56. Charlie
Charlie
The night air slaps me in the face as soon as I jump out of a Jeep.
Why am I even running to begin with? I can barely keep my balance.
I’m tripping over my own feet. My shoes hit the pavement and my knees almost buckle beneath me, but I keep running anyway.
I don’t know where I’m going. I just know I need to find him.
Someone important. My heart is beating a million miles and hour, and there's this tortuous sensation ripping right through me. I’m covered in snot, slobber, and tears.
I can’t even see from the tears streaming down my face, but something inside me tells me I need to see his face, I need to tell him I didn’t mean to leave, that I didn’t want to.
But the parking lot is spinning. The streetlights stretch and bend, like blinding-white halos bleeding into the sky. My head is pounding so hard it feels like my skull might split open.
My vision blurs. A flicker of light, then darkness, then light again.
Each blackout feels longer than the last. I fall hard onto the pavement.
It’s just ringing in my ears, as my eyes flicker open.
My knees are throbbing, there are pebbles and rocks engrained in my arms leaving indents.
I’m trembling all over as I lift myself off the ground.
My feet scraping against rocks. I think I see a building ahead.
There’s music playing, people cheering in the distance.
This must be some sort of concert. When I blink, the building is gone.
I’ve turned the wrong way. The sound of the music fades behind me, replaced by the singing of crickets and the rustle of leaves.
I don’t realize it until I stop to catch my breath.
That building is really far away. Why am I all the way over here?
The glow of the streetlights are gone. I’m surrounded by trees.
There’s a row of dumpsters lined up against a chain-link fence, the air is thick with the sour stench of old beer, sweat, and trash.
My head throbs and I press my palm against the side of it, feeling how sticky my hair is, how wet my skin feels. My balance wobbles. Then I hear it, footsteps behind me. The clicking of heels, and a raging scream rips out of someone’s throat.
“You bitch!” It cuts through the air, resounding off of every tree in the distance. My stomach turns cold.
"You don’t deserve him,” the voice spits. “He belongs to me!”
I turn around slowly, the world tilting with me. My eyes strain through the dark, and then I see her. A blonde with messy and wild hair, her mascara streaked down her face. Her pupils are huge, her hands trembling and in one of them, glinting under the dim moonlight, is a crowbar.
My voice shakes. “What are you doing?”
She steps closer, teeth clenched, eyes wild. “You ruined everything!” she hisses. “He was supposed to be mine”
Before I can move, before I can even breathe, the crowbar swings through the air.
It’s a white-hot burst of pain at the side of my head.
Ringing fills my ears, and then there's something warm dripping down my face.
I use a hand to touch my skull and there's blood soaking my palms. The crowbar strikes down again.
Then there is nothing. Everything goes dark.
It slams into me so hard, it rips the air from my lungs. I jolt upright in the hospital bed, my chest heaving, and a scream tears out of me before I even know what I’m saying.
“She hit me!” My voice cracks. “She hit me! It was her!” I point at the blonde nurse with those fierce green eyes. I’m trembling all over as my index finger keeps its direction straight at her. “You tried to kill me!”
Hands grab at my arms. I thrash, kicking at the blanket tangled around my legs. My IV line yanks against my skin, burning, and the machines beside me start beeping out of rhythm.
“Get her away from me!” I scream, sobbing now, my throat raw. “It’s her! She has blonde hair! She hit me with a crowbar! She tried to kill me! Get her away! P-please!”
Two nurses rush in, their sneakers squeaking against the floor. One of them grabs my wrists while the other tries to keep me from falling off the bed. My pulse is pounding so fast it hurts.
“Calm down,” one of them say but I can hear the panic in her voice. “We need you to calm down.”
“I just came in here to check her vitals. That’s it.”
“You hit me!” I fight harder, my body shaking so bad I can barely see. “She’s here! She’s here, get her away from me!”
The room tilts. I catch flashes of blue scrubs, white walls, the flicker of the fluorescent lights that make everything too bright.
“She’s reliving something,” one nurse says over the noise. “If you don’t calm down we are going to sedate you again!”
“No! Don’t touch me! Please, don’t, I don’t want to sleep. Stop! Stop! I’ll stop! Please!” I hold up my palms, my lips curling under my bottom lip. The room goes quiet. The nurses freeze in place, and I just breathe in and out through my mouth so harshly that my tongue is dryer than cotton.
“Do you remember what happened to you?” one of the nurses asks, her mask moving with the words. “Do you know their name?”
“No...” I say with my eyes darting all over the room to make sure no one sneaks around the corner to jab me with a needle again. “I’m thirsty, can I have something to drink?”
“Yes, we can go get you some water. Just please stay in your bed,” the nurse with blonde hair says, turns a heel and leaves the room.
I spot her shaking her head, and I can feel myself becoming small.
They all must think I'm crazy, and maybe I am at this point.
I grasp the thin blanket I nearly kicked off the bed and pull it over my feet.
I just want to be able to sleep without the nightmares.
I just want pure blackness, and nothing else.