welled up, releasing a single tear of blood down its cold face which was quickly snatched from its cheek. Alex walked away stricken in grief; the angel’s face suddenly turning behind her. The statues sad eye sockets sobbed and its long screaming mouth cried as its sister walked away and abandoned her once more. Alex turned and looked over the stone face one more time, its expression now back as it once was, its grief hidden from Alex’s saddened gaze.
    “Goodbye Baby, see you soon.” she said tormented in growing grief and heart-wrenching guilt.
    Alex walked away choked and sick, beleaguered and haunted as she strolled through the nightmare landscape lost and traumatized, the weather battering her tiny frame. As the wind screamed around her, the bare trees creaked with desolation, the rain randomly switching directions as Alex battled against it, pushing her mortal frame through the sick and twisted landscape as the monuments and stone figures all around her wept in agony. Lightning cracked silently in the distance as her tiny silhouette walked through the graveyard, the skyline ruined with ghostly trees and stone shapes as her teeth chattered through her weeping eyes.
    Alone and hurting, she continued across the land without a goal, her heart and soul tormented and hopeless, ravaged by solitude and loneliness. She walked over to a puddle that rippled on a tomb and looked at her distorted reflection, her face white and lifeless, her lips and eyes black and featureless, her dark hair hanging in the head beating rain.
    “What the hell has happened to me?!” She whispered softly.
    She sat down under a tree as is it pathetically shielded her from some of the downpour. Her thoughts casting back to a father that hated her, friends that she left behind; a string attention seeking one night stands and life that seemed long gone; set upon her to forever punish her for sins that eluded her. Then she thought about Sarah, a beacon of happiness and symbol of love in a life that was pretty shit to say the least. She picked a handful of wet grass and slowly tore it to pieces, the rain thrashing at her head as she thought about how she wasted her life doing nothing,