#hlcn: elizabeth | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

holocene-sims · 2 years

Note

Things said meme number 31 for Grant and Grant's late sister situation 😭😭😭

ooh okay this is a good one 👀 a really good one! sorry it took me so long to post, though!! it's been sitting in my drafts for a hot minute lol

anyway welcome to the angst express train 🌧️

btw this is a pretty fucked up example of grant's childhood so...

tw for death mention & tw for abuse. anyone reading this, scroll right past this post please if this could be triggering for you! the part with the abuse is placed under the cut for safety as well, so you won't see anything unless you click on it!!

31. things you said at my grave

she’d given him a letter last month.

she handed it to him in the middle of the night without much fanfare. she knocked on his bedroom door, slipped the letter through the crack, and walked away with nary a word spoken.

grant picked it up, though, soon after she vanished and found that she’d sealed the envelope with a bright pink hello kitty birthday sticker. he flips it over and reads the perfect cursive inscription on the back.

“happy birthday to my favorite person <3 XOXO, elizabeth”

it wasn’t his birthday, so he put it away in the nightstand, confused, and saved it for later.

she did the same thing the next night, although that time she’d explicitly asked to come into his room, and she came bearing a beautiful wooden lockbox–almost an exact replica of their grandmother’s decades-old handmade jewelry box–and a key to go with it. she placed it neatly on top of his cluttered shelf of hockey trophies, then sat beside him on his bed where he lay awake, staring at the ceiling.

“what are you doing?”

“stuff,” elizabeth replies, her voice shakier and more fragile than ever, “don’t tell kelly.”

“don’t tell kelly what?”

“that i didn’t do this for her.”

“didn’t do what for her?”

elizabeth leans over and cups his face in her cold, skeletal hands. when he looks up, he sees a waterfall of tears pouring down her cheeks, and suddenly, he knows what all of this is about.

“the letter i gave you yesterday...whether i'm here or not, open it on your birthday.” elizabeth lingers for a moment, still cradling his face, then she abruptly sits upright and points to the box. “and all of those...you can look through them whenever you want. look, not open. but it’s just letters. you’ll figure it out. you’ll know when it’s time for each of them.”

grant rises from bed, too, and clamors out from underneath his pile of blankets to rest beside her on the edge.

“lizzie, no–” he pleads, grabbing for her wrist, “don’t die.”

“i don’t want you to feel like you’re alone for the rest of your life. you wouldn’t believe me if i say i think heaven is real and that you shouldn’t worry because i'll be with you forever, just farther away. so i had to do something, okay? keep these as a reminder of me, that i'm always here. grant, i'm–um, i'm so sorry i can’t see you grow up. i'm so sorry i can’t protect you anymore. it’s the only regret i have about this life. but i know you and i know that you’ll be fine, that you’ll live a good life, and that you’ll be happy someday when you get out of here. i can let go because i know you’ll be okay, but i can’t let you feel like you’re alone. okay? i will miss you more than anything and i know it’ll be the same for you, but keep these and, um...someday way off in the future, we’ll see each other again and we’ll have a lot to catch up on.”

and now he kneels here, sobbing, at her fresh grave site in torrential rain under the pitch black blanket of night, clutching the first letter in the safety of the inner pocket of his rain jacket. the grave is no more than a roughshod pile of unearthed dirt surrounded by mountains of flowers and signs with elizabeth’s name and pictures of her before she’d been struck by the hand of fate and the daunting c-word. the photographs are far from old, being handpicked from last year’s high school graduation photoshoot.

grant hesitates to pull out the letter but does so anyway, knowing his time here is as limited as her time on earth was. he’d forgotten to fiddle with the house security alarm before he leapt out his second-story bedroom window and hauled himself down to the ground via the nearest tall tree. the last sound he’d heard as he sprinted out the backyard and over the wrought-iron fence was the shrill whine of the alarm alerting everyone to an “intrusion.”

surely the three mile dash from his home to the catholic church’s cemetery would give his parents plenty of opportunity to discover he'd gone missing and for them to subsequently bother to care about where their least favorite child ran off to.

just as he begins anxiously working away at peeling off the sticker without damaging it, the distinct echo of footsteps in entrenched mud behind him sends his heart rate flying sky-high. he considers making a run for it again to either his uncle’s or his grandparents’ house down the hill–there’s no doubt he can outrun his 50 year old parents and unathletic older sister–but decides against it.

he’d come here on the earliest hour of his twelfth birthday to read the letter with the company of his sister, even though she's six feet underneath him. no way he’s backing out now.

“you are nothing but trouble! get up! get up right now!”

lightning strikes a tree on the opposite side of the cemetery. the ensuing bomb of thunder kills his ears and nearly drowns out his mother’s incessant screaming.

grant stays where he is, praying lightning strikes him before his mother does. finally, though, the sticker releases and he frees the letter from the envelope in record speed.

“grant, come on, just get up…” his sister kelly begs. “it’s late and it’s storming and we have to pick out the headstone tomorrow. we all miss her. now let’s go.”

his mother tries again to rattle him. “there is no need for you to go around making this all about you! i should not have to chase you down in the middle of the night when i have just buried my daughter!”

he ignores them all and reads the letter patiently.

he’s halfway through when kelly’s whining breaks his concentration.

“let’s do this the easy way, grant.”

if his father is there, he’s doing what he always does, and that’s nothing.

“alright, that’s enough!” his mother screams at the top of her lungs. “get up or help me god you’ll be in the ground next to her!”

grant immediately halts what he’s doing and glances over his shoulder, eyeing his family with suspicion. his father and sister are clad in pajamas but his mother–who is marching his way like darth vader on steroids–had apparently wasted energy and time to dress herself up in proper clothing before driving out this way.

of course she had. she can’t be seen abusing her children in anything less than the 400 dollar dress she’d worn to the funeral yesterday, can she?

seeing her coming after him, he panics and starts gearing up to run away, only to fumble with the letter and let it slip from his hands to scurry away in the harsh wind. he desperately reaches for it, only to be stopped dead by his mother’s talons gripping onto his hair and yanking him backwards. he crumbles under the unexpected weight of her strength and his head slams full-force into the solid ground. she slips up for just a moment, letting him go, but nothing stops her. she reaches down and grabs him by the shoulders and continues dragging him by hand through the mud.

“mary, let him go.” at last, his father pipes up. “that’s a bit much.”

“shut up and stay out of my way! i’ll let the child go when he obeys me for the first time in his life. he’ll learn someday!”

grant’s eyes flutter open to the world spinning like a tilt-a-whirl around him. he lifts his head and looks out ahead of him, but the poor grave just before him is a blurry mess of colors, all washed out by the horrible ache splitting his brain in half.

“i just wanted to be with her…” grant whimpers.

“well, me too, grant! but you don’t see me or your father or your sister acting a fool, do you?”

the grave slowly slips farther and farther away as he’s pulled–kicking and fighting and smashing his head into the ground every other second–towards the parking lot. but he grows tired of lashing out against his mother and his fear and hatred of her is replaced by primal, unbridled grief.

“why did you leave me?!” ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. “take me with you, take me with you, take me with you! don’t leave me! please, please, please…take me with you! or come back! please don’t leave me! elizabeth, please…”

he braces for the impact of his body on concrete just as a bright burst of yellow from a flashlight shines in his and his mother’s faces. she gasps and stumbles away, releasing her iron-grip on his body. grant stumbles forward and up onto his knees, almost careening over, but he’s caught by another set of arms.

he doesn’t even need to look up to know his grandparents overheard the commotion and rushed over to discover the source.

somewhere off in the background, his mother is engaging his uncle and his grandfather in a screaming match, but grant loses track of the words soon enough and melts into his grandmother’s warm embrace, still sobbing.

“please don’t leave me, elizabeth.” he begs once more into the void. “don’t leave me. i don't want to be alone.”