Dear Esther Fan Fiction

               Chapter One (Dear Esther)                          

The office is dusty, clambering with junk mail and an old typewriter. “They must have given you your vaccinations with a phonographic needle.” Is what he said to me last, laughing up a storm in our once homely light house by the sea. My flash light fell to the floor causing the many letters he left me most of which I never bothered to read, fly out of my hands and flutter to the ground around my feet. He was a true insane genius.

Writing was the only thing he loved to do… That, and well, hiking the dirt trails with me. Reading and listening to old records; now scattered and torn across the floor. Along with his music sheets, scatted as well. His violin piece was the perfect accompaniment for a long day’s work. I picked up an open letter, written to me.

“Dear Esther. The morning after I was washed ashore, salt in my ears, sand in my mouth and the waves always at my ankles. I felt as though everything had conspired to this one last ship wreck. I remember nothing but water, stones in my belly and my shoes threatening to drag me under to where only the most listless of creatures swim.”

That’s how he found this cursed island, by chance. Chance is such a unique word, it could be evil or good depending if you win or lose. I stood outside the threshold. That boat right outside our house, once used to travel to our secret light grove on the other side of our island. Now in shambles, dilapidated and rotting from the inside, algae attached and growing across the bottom.

“When you were born, your mother told me, a hush fell over the delivery room. A great red birthmark covered the left side of your face. No one knew what to say so you cried to fill the vacuum. I always admired you for that; that you cried to fill whatever vacuum you found. I began to manufacture vacuums just to enable you to deploy your talent. The birthmark faded by the time you were six, and had gone completely by the time we met, but your fascination with the empty, and its cure, remained.”

            He always loved seeing me in despair, as if that inhibited him to love. He went back and fourth like the ocean that cover the shore. The last time I could remember seeing his face… That look he gave me was so cold. The wind rolled down the mountain brushing through my hair, sending a cold chill down my spine. It helped me to forget about him, for just a single moment. I can’t bring myself to walk back inside. Knowing how his procrastination tore down our beautiful home. If he would have just thought about, how I felt for once, maybe I would have never left. And well, that was a lie. I wanted to… No I needed to leave. Coming back was the last thing on my mind. I remembered him writing me later.

  “Dear Esther. The gulls do not land here anymore; I’ve noticed that this year they seem to have shunned this place. Perhaps it’s the depletion of the fishing stock driving them away. Perhaps it’s me. When we first landed here, Donnelly wrote that the herds were sickly and their shepherds the lowest of the miserable classes that populate these Caribbean islands. Three hundred years later, even they have departed.”

I felt a surge of relief when I first read that he felt as though creatures were leaving the island to get away from him. Now I’m filled with regret. Forty years later after leaving the Island, to only return to empty memories and a pang nauseating feeling sunken in my gut.

The large grass plains and wild flower beds behind our home, are so breath taking, in weather like this. The sun behind dark conjuring clouds, so pristine, so… beautiful. It’s strange how something to magnificent could turn into something so violent in a matter of moments. And that’s just who he was. He didn’t start that way, they never do. I could still remember the last letter he sent me… even now.

“Dear Esther. This will be my last letter. Do they pile up even now on the doormat of our empty house? Why do I still post them home to you? Perhaps I can imagine myself picking them up on the return I will not make, to find you waiting with daytime television and all its comforts. They must form a pile four feet high now, my own little ziggurat; a megalith of foolscap and manila. They will fossilize over the centuries to follow; an uneasy time capsule from a lost island. Post marked Oban; it must have been sent during the final ascent.”

I feel as though by leaving this island, I made him madder. He wrote to me even on his death bed. That crazy… crazy man. I pulled out the last letter he sent me. It crinkled as I lifted it from my pocket. When studying the words, I began to fill that empty vacuum once more, as if… for the last time… over him.