Love You From The Scalp To The Ends

Chapter Seven

"HARRIET?" A second screech pounds on Harriet's ear drums. As her eyes follow the plea, she has no recollection of how to behave.

Harriet's eyes gaze upon the figure she's been yearning for during long days. Across the raw scalp, is Fleah. She's shaking, forcing her wobbling legs to drag behind just to approach the other louse. 

After dragging for 30 seconds, Fleah came to a halt. Harriet, from the stretched distance between the two, can practically feel the agony. Harriet sprints as she sees Fleah begin to sway side to side, foreseeing a collapse.

Harriet prepares to catch the louse, but as she comes face to face with Fleah, she's stable. Fleah longs for a tight embrace to seal the reunion between the lice, but Harriet is frozen. She's too scared to touch her. All of the tension of Fleah's status to Harriet has been relieved back down to her fears. She's scared that if she touches Fleah, she'll know. So, they just stand.

"You're alive," Fleah whispers, a voice crack erupting mid-short sentence.

"You are too."

Suddenly, Fleah begins wailing and Harriet feels obligated to hold her. They crash into the ground as Harriet tries to translate Fleah's sobs into words.

"I just want my mom," Fleah painfully cries. "I want to be newly hatched, I want her to hold me, I want her to whisper careful lullabies, I want to be with her now."

Time was paralyzing. Harriet and Fleah sat in a bloodbath, as everyone around them was moving. Fleah cried all of the tears left for her entire lifetime. Harriet wanted to cry as well, watching her old blood sisters be severed to death wasn't deserving of her postponed reaction but selfishly, Harriet just felt relief that it wasn't Fleah. 

After a period of non-verbal suffering, Fleah was the first to speak again.

"I saw," she paused to take a shaky breath. "I saw Lila O'Hare die." 

Harriet felt a continuous pang in her chest. She knew this conversation would come, she dreaded it. But she sat in silence, clinging onto Fleah's heart-scraping words.

"She was in my first division. My first friend. I don't know why we stopped talking, I'll beat myself up for it when I can feel anger again." Fleah doesn't take a look at the louse holding her, she looks ahead. Harriet knows that Fleah felt blinded by the terror. "She died next to me. I knelt next to her, holding her as she tried to mumble her last words to me. The blood in her mouth kept her from speaking. I knew I should've done something. Fuck, I even know first aid! But I panicked and just let her die! I fucking killed her Harriet, I'm a killer!"

By then, the cradled louse went back to hysterical wails. Harriet wanted to say something, but her words couldn't even build up in her mind, nothing would help. She resorted to rocking Fleah and mumbling soft reassurances.

"Why the fuck are we obligated to live this lifestyle? Why are we not given a chance to survive? All she wanted was to live. Our only duty is to lay eggs and die. Maybe we could live to watch our children die if we're so lucky."

And Harriet still didn't know what to do.