Chocolates and Flowers

When Love Falls

Boom.

 

The ground almost seemed to shake. The young woman was motionless for just a few seconds, her breaths returning to her slowly, which was impossible. She had to have fallen at least four stories, maybe more. People started to gather around, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. Her vision was still blurry, and she tried to remember how she got there. There had been a girl, angry and crying, there was shouting, and then she was falling.

 

Her head was pounding with pain and she reached up to touch it, the wounded area burning where her fingers barely even brushed. She brought her hand back and saw a bit of red, realizing that it was blood.

 

Must have hit my head, she thought, but how did I survive that fall?

 

Now all of her other senses started to right themselves: the heavy iron scent of blood, her vision becoming more clear. After a dazed moment, she was finally able to hear a man ask her frantically if she was okay. She managed to choke out a yes and the man's panicked eyes shifted to the ground beneath her.

 

It was then that she realized she was not on the concrete, but on top of someone. She found it impossible to move, she was frozen where she lay; she would have moved but fear had immobilized her. What if she had landed on someone? The man helped her up and she leaned on him to support herself. She did not want to look at who she fell on, not yet. Her stomach twisted horribly.

 

Everyone kept shouting, asking if he was okay.  They didn't mean the man at the fallen girl's side, the one who was helping her stand. He was okay. So it, the thing she had landed on, was a he. A person. A man's voice kept shouting to the crowd to back up and to give room. Still confused as to what had happened, the young woman felt questions start to form at the back of her throat. Or maybe it was bile. The man supporting her turned her around to see a young man on the ground where she had just fallen.

 

Blood covered him, contrasting sharply, garishly, with his open eyes, which were such a beautiful, brilliant blue color. She had only said that about one person. The young man laying motionless on the sidewalk was the boy she loved. Using every last ounce of strength left in her weakened and confused body, she shoved the man supporting her away and fell to her knees in the ever growing puddle of his blood. Her fingers reached out to caress his cheek, feeling the scruff on his jawbone that had tickled her cheek when they would lie together.

 

Her vision blurred again and she didn't stop the tears that fell freely down her cheeks. And she broke.

 

She started to beg him to wake up, shook his shoulders, saying it's not funny, stop it, please, just wake up. But he didn't, he just laid there, unresponsive. A hand landed on her shoulder, a woman's voice told her it was no use, that the boy was dead. The girl told her to shut up, he was just faking it to joke with her. She was bawling, screaming; her heart felt like it was dying with him, being torn mercilessly from her chest. Two pairs of arms pulled her away from his carcass and still, she screamed his name, begging him to wake up.

 

Her vision began to fade again, her brain starting to shut down from an overload of stress, physical injury, and shock. Just as she was slipping under, falling limp against whoever now held her, she breathed his name one last time, "Cas..."