The Reason No One Talks About Georgia

They used to call her Reno. A pair of lips, pulling back Reh. And pushing together in an alluring pout, no. 

It was a soft word, Reh-no meaning 'beautiful'. Her only peace in the name was a bald headed woman, holding a blue loth to her naked chest, reaching out to her from the haze of her memories with a soft brown hand. 

Reno she'd whisper, and smile that warm smile of hers. An Reno would have to gulp back the knot in her throat. She knew what came after. 

Reno knew what happened before.

Flickering fluorescent lights. Greying white walls. Loud clang of metal. Ringing voices of people. Glaring flashlights.

So she became Georgia. When she was alone, when she had her all to herself, she was Georgia. 

Georgia was a bright girl. She was fun and happy. She ran through meadows and allowed them to weave ferns into her hair. Her hair were ringlets that fell over her forehead when she laughed, and when she cried, she bawled. She would stagger on the ground and fall to her ass, crying unabashedly. Freely.

Reno was nothing like Georgia. She travelled from cabin to cabin at night, legs tottering, clothes ripped. She had been thrown, used, hurt, pushed, but she could never bring herself to look anyone in the eye. 'Be angry' she told her fear, but trembled in the face of it. And so, after a point, she came to accept it as it is. She knew fear better than she knew herself. 'Be quiet and it will be over' she told it, and when it was, she hugged it and whispered to it words of comfort. 

Soon she was let go, like all the others. 'She's old enough to remember. If we leave her now, there is still a chance that she'd forget,' someone argued. 

So without much ado, Reno was gone. And Georgia was brighter than ever. 

She chirped and quipped with the sighing trees and hopped with the birds. She ate grasses and wild berries and she frolicked around in clear, cool lakes. She was burning bright, a candle of its own making, but it flickered once.

When she was deep in the forest, licking off plum juice from her arm, she saw something from the edge of her vision. A shadow moved. Her head snapped towards it, but there was nothing.

She looked at the ground to her own shadow, only to find it nowhere to be seen. Her heart lurched.

Reno, the lady whispered. Run.

But you're going away soon, Reno said. How could I ever leave you?

Reno should have run when she was told to. She should have disappeared to that hospital.

"Reno!" snapped Georgia. "Why are you here?"

Reno was in front of her, with her shadow, hugging herself.

She used to hug her fears.

Run, the woman said.

"Why don't I have a shadow?!" asked Georgia. "And how can I see you?"

Run, her dying mother urged. Lest you end up diseased too.

"You don't exist," Reno murmured to herself. "You don't. You don't."

"What are you talking about?!" Georgia screamed.

"You don't exist."

Run. Spend the rest of your life in the woods and learn to dance in the rain.

The daughter of the cancer patient is showing signs -of schizophrenia- should we let her go?

"I don't understand!" 

"You don't exist!" Reno blurted. The howling wind in her ears quieted down.

"Oh."

Reno looked up at her to apologise with teary eyes, but the forest was empty.