Blood and Picket Fences

Tampons: Karoline chapter 8

boom, boom, boom. She could feel her heartbeat pounding in her head. Her ears felt stuffed with cotton and her mouth was drier than the desert. She had to pee so bad it hurt and her stomach twisted in knots. For the longest time she just laid there though, staring up wordlessly at Grayson who was hovering over her with that fretting look on his face like the world was ending or something.

Or something... The words repeating on loop in her headache riddled mind.

They're dead. Everyone is dead.

She felt the panic rise in the back of her throat as she felt hopelessness creep into her heart. She couldn't breathe the memories of the day before suffocating her like a wet rag over her face. It was morning now, her frantic eyes catching the rising sun coming in from the large picture window. She swallowed back a cry her throat sandpaper dry chest burning with the realization that she had stopped breathing. She'd stopped breathing. Her chest deflated like a sad balloon after a kid's birthday party.

She thought of her last birthday party, in her kitchen a mint chocolate chip ice cream cake in front of her, her family and the Kesslers surrounding the island counter where she sat perched on the copper barstool. Like a polaroid snapshot in her mind, painful and clear. She would never have another birthday like that she knew with certainty. Her family was dead. She may never have a birthday again, she realized swallowing back bile. For all she knew today could be the day she died.

She closed her eyes tears welling up in the corners. Her breath came out in rasps as she shook.

A warm hand on her cheek the only thing to pull her out of her stupor. She pressed into it letting out a heavy sigh, it was Gray, the pinched expression on his face clouded with worry.

"Kara, can I get you something?" He pleaded.

"W-water," she groaned her voice scratchy. Gray helped her sit up his movements careful, gentle even, his arm making her skin warm where he lingered. She nodded at him, she could have sat up on her own, but part of her didn't want to. Even though she felt horrible and seriously had to pee, she had wanted to curl into a ball and close off from the world. To disappear into the blankets and clean lavender sheets and never come back out again.

It wasn't practical though so she took the water instead. Swishing a mouthful around as the acidic taste came back. She'd vomited and not brushed her teeth.

She swallowed the mouthful hard with the realization wanting to gag. She coughed a little and both men looked at her in concern. "I'm fine," she groaned, handing back the water before clutching her head. The coughing brought the thumping back.

She pulled back the sheets and pulled herself to the edge of the couch bed, her back aching a little bit as she rolled her shoulders hearing a defined crack, she felt bruised all over and realized painfully she probably was. Her fall down the uncarpeted stairs at her house had been violent. So had what you'd seen after that. Stop that!

She scolded herself harshly cursing in her head something fierce in German before pushing her bare feet into the tan carpet floor.

It felt plush beneath her toes. She squished them as she shakily pushed herself up, her head becoming dizzy and she almost plopped back down but caught herself at the last minute. She felt like a foal walking for the first time.

"Where are you going?" Benzion asked his usual calm demeanor gone without a trace. The man before her not looking his young 40 that he had the day before. This man looked old, worry lines creasing his forehead, his lips pinched together in a jutting frown. She watched his shoulders itch up, and she had to do a double take. He looked so much like Gray that it was startling. A much much older Gray but it was clear that his anxiety sat in the same way. The bunching of nerves in his torso the twisting of the features on his face. She wondered what her own face looked like.