Collide✔️

t h i r t y f o u r

When I wake, there is something deep within me that assures it will be better to rest. To spite it, I fight against the leaden weight of my eyelids and force them open, curling the soft material I lay on into fists of concentration. I cannot lift my head, for it forces only the blackness of unconscious to further ebb into my field of vision, so I remain still, rigor mortis bar the flutter of my eyes as they crack only slightly, momentarily stripping light across my sights.

Eventually, the sharpness of light is manageable, and my eyes can remain open without watering profusely, setting forth a translucent barrier to dilute the brightness of this room I am in. A spotlight blares down from directly above me, one of dozens in the white ceiling. Tentatively, I lift a tremoring hand, carding it through my tangled hair, thick with sweat and wrapped with the most pungent scent – one that comes with not having been washed for the length of a week or so.

It is easy for my heavy head to fall to the side, stretching my vision as I try to make understanding of where I am, what has happened. The room is not mine; plain white, from floor to ceiling, with furniture as blanche to match. There is a glass of water to the side of me, and when my eyes lock to the tepid liquid, it is then I realise to the intensity which my throat is dry, horribly so, scratching as though I have swallowed a dozen razor blades, leaving me in a fear that I will not even be able to speak again.

My hand reaches out, and just as my fingertips caress the glass, they freeze in synchrony with the mis-beat of my heart. They move towards me, almost as if gliding through water as I turn the hand thoughtfully, inspecting with curious eyes. I am dirty, but I expect that I was dirtier – cleaned, but in a desultory manner – leaving flakes of vermillion beneath my nails, locked deep into the fine crevasse of my palms. It takes my free hand picking at the stains, the free scarlet fragments drifting to my abdomen –

- Kian.

My body darts upright, flooded with an onset of vertigo as nausea claws at my already broken throat. I whimper, suddenly entirely aware of what my mind had opted to ignore. Him, embedded with a bullet that left rivers of red streaming from his stomach, my hands proving redundant sutures to the wound. His still body, skin having paled to a ghostly alabaster that stood harshly against the thick darkness of the blood that dressed him. They took him away – he let go of my hand.

The memory stains, there when my eyes are open and painted against the black of my eyelids when I force them shut, daring to mock me for opening the vault of my mind that had been locked for my own protection. A scream rips through me, unintelligible as my voice cracks and shatters, a noise leaving me that hardly displays the distress that has overcome me. Pure agony. The breathlessness that comes from the withering of my heart. Why did he let go of my hand? I told him not to.

Both hands find my scalp, clutching at my hair with such intensity, a sharp sting prickles the length of my head, stretching painful fingers to wrap around the nape of my neck. I scream again, for that is all I can fathom to do. This one, as though the willingness of my body matters no longer, tears through me with such ferocity, it is as though I am being tortured. That I am – he let go of my hand.

My body curls, falling into the softness of the mattress that is no longer comfortable, stilling clinging to my hair with my fingered coiled among to tendrils, a simple pain to remind me of how this anguish is real. How I am not dreaming. My screams morph into inconsolable tears – sobs that escape me in spite of my dehydration. Coating my cheeks with saline, drenching the duvet I have buried my face in, though it hardly muffles the blood-curdling noise of my cries. To such a volume, I do not even hear the door open. It is only the hand that rests against my back, stunting the rhythmic rocking of my body that manages to borrow my attention.