Tears For Corrin: Part 3: Slivers Of Sunshine

without fail, it will happen again, just as it has every year. Corrin is growing older with me but trapped in the body of a child, she grows older in intellect and knowledge, also, she grows more bitter and jealous of this world that she can only minutely participate in. every time i see her bored expression it sends chills down my spine, i can feel her breaking down and becoming less enthralled with being merely a glimmer in the corner of one's eye.

Corrin haunts the soil steps behind me, following her strongest connection to what she once was and never will be again. misery has set in on her like a plague and i feel it spreading into me and out into the world.

i have become a conduit for her emotional outbursts of rage and disgust, loneliness and longing, her every emotion that she can no longer show on her own.



autumn has settled into the view of the world and that fated day comes closer, and with it, my annual test of her boiling point. "when is this day going to be over?! shouldn't i have been long gone by now?! see, there is no fucking God, i'm all the proof anyone could ever fucking need!" we were once friends and she was amazingly excited about life, as it seemed. now, she is the eternal child who longs for adulthood without ever getting to see it from her own point of view. she watches and scoffs at everything and everyone. spiteful comments spew out of her mouth from every direction: "for the love of fucking Christ, is he seriously taking this long to ring up your shit? does he have Polio?!"


i muster a laugh when she curses the world, with her tiny voice, using profanity and obscenity like a seasoned professional. she comes and goes as she pleases, hidden from my ears and eyes when she's upset with the fact that i'm laughing at her, not with her. mind you, she only still looks like a child, she has aged mentally and emotionally and has no problem letting me know it. "i'm just as capable of explaining these things to you as you are to me. i'm not a goddamn child anymore, so stop laughing you fucking prick!" the more i think about how right she is, the more hilarious it becomes: she is indeed just as capable, for a dead girl.


it wasn't that long ago that i tried, to no avail, to seek her out in her own plane of existence. she stayed in the shadows, or abyss, or whatever it is and would only speak to me as if she were some infinite source of knowledge. she told me, "you should've seen your face, it was priceless! seriously though, what were you thinking?!" she pulled a prank on me in that place beyond this world and i fell for it full force. i sunk into a sense of failure and she, the eternal doll, jumped around and laughed about it for days, often with an out stretched finger pointed at me with a look of mock terror. Corrin is the devil's advocate, i'm almost 100% sure of it after that.


this year will be the 15th time that i will have to endure that wreckage, engulfed in flames, and see how she spent her final minutes in pure agony. i asked her last year if it was "under her control" or if it was just "something that happens" against both our wishes. she stared at me like i was asking her if the sky was blue. "well, i can tell you i didn't exactly get a handbook or an instruction manual. i sure as hell didn't get an orientation. this isn't beetlejuice."


the years have come and gone, she has not. this year, like all the others, she took me by my shivering hand and walked me to what is now "our" demise. the slow, agony that we now share for what i'm sure will be an eternity. Corrin's serrated smile lurks behind me, ahead of me and over me. she is the eternal child, with the mind of a woman, who longs for life even though the one she had was painful and worth ending, or so it would seem to me. the nights grow longer and the shadows and shades extend their arms out toward me, reminding me, that Corrin is there ready to pop into my life and riddle me with tired laughter, the spewing of new found atrocities of speech and her eyes that have grown so old yet still look so young and vibrant.



slivers of sunshine tip-toe through the mist of her skin, the darkness now haunting her eyes like she haunts me. Corrin watches, waits, converses and astounds me. even to this day.

Tears For Corrin

i can say, without any doubt, that i am being haunted by a little girl i once knew.

she had eyes like lime green glow sticks and hair the same color as hand rolled cigars. there wasn't anything really extraordinary about her except that fact that she was funny and she liked being my friend. we spent hours together playing in her yard, coloring in coloring-books, watching cartoons and talking about childhood nothings that seem so trivial by today's standards.

her name was Corrin and she was my first crush.

it was after she died that i found out how disturbed and emotionally troubled she was. maybe that is what drew me to her: the mental defects that sprayed out into the world in the form of hyperactivity and surrealistic chatter. her imagination was clearly what she saw all the time, a world she created and controlled, despite the numerous medications she was fed on a daily basis.

sometime, just after fall had taken the world in its hands, Corrin decided that she was done with the standardized dosage of her medications and she wanted to know what exactly would happen if she went overboard with her four course spread of pills.

Novemeber 14th, 1996 was the start date of her "new routine" of pill consumption, it would also be the last day she would see the sun rise and fall, much the same way we all see it today.

she gorged herself on anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, diabetes medication and blood thinners. shortly after he dad came home he discovered her on the floor of the kitchen puking blood and crying for someone to kill her. due to shock, or incredible fear, her dad skipped on calling the paramedics and gathered her up in his arms and rushed her to the car and headed for the nearest hospital.

along the highway, speeding toward the emergency room, he lost control of the car and hit a guardrail, sending the car into a slide that ended with a set of large trees. he was appearantly killed instantly while Corrin was left with several broken bones but still alive and suffering.

she sat in that wrecked car, strapped tightly into the front passenger seat, wishing for a quick end to her torment and pain. it would not come to her, instead the smoke started to pour out from under the hood of the car. the flames began to grow and lap at the sides of the hood, taking hold of it and pulling their way to the windshield. she sat in her dad's car, next to his bleeding and lifeless body, watching the flames grow brighter as they inched their way toward her.

she cried and screamed and cringed, but nothing would stop the assault of fire that was now consuming her body, cooking her alive inside her steel roadside tomb. when the fire crews got there she was already gone, they had to identify her by her dental records, although i'm sure no one had a doubt in their mind that the small, charred body was her's and her's alone.

the only reason i know all of this is because two years later, as i began the decent into my teenage years, she came to me in a nightmare that i will never forget, no matter how hard i try. she whispered my name and woke me from my bed, which was positioned just behind the wreckage of her dad's car. she took my hand and walked me to the rear passenger door which was wide open. she asked me to sit in the back seat, so i did, and she opened the front passenger door and sat down. she leaned her head back to her right side and spoke these words to me:

"paul, i hope you're ready to see fireworks. the show is about to begin so buckle up."

that's when the flames rose from under the hood of the car and started their climb toward the inside of the car that we now sat in. i tried so hard to open that door and get away from the horrible stench of cooking human flesh, but that door wouldn't budge a fraction of an inch. i started to scream for help, just as she had all that time ago, but no sound came out of my throat. my voice was useless in that horrid nightmare. i looked out of the car window where i was sitting and i could see Corrin standing on the highway smiling at the car as it was engulfed by the living lights of the fire.

thats when i woke up, in a cold sweat, and she was standing at the foot of my bed just staring at me with the same smile she had just a few seconds ago. she told me that she is bound to the wreckage and to the road and to me, because as it turns out, i was the only kid who wasn't freaked out by her over active imagination and her hyperactivity.

i was her only friend before she was eaten alive by fire, alone, on the side of the road.

so now i am haunted by Corrin:

my friend

my first crush

my eternal shadowy companion

my tormented ghost child

i carry around a small amount of her personality and mannerisms. somehow, as a way of coming back to play, she has attached herself to me in strange ways that i can not yet begin to explain or understand. so, to this day, i can still feel her walking around with me and beckoning me to watch cartoons with her, color in coloring-books with her, play outside in the yard with her and talk about childhood nothings with her.

Corrin is haunting me and i wouldn't have it any other way.

Dax.