𝕃𝕠𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝔽𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘 | Daryl Dixon

48 | ONE BULLET LEFT

Tick... Tick... Tick.

Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty seconds. Probably the millionth sixty she'd counted to, and still, she couldn't move. She couldn't open her eyes, couldn't speak, couldn't reach for the back of her hand to scratch her skin where the IV tape was making her itch, sending her insane.

It wasn't meant to be like this. She was supposed to slip away peacefully, yet here she was. Unwillingly grasping onto life, breathing through a mask that made an incessant white noise which grated her eardrums. Her head felt too heavy to lift off the flat pillow, in order to fix where her tangled hair was uncomfortably being tugged, trapped under her shoulder.

She wanted to scream, to cry, to tell somebody to switch it all off. To pull the plug, let her go. But no... she lay completely still, completely silent.

Tick... Tick... Tick.

She could still feel it all like it was still happening. The way the pills had scratched her throat when she downed them all at once. The way her stomach burned and cramped when she threw up, on the brink of passing out. The acidic taste of her vomit was still lingering on her tongue, an iron-like note to it. Blood.

When her eyes did finally open, she was met with a bright light. Too bright to handle. Completely white, the glow emanated through her eyelids when she squinted, attempting to sooth the ache in her forehead.

If she were religious, she might have thought the light to be an angel. And angel coming to get her, save her from her suffering, take her away to somewhere peaceful. After fifteen years of life, of loneliness and pain. Surely, she deserved the chance to float away.

But that dream died as quickly as it was born. A shadow appeared in the light, looming over her, making everything feel dark. She should be so lucky that the sun itself had switched off.

She was doomed to live. Cursed by the world that had already done her so wrong, to continue existing. Continue suffering while the people around her condemned her, cast her out like the runt of the litter, sending her out for the slaughter.

She vowed there and then staring up at the shadowed light, to walk the world as its people saw her. Not a person, but just matter. A shell of a girl existing on an Earth where she didn't belong, walking among the living, pretending to be like them. The walking dead.

And all the while, time just kept ticking onwards, leaving her behind.

Tick... Tick... Tick.

➳

Tori gasped awake, almost hitting her head on the roof of the rusty car she had spent the night hiding in. Lying across the uncomfortable, torn up back seats, her back was stiff, and if felt and sounded like every section of her spine had cracked when she stretched.

The ticking that had echoed in her head during her dream was replaced by a pounding on the dusty window of the car, as a lone walker clawed at the glass with its broken fingernails and limp hands, growling with a hungry glare in its yellow eyes.

Tori leaned back on her elbows and flipped the walker off with a blank stare, before huffing back, falling down onto the seats once again, staring at the torn car roof.