KILL ME SOFTLY

1

I stared into the dark and it stared back.

•

It was silent. Like the lack of noise was mocking all the death I'd laid my eyes upon. So silent despite the sound of water dripping into a puddle on the ground somewhere near me, somewhere just close enough that droplet would hit my forehead just above my right brow.

I wondered if I was still in the alley. If I'd died there. If I'd bled out, and become nothing next to the other bodies. Next to Rebecca .

But the pain that echoed through me like a virus was like a sharp reminder that I'd have to still Be alive. Because the after part of death wasn't supposed to Hurt like this. This much.

I was shaking, I could feel my body surging and my chest rising fast despite how breathless and choked I felt.

The goosebumps on my skin, and the thudding heartbeat in my chest and The ache in my body that prevented me from even attempting to move.

I hadn't opened my eyes, but I could. But I wasn't ready to look into the darkness that I knew would surround me. Wasn't ready to wonder if any of the monsters I'd met would be lurking in it.

I was a coward. I knew it. My friend was murdered and all I did was stare and watch the blood leave her head. And even with her death, I still only seem to care presently about myself and whether I'd join her or not.

I wanted to pretend that this was a high, a powder drunken illusion id slipped into. Like the drug Rebecca lined for me was made bad or laced, and it'd fucked with my head and id gone and lost myself. I wanted to pretend That none of this was real.

But all at once I knew better than to believe that so I found my eyes had opened as I was staring at a ceiling.

A ceiling littered in cracks and bullet holes from ricochet shells, cement spattered with blood made from heavy beating and lashes done hard enough to imprint its history on the fucking ceiling.

I wanted to scream, I tried to, but I opened my mouth and my throat burned. It burned and I saw stars until I surged my head to the side and emptied my stomach onto the ground next to my head.

Every forced heave making waves of magma ripple through every nerve in my body.

I felt as if someone was watching me, like a million eyes had planted themselves on ever patch of my skin.

I forced myself to roll to my side, screaming out in pain as I did so. Enough pain that my lip trembled and tears fell into my mouth. I was gasping for air as if moments ago I was drowning.

"What the fuck." I whispered with razors slicing my throat.

If this wasn't hell than it had to be something worse.
I no longer needed to know what hell was like, not now, not with the feeling as if the darkness was watching me and I couldn't do a single thing about it.

I was a coward, yet I brought my hand In front of my face. Straining my eyes to see it, despite the dark that pinched my skin and slithered it's way up my senses'

My hand was still etched in dried blood, my own. And In a instant I lowered my shaking hand to my abdomen, to find that every remnants of my clothing had been striped away and I laid bare save for the rough bandage wound tight under the cup of my breast and over my ribs.

It's splintered fabric covering hard bumps I'd assume where staples that held my wound together made bile rise in my throat once more. As the though that only bent metal hooks were what kept me from spilling my life over the same fucking floor as god know how many others.