Eidolon

• Kayla Smith, Grade 12, Moreton Bay College
• Short Story
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'The Text Generation 2014' competition

The tiny football spikes are still dumped haphazardly next to the front door where he left them.

They have remained a permanent fixture there for the past thirty-seven days, a constant reminder of the matching little feet that never got the chance to grow into them properly.

Even now, my parents still refuse to let anyone disturb the chaotic mess of my baby brother's room. Nothing has been put away, and you'd be forgiven for believing that the occupant has just stepped out for a brief moment. I guess that's the point.

Pokémon cards are still fanned out across the carpet, even though Dad would always get cross at him for leaving his Christmas presents lying around.

"We take care of the things we have," my father would explain sternly, "How would you feel if these became damaged, or lost?"

I can tell you now that loss is an artist who paints over any vibrant scene with muted pastels, wielding grief like a paintbrush that blurs everything into muddled non-distinguishable forms.

Loss is a master sculptor too, who has wiped away the constant V furrowed between my barrister father's brows and remoulded my mother's smile to perpetually twitch downwards. My parents have been transformed into blank impressions of themselves, grief rendering them unable to comprehend that they still have another child who is slowly drowning in a different way.

It was me who found him, submerged face down in the pool. His chubby arms outstretched like wings, his hair a weightless watery golden halo. He was five. My waterlogged school uniform could not drag me down as heavily as the guilt stripping back every thought in my head until all I could taste was chlorine, all I could feel was his little body in my arms and all I could hear screaming from every cell of my being was WHY DIDN'T YOU LOCK THE GATE?

These days I am an eidolon, a spectre of my former self who haunts my house like an unsure apparition, feeling no right to remain in this place. I’ve heard countless people whisper reassuringly that it was an accident and that he might have climbed over the fence like the determined kid he was.

Regardless, there is now a pull in the very fabric of who I am and it’s unravelling slowly. You can dig a tunnel in the sand and smooth back over it, but the ground will still be unstable if you place too much pressure on it.

So this is the purgatory I live in now, precariously teetering back and forth over the precipice of blame. It’s difficult some days, but it’s up to me to live on for him.