A Blue Dress: Short Story She stands silently, looking down and to the side. Her dress flutters with the wind but she barely notices as she remembers the day she last stood at that beach, all those years ago. The day of the accident. FLASHBACK: "Daddy!" The child shouts across the water. Her father lifts his head and treads the water, listening. "Help me swim!" "You don't need my help anymore. You know how to swim." Says the father with a sigh and a playful, yet tired, twinkle in his eye. "But daddy, I'm scared!" "Of what, child?" "Of drowning!" "What makes you think you'll drown?" "Daddy, please?" "You can do it yourself!" And so, the little girl in her bright blue bathing suit slowly entered the water, concentrating intensely on what lay in the water. A moment later, she looked up, and her father had disappeared. "Daddy!" The little girl called, taking another step forward along the rock. There was no answer. "Daddy, where are you?!" Another step. Slipping slowly, unnoticeably. That is, until she hit the edge and slipped. Down, down, down she fell, a shortage of air in her lungs as she screamed before she hit the water. Forgetting herself for a moment, she continued to scream as she went deeper and deeper into the hostile waves. Her eyes are open and stinging, but she catches a glimpse of her father, swimming peaceably toward her sinking form. She thrashes around, but her father holds her still, and swims toward the surface. She continues to thrash as she gets closer, and an unlucky kick hits her father in the face. He blacks out and sinks, his grip on the girl slipping as she kicks her way toward the surface. She dives back under, forgetting her fear in search for her father. Deeper and deeper she dives until she finally catches a glimpse. She makes a grab at his arms a number of times before finally taking a grip, and she pulls him toward the surface. Weighed down by the man, she doesn't get far before she lets go to catch a breath. Again and again she dives, but to no avail. She can never pull him far enough. After a while she gives up and swims back onto the rock. "Daddy!" She sobs repeatedly, until her mother sees her. But by then, it's too late to save her father. And then, another story plays through the woman's mind as she stares at the place she fell, and where she caused her father's death. FLASHBACK: "No, mummy! I don't wanna go!" Screams an angry child in a navy blue dress. "But you have to say goodbye to your daddy!" "I already did. He said to stop crying, that it wasn't to be changed. He told me to tell you that he was sorry that he had to go, and that you'd be alright." The mother is shocked for a time, but it wasn't long before she spoke again. "Why don't you want to go?" "Daddy told me not to. He said you shouldn't go, either." The mother again appears shocked. Tears in her eyes, she walks over to the house next door, hand in hand with her daughter. An elderly couple answer the door, smiling pleasantly. The child's mother explains that the child will not attend the funeral, and the couple agree to babysit as the mother attends. The child sobs that her mother should not go, but the elderly neighbours comfort her and she soon forgets her fears. The child passes the following stormy night in the house of her neighbours, and she never sees her mother again. And the last story plays in her mind, earlier than the others. FLASHBACK: A child stands at the foot of the stairs. She cannot sleep for the nightmares of her father drowning. But the child makes no sound, for the scene in front of her is too fascinating and sweet. Her father zips up her mother's blue dress, and he turns her toward him. "You look just like you did the day I fell in love with you." He says. "Older, though." "You look as though hardly a day has passed." He turns and presses a button on the radio on the cabinet behind him. A slow song begins to play. "May I have this dance?" He asks, extending a hand toward the child's mother. "Of course you may." She answers with a smile. The child creeps back up the stairs and into her bed. She does not disturb her parents that night. And there was that child, grown now in her mother's image, wearing the dress her mother wore the night before her father died, standing on the rocks that saw her father's death. Her mother's dress flutters with the wind, as does the hair she inherited from her father, but neither parent stands beside their daughter as she wallows in her sadness at their memory. A gun glints in her left hand, her dominant hand like her mother before her. There are no tears in her eyes but her misery and suffering is unmistakable. "I could've stopped it." She whispers, though no one else stands on that beach. "I knew. I knew what was going to happen and I did nothing! All because of this stupid dress!" Tears form in her eyes as she looks again at her surroundings. As she sobs she collapses onto her knees, cutting them on the rock, but she doesn't mind. If you looked, you'd see scars and open wounds on both her wrists, travelling right up her arms, but there was no one on that beach to look, and no one to stop her. She holds the gun to her temple. With a last-minute decision, she jumps and treads water as she shoots herself in the head. And that was the last time anyone wore the blue dress.