Chapter 47 #2
Our laughter echoes until it sputters out, and I’m no longer in the field with cheeks sore from giggling. I’m in a cozy room I recognize. One that smells like yummy things and makes me feel safe, but it looks strange from down here, where I’m huddled in the corner under the eating table.
I make a sound, feel something wet slide down my cheek, but the little boy puts his hand over my mouth and holds me tighter.
“Shh. It’s okay,” he whispers in my ear. “I’ll look after you. Always.”
But I don’t think it’s okay.
There are lots of strange people in the room. I can see their dirty boots from under the tablecloth—can hear their mean voices.
They’re making my heart scared.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now please, get out of my home and leave me to finish my meal in peace!”
Mommy.
Why is her voice mad?
“There are three meals on the dining table ... Search the room! ”
Feet move, heavy things go sliding across the floor, bits of paper land everywhere, and someone steps on the picture I was painting for the boy holding me tight.
A hand drops down and picks it up.
Paper rips, and I feel the sound somewhere in my chest.
The boy slides me against the wall, then puts a finger to his lips for me to be quiet. He’s holding something sharp, and I think he might be scared like me because his hand is shaking.
I reach for him.
He turns away at the same time the table flips, making me cry out.
There are people everywhere, but the ones I know are in the corner crying.
I’ve only ever seen them happy.
Other people are dressed in gray, and they have strange marks on their foreheads. They’re looking at me with angry eyes that make me want to hide again, but there’s nowhere else to go.
No.
No more.
I’ve seen these people on my wall ... In pieces in my nightmares. I know what’s coming, and I don’t want to watch them get feasted on.
But my subconscious is strong, and I’m weak ... dying.
It holds my eyes open and forces me to look.
The scary, angry people step closer, yelling things I don’t understand, pointing fingers.
One of them has my mommy. Sparkly tears are dripping down her cheeks. Maybe she needs a cuddle?
“Mommy ...”
Her face crumbles.
A big man walks toward me and the boy. His head is shiny, and there’s one of those wood-cutting things hanging from his hand. I think it’s called an axe.
Why is there red stuff dripping from it?
“No! Please! I beg you, they’re only kids!”
I don’t like the way Mommy’s voice sounds. It makes my eyes sting.
The man looks at the boy. “Get out of the way, kid. Mercy is not preserved for those who stand against the stones.”
The boy runs forward with the sharp thing held above his head. His scream stands out the most ... until Mommy makes a louder sound at the same time the axe is swung.
He stops.
I push to my feet, try to follow ...
Watch him fall.
Watch the light leave his eyes.
I take one, two, three whole steps, then slip on the sparkly stuff spilling from the hurt in his chest. But he doesn’t catch me. The tickles never come.
Mommy keeps screaming, louder and louder.
I crawl through the wet, curl up beside him, and wait for him to blink ...
Smile ...
Laugh ...
For him to stop looking at the wall and tell me everything’s going to be okay.
Big, strange hands pull me away from his warmth, and my nightgown is ripped, the top of my arm poked over and over.
I kick, wriggle, scream —louder than Mommy and the squealing sounds in my ears.
Put me down ...
Put me down!
But the words don’t sound the same as they do in my head because I never needed to speak. He did it for me; somehow knew what I wanted to say.
And now he’s broken on the floor in a puddle of wet.
I feel something inside me growing from the place where my heart is, and it hurts ...
It hurts so much I think I’m going to crack open and everyone will see my insides.
I think I’m broken, too.
The memory shifts—an ocean pulling back into itself before another wave strikes.
The roof caves, someone screams, and all I can smell is pain; burnt pain that makes me want to spew.
I’m watching from the outside, no longer in my child-body.
Nothing is.
It’s all escaping through the splits in my skin and my eyes and my ears and my wide-open mouth—an oily blackness spilling out in vicious, torrential spears.
Burning.
Silencing.
Seeping through the ground and melding with the dirt.
The floor is gone, so are the walls. The roof is in smoldering piles, making the night glow red.
I’m in the center of it all, as if the world is rushing away from my body contorted in the dirt.
My clothes are burnt.
I can’t see my mommy anymore.
All I can see are bits of bodies everywhere, big and small, scattered all over the ground as if they were flung like rag dolls that fell apart mid-flight. Some have upside down v’s carved into their foreheads, others are the people who changed my bed sheets and cooked me yummy food.
The power did not pick and choose. It just ... did.
It killed.
The thought jerks me into consciousness.
I kick forward, my body now at a slight angle that allows me to slide further through the hole. A jagged piece of rock drags a line of fire from my hip to my knee as I wiggle out, freeing myself from the chewing jaws of stone.
Bubbles pour from my mouth, racing me to freedom.
I explode through the surface—choking, spluttering, heaving breath into my starved lungs. Breath that tries, and fails to temper the storm lashing my conscience.
Wading to the edge, I crawl out on hands and knees, drawing life into myself while grating layers of skin from my shins.
I barely feel the sting.
Barely notice the squealing bathers dashing from the pools, snatching their clothes, and running up the stairs as if they see the truth in my eyes.
See me for what I really am.
I make it almost to the wall before I vomit, the spill of water and bile having nothing to do with my almost drowning and everything to do with my sudden wave of vertigo from the fall.
Because I’m no longer standing on the edge of that chasm deep in the folds of my subconscious. I’m down in the guts of it, trying to claw my way out with desperate, bloody fingers.
Trying to escape the slew of ebony roots coiled in a sizzling slumber—the pile larger than life itself.
An oily blackness spilling out in vicious, torrential spears.
Burning.
Silencing.
I vomit again, my body repelling the septic revelation it’s being forced to swallow ...
It was me.