Double Crossed

Barbie Dolls In My Bed

[Volant’s POV]

I wake up in front of the dying fire, the slightly warm sand beneath me. The scent of vanilla fills my nose and I slowly open my eyes, squinting at the bright sunlight. I am met with the sight of a beautiful girl, my arm is slung around Erin’s waist and her vanilla scented hair falls in front of her face. I move to brush it out of her eyes but before I can, I feel a force pulling at me.

The trees, sand and crisp water surrounding me stretches and blends together as I’m pulled farther and farther away from our make-shift camp site. The faster the scenery flies past me the faster my eyes dart around looking for anything that makes sense and the faster my heart beats in my chest. My fists ball at my sides as I franticly look around, the yellow of the sand, blue of the water and dark green of the trees merging together to look like some expensive abstract painting. Only it’s not so breath taking when it’s all you can see for miles.

The pulling feeling I felt when I was first dragged into this comes back, only it’s somehow in reverse, pulling me in instead of pulling me away. It’s over as fast as it started. All of a sudden I’m standing in the middle of a forest, a body lying in the distance, unnaturally still.

I try to keep my composure, to do as I was taught, but my resolve is quickly fading. I’d recognize her long brown hair anywhere. Only something’s different. I immediately start to run, anxious to get closer to her, to my sister. I’m running as fast as I can, sprinting towards the body in front of me. Although the faster I run, it seems as if the trees around me move in the opposite direction, stretching the distance between me and my sister, keeping me in the same place.

Fear spreads through my body, and the helplessness I felt on that dreadful day returns with a force akin to being run over by a semi-truck. It’s like her death is happening all over again. The uncontrollable terror and realization that the person lying in front of you is never coming back. The agonizing truth that this wonderful person you know is lying dead in your arms, pale and lifeless. There is a slight blue tint to her skin from the loss of blood. It bears a startling contrast to the once lush and full colour of her skin.

Now it’s happening all over again and I still can’t do anything about it.

I try once again to sprint towards my sister, but the ground in front of me stretches again, leaving me the same distance away from her. In a moment of pure frustration and agony I fall to my knees. I am forced by some unknown power to watch as the pool of blood around her grows and her skin quickly turns a richer shade of blue with every passing moment. Unable to look at the sight any longer, I squeeze my eyes shut and look toward the floor, my hands going up to pull at my hair. I don’t even notice the tears flowing down my face until I feel drops of water on my arms.

The ground under my feet suddenly begins to move and when I look up I find myself kneeling in front of my sister’s body. Her face is buried in the grass and the blood is covering my knees. I can’t help but notice the leg that was shot, is missing. It’s like it was just roughly ripped off, leaving the bone completely exposed. My gut starts to churn and I look away, only to find my hands covered in fresh, gooey blood. Her blood. That’s all it takes. The next thing I know I’m vomiting, emptying my stomach’s contents onto the floor.

All I want right now is for this to be over, for the nightmare to end, but it can’t. No matter how it happened, it happened. My sister is dead and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that. I don’t know how long I stay here, kneeling in my sister’s blood while vomiting all over the grass. When I do look up, however, I am immediately confused and I start to panic.

Her body is gone.

I get to my feet and anxiously look around, my heart beat increasing, and with every frantic beat, I feel my heart break all over again. I look everywhere, there is no sign her body was here at all. No blood on the ground or on my knees, no body, not even a flatten patch of grass where she was lying. The only thing that proves she was there is the blood still covering my hands as a constant, gruesome reminder. One I can never wash away.