Cathartic Laugh

Social pressures, impulsivity, cognitive dissonance, lack of self-awareness… These are simply a few of the many reasons why humans act in such a contradicting manner. Selfishness too, is one of those.

Avisha, or Ava, as what people liked to call her, may have just acted out of selfishness as well.

A few days ago when they held their grandma's funeral. She didn't cry. She wasn't sad or anything like that. In fact, she was even smiling, grinning ear to ear. Anyone who saw her might say she had no respect for the dead or something.

But what could she possibly do when her lips were moving on their own? What could she possibly do when she truly was happy when her grandma died?

As she watched the corpse lying peacefully in the casket, all Avisha could hear was the conversation from a long time ago.

She was only around fourteen, a bit naive, still innocent, and didn't know any better, when she met a guy. They liked each other although they never really got to confess their feelings until the very end.

Sometimes, the guy would accompany her on her way from school. They would eat lunch together, skipped class from time to time. He taught her guitar, and she taught him arnis. Years passed by like this. A memory so beautiful and pure her grandma had forever tarnished.

It was over three years ago when her world collapsed.

Lying on the floor was the corpse of the only guy she had ever truly loved.

'WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?' she repeatedly asked. Her chest felt tight. She could feel it constricting, threatening to explode. Her throat was becoming dry and tears dripped from her eyes nonstop.

She couldn't believe what she was seeing. No. She wanted to deny it.

"Why?" she managed to squeeze out a word from her throat as she slowly approached the corpse. He still had that annoying mug on.

"Monsters like him have no place in our world," was what her grandma told her.

She had forgotten the rest of the conversation, but that was the very first day that she was able to use Blood Magic.

Her vision turned red. She could feel all the movement of her blood inside her body. Her heart was beating faster than ever before.

She didn't remember what she did that day but her grandma became bedridden only to end up dying in three years.

She had shut herself off starting that incident. She told not a single soul. Not even the siblings she trusted more than anyone else in the world.

All they knew was that she became a shut in from stress in college. That she temporarily quit school so Jean would finish first.

Nobody remembered him. She couldn't even recall his name nor his face. She asked around her friends in high school, her neighbors… But nobody remembered.

And that was when she stumbled upon a certain forum on the internet. The possibility of the other dimensions. It was said that if you go there, the people from the dimension you came from will forget about you, as though you didn't exist in the first place.

Ava was continuously researching this for three years to the point of obsession.

She also found out that if you stumble to a different dimension with someone else, and that someone somehow managed to return, that someone will have a vague recollection of you still. A memory so vague that no matter how hard they try to remember, they just couldn't seem to even scratch the surface. Just like an itch of a long amputated limb.

"Ah, it turns out I don't want to be forgotten after all."

Elian heard Ava muttering.

He still had goosebumps from earlier. He just couldn't get it out of his head. He looked beside him. To Richard. The poor guy was still shivering.

It was then that they heard someone laugh. It was Ava.

She had burst into uncontrollable laughter. It started off as a chuckle, a small giggle that escaped her lips, until it grew louder and more intense. 

Tears welled up in her eyes as she continued to laugh. But it wasn't a happy one. It sounded like a release, a cathartic escape from the weight of the decision she had just made. A decision that had left her heart heavy and her mind conflicted.

And when she was done laughing. She turned around to face Elian.

"I'd like to make a deal with you," she said to him.