Goodbye | Taylor M. Hallford

Hazel walks down the silent road and the fog of her breath trails behind her like a fading rope. Her shoes echo on the pavement and the world is silent and sleeping. Ahead of her, in the distance, a dark silhouette stands at the roadside. It is still and unbothered by the cold. Its breath does not linger in the air.

She’d seen the being before. It lingered around the corners of coffee shops, behind street signs, and it waltzed through traffic. Whenever she pointed it out to others, in the past, they claimed she was joking or going crazy.

She has an odd feeling that it is eager for her tonight.

The first time she saw it was at her friend's gravestone almost a year ago.

Hazel shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her coat. She feels a small bag grace her fingers deep in her left pocket. It had been a long day. If the dark figure is there to take her, she will go calmly, she thinks. A sinking feeling accompanies her, in her chest, that something, maybe multiple things, had run their course. She thinks of earlier that night at her friend's apartment.

***

Trev held out his hand toward Hazel. In his fingers was a tiny baggie. Powder lined the inside of the baggie showing that the small Ziplok had been shoved and thrown around in numerous “hiding places.” In it was a pill capsule with tiny shards of crystals inside.

“It’s yours.” He muttered his words as he swallowed his own pill. Then he cleared his throat, took a sip of water, and began chewing on a barely recognizable mouthguard.

Hazel had taken it from him. She rolled the capsule over in her hand, letting the dust be removed by the sweat of her skin. The moon rock inside attempted to reflect rainbows. She breathed in and let out an undetectable sigh.

Trev and her were sunken in on a crumb-filled couch with crusty stains of spilled food and drinks. The coffee table in front of them held a dirty bong, a jar of flower, a grinder, a scale. Specks of crumbs littered the top.

On the other side of the table, Kara slumped into a bean bag as dirty as the couch. Kara would step out for a cigarette as soon as she started to feel the drip at the back of her throat. Next to her was an empty lawn chair. The seat had a permanent portrait of the late Brett’s ass imprinted into it.

Trev had left the chair out because he had seen it as just a chair. But, when Hazel looked at it, she could only see Brett’s chair. His sweat stains covered the butt and back of the seat from when he would show up after a long day working in the sun. Everybody always sat in their respective spot, and that one belonged to Brett. It had been a year since Brett died, and not a single visitor had sat in the chair.

Hazel put the capsule back in the bag. “I think I’m alright for tonight, actually.” She said.

Kara gave her a sour look. Trev rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What?” He asked.

“I’m not really feeling it tonight.”

“It took me two hours to get it this time. You know how much me and Kara drove around trying to find this guy?”

Kara chimed in. “Never going to that guy again, by the way. He was creepy.”

“They’re all creepy,” Hazel said. “Plus, I’ve got work at noon tomorrow.”

“How is this time any different from the other times you’ve had work the next day?” Trev asked.

Hazel didn’t have an answer.

Kara rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’m stepping out.”

Hazel spent the next couple of hours there while her two friends stayed bitter toward her. The two went back and forth between putting different songs on and melting into their seats. When she stepped out to leave, neither of them noticed.

***

Hazel is closer to the silhouette now. The being is still straight and unwavering by the chilling air. She can now see the features of the cloak. She could never think of any way to describe the cloak other than the darkest black, as if the figure had been cut out of existence.

She thinks about the capsule in the baggy in her pocket, about Trev and Kara. Both things make her shoulders feel heavier. When was the last time they got along sober? She rakes her brain. After the funeral? She remembers it hazily.

***

Kara was a mess in the passenger seat. She sobbed and didn’t bother to worry about the eyeliner she smeared across her face. Hazel rubbed Kara’s shoulder from the back seat. She had been too high for tears to form, and she had a strong feeling that Brett would want her to comfort the others.

“Screw that hag.” Trev huffed in the driver’s seat. His breath smelled of bottom-shelf vodka and off-brand cola. Unlike Kara, who wore a black dress, he wore a black tee and red basketball shorts.

Kara wailed some more. Hazel said nothing.

“We were his best friends!” Trev said. The was a slight slur in his voice. “Where does she get off kicking us out? We deserve to see him go just as much as his pretentious family! We were there when he died.”

Kara cried harder at the last sentence Trev spoke. Hazel reached her arms around Kara’ seat and hugged her tightly.

“Let’s do our own ceremony.” Hazel finally said.

The other two looked back at her. Kara stopped crying enough to nod her head, and Trev agreed. He cranked the car on and sped out of the funeral home parking lot.

The three went to the liquor store, the grocery store, and their dealer. With the money they had, they bought all of Brett’s favorite things: A bottle of Tito’s, a twenty-four pack of Lonestar, three packs of Turkish Royals, Pepsi, Flavor Blasted Goldfish, an Eighth, and his favorite brand of frozen pizza.

The three sat around the living room as they always did. They smoked, drank, and occasionally snacked. Bretts’ favorite songs played on the speakers. They all shared their memories of him. Kara’ crying turned to a nostalgic smile. Trev no longer yelled in anger, he yelled in excitement to tell stories of their dead friend. Hazel laughed when she could and hoped that Brett was looking down and smiling at their celebration of him.

When nighttime came, they drove to the cemetery passing the bottle of Tito’s back and forth, unafraid of the police, or pedestrians, or ghosts.

Hazel, Trev, and Kara stumbled up to his newly buried grave. In their drunken stupor, they each gave a farewell speech beside his tombstone and poured drops of the bottle onto the upturned soil.

They celebrated his memory and life and said their final goodbyes that night. Hazel could see the silhouetted figure standing over them as they cheered to him in the graveyard. She wasn’t in the right state of mind to think too much about it that night.

She remembered seeing it again when they crashed the car on the drive home. Kara was asleep in the passenger seat, and Trev was swerving on the road. Hazel had tried to settle and lay down in the back seat until they got back to the apartment, but the movements of the car jerked her around. She finally looked up and briefly saw it out the window. Waiting. Next thing she knew the front end was wrapped around a telephone pole.

None of them were hurt, thankfully, but she continued to see the figure on occasion.

***

Hazel is passing the figure under the street lamp now. She stops in a moment of hesitation. She is half of the width of the street away. The wind rushes by and she swears she hears a voice.

She turns to the figure and looks at it. For the first time, she sees it. It isn’t something to be ignored, but it isn’t looming despair. She sees its face under its dark hood. It’s a familiar face. One she hasn’t seen in a year. It’s fear mixed with anger, and sadness, and anxiety, and regret. It is everything she had felt in the last year.

She looks deeply at the face and thinks of the last time she’s seen the face in person.

***

Hazel had been running down the street for two miles, maybe three. She felt her lungs burning and slowly trying to collapse on themselves. She kept moving despite her muscles screaming to stop. The night air was cold, but she could feel sweat dripping down the side of her face. She couldn’t let herself lose sight of Brett through the colors, though.

The four of them, Hazel, Trev, Kara, and Brett, had taken the same dosage. Plopped it onto their tongues and commented on the chemical taste. It was much different from the real stuff. Hazel had been throwing up in the toilet while Kara tried to comfort her by holding her hair and rubbing her back.

Through the gurgle of her vomit, Hazel could hear crashing in the living room.

She mumbled. “What’s going on out there?”

Kara shushed her and said not to worry about it.

When Hazel wiped the last bit of spit from her chin, Trev crashed through the bathroom door.

“Brett’s run away!”

The three threw on their shoes and jackets and ran out to chase after him.

Trev explained. “He started saying weird stuff and falling all over the place. When I tried to get him to calm down he threw the TV across the room, ripped off his shirt, and ran out the door without his shoes."

The three ran until they could see Brett. He was running for his life and leaving trails of clothing behind until he was butt-naked running through the streets.

The three ran and ran and ran, trying to keep him in view. Brett stayed ahead of them the whole time. He screamed incoherent nonsense, and the word “no.”

Cops showed up with their strobing lights.

They yelled for him to get down.

When he tried to flee, they tased him.

He tumbled to the ground with flailing limbs.

The cops wouldn’t let the three friends get closer to him. They did the best they could to keep the man down and restrain him, but Trev's body was violently convulsing.

Finally, Hazel felt herself make eye contact with him from the distance as he lay face-down on the asphalt. He became still and had a sudden and sober look in his eyes as if the world had become clear to him. She thought she saw the reflections from a tear in the flashing blue and red lights that encompassed the night.

Then, Brett went limp.

His heart gave out.

Hazel couldn’t remember how Kara or Trev reacted. She was screaming too much. She wanted him back. He couldn’t be taken from them that quickly. But he was.

***

Hazel looks at the face of the figure. It’s the same face, the realization, the all-encompassing emotions. All of it. It’s not Brett, but it’s a warning. A warning of a lesson that should have been learned.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t help you.” She says.

She walks closer to the figure, reaches into her pocket, and pulls out the small bag with the capsule inside. She examines it. The crystals inside don’t seem to reflect rainbows anymore.

Shaking from the cold, Hazel holds out the bag to the still figure.

For the first time, it moves. It reaches out and takes the bag. She can feel its bony fingers graze her own. They were colder than the air that night.

Although the face doesn’t smile, there is a new feeling it portrays among the array of emotions. Happiness? Hazel thinks. No, it’s something like hope.

“Goodbye.” She says. She isn't just saying goodbye to the hooded being. Her voice echoes in the night air as if it's for multiple things. She can’t help but feel her eyes well up a little bit. She wipes the tears on her sleeve, turns, and continues her walk home.

When she looks back the figure is gone. The only remnants are the now empty space, memories.

It is one of the coldest nights that year, but she feels the warmest she has in a long time.

---

Taylor M. Hallford is from Austin, TX, and holds a BA in English Literature from St. Edward’s University. His short fiction has been featured in The Sorin Oak Review and The Violet Elm Zine. While not working, he spends his days philosophizing with ghosts, pampering his plants, drinking scalding coffee, and reading and writing fiction and poetry.