Reflection on the Lake

He lit his last cigarette and took a deep drag. He could see everything now, standing there on the same snowy lake, though he wasn't there when it happened. He could see her; a doll's face peering as if out of a glass window of a shop. Her fists would be clenched, no longer banging against the barrier that was the only thing keeping her from air. She wouldn't be smiling anymore, her lips would be kissing the ice in silent defeat. So quick was the transformation from fun to fear. Her icy companion didn't show her mercy, didn't comply to the gurgled pleas. Nature doesn't give mercy, not to anyone, even children.

Had she been stronger, could she have done it? Could he have done it? Or was the ice so deceivingly thick, that while you could see life swimming on the other side, you still never had a shot to break through. How cruel it was... to see life but not be able to reach it, to feel air at your fingertips and not be able to breathe it.

He pictured her tiny blue fist pounding against that glassy surface... for how long? How long until someone realized she had even gone under? How long would it take? He could see her on the other side of the ice, saw himself bending down, looking at the porcelain doll on the other side. Young, beautiful, and lifeless, battered like a lost toy. Her eyes would be open, drained of their color, and now a strange yellow, floating in her head. Are you in a better place, he whispered to the ice, or are you forever trapped in this watery grave, reliving your last look at a cruel world?

When he had arrived from work, she was already in a body bag. The ambulances and squad cars were piled awkwardly in the snow, as terrified bystanders watched. He ran over, but he didn't see her. The body bag was closed, zipped shut, so no one had to see. He hadn't seen her reaching out, cold hands pressed against colder realities. He didn't see the hair sweep across her face, as she choked on numbing water. Her mother's hair. Perhaps his screaming face. He would never know.

He remembered looking down on her stuffed body in a tiny coffin. He remembered that and nothing else. Not her funeral, or the people who attended. Not anything else about any of it. Just that glimpse of her embalmed body, and just the glimpse of a thought. Her cardboard body was covered with thick makeup, her eyes closed to try and make her look as peaceful as was capable, and the almost insane hilarity entered his mind that the thing before him used to be his daughter. As if anyone could picture that thing at rest to be human. This thought seemed to take over all others, though it didn't even seem to be a real thought; that thing is your daughter. He would have preferred to have been there, to see the life drain from her eyes, to see the tiny fists unclench with an aggravated calm, he would have preferred to see anything but this leftover. It would have been less painful to have been there. To see her blue lips form the word, "daddy" over and over, to pound his fist against the ice as she struggled underneath.

Perhaps if he had been there, even if he couldn't save her, he would've saw the shift. The shift from life to death. Perhaps there would have been some inkling, some hope, that she was not just some rotting corpse in a box. That her life... that life lead to something more than that. That life wasn't the only thing... that this pitiful excuse for life wasn't all that she had. That every movie he watched or book he read or job he worked or person he slept with or church sermon he attended wasn't just a distraction from the fact that both she and he and everyone else are all going to die, and nobody knows what's going to happen. Everyone pretends to know, or think they know, or come up with new theories everyday of creative, philosophical ideas of how it all happens, but when they are up against it, facing it, looking at that piece of rotting garbage propped up for others to mourn over, do they feel that flicker of doubt? Do they feel that stab of pain rise up through them, cold and hard, to the point where they can't help but shiver or convulse, as the mere idea of there being no afterlife creates a fear so powerful it is unlike any other physical or mental reaction in this world. Do they feel it... did Angeline feel it as life left her body...

He didn't know. He put his hand on the ice lake, and felt his face grow hot with hatred. He wasn't there. His daughter died and he wasn't there. And everything he did now didn't matter. He wished he was a bigger man, but there was no man left. He had left the basis of his immortality in the hands of a careless little girl on ice skates. She was his heart, and now there was only an empty, dark hole, and only nature was to blame. He took his hand off the ice. It was painfully numb but he didn't care. He threw his cigarette on the frozen lake and walked back to his car.