𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐎𝐃𝐀𝐘 . | 𝑅. 𝐺𝑅𝐼𝑀𝐸𝑆

▪︎SWIMMIMG IN HOLY WATER▪︎

01

IT BURNS. It burns every scared and cursed inch of my appalling body.
It's running down my throat and flowing into my belly and combusting into my veins, spreading and overtaking. Like a firey acid was shoved through my lips and gulped down in a fucked up confused thirst for feeling. Working its way from the inside to kill me.

I'm choking on it. I'm fighting with every small muscle, bone, ligimit, and tendon for it to stop. For someone to save me. Extinguish the flames, rebuke the evil spirits. My body is thrashing, re-opening stitches. Allowing bruises to stay and make home on my landmap of hurt.

I can feel it, hot and sour in my ears, dripping, burning, boiling.
The laughter. My screams. The grunts. The single gunshot.

And I'm sure, unlike I've ever been sure of anything else before, that I am dying.

That this is my final moment before I take up residency in hell.

And I'm readying myself for the dread. I'm trying, battling with my trauma for the heat in my ears to be static. The acid in my veins to be my new blood stream. The breaking and bruising of my body to be... anything besides pain.

When a soft, cold hand curls around my knee and I'm swimming in holy water.

My eyes, surprisingly not bleeding with acid, fly open as I sit upward, latching onto the hand on my knee. 'Save me. Stay, don't let me drink up the boiling poison again.'

"I'm here." Glenn says, sounding breathless as he adjust his hand on my knee to grasp my hand, allowing me to squeeze to the point of his pale skin fading purple.
"We're all here."

I steady myself in the depths of his brown, brown, eyes.
His hand in mine. Real.

Real.
He is real.
I am real.
And though, the pain was real. It wasn't as real as the physical essence of him here with me.

He doesn't look away from me as he continues to asure me that I'm awake now. That the nightmare was just the fucked up space of my mind. That I am physically here. That I am awake and alive. The acid isn't drowning me.

Yet.

I accept it, nodding before letting his hand go.

"Thank you. I'm sorry." They always go hand in hand. Odd, no? Always sorry, always paying forgiveness.

He gives me the classic Glenn Rhee smile that blows out any remaining embers in my mind space and cools my skin with it's  velocity.

"Don't be sorry." He said, like he always does. And I just smiled at him sheepishly, like I always do.

He gives my knee a assuring pat before focusing his attention on the paper and pen on his lap.

I face forward, assessing my surrounding, clearing the fog that is my head. Breathing in the clean air and feeling the breeze. Another reminder that I am infact, not, dead.

As much as my dark, malevolent nightmares try to deceive me into thinking I am dying or already burning for eternity because of my wicked sins.
Either or, they both feel like hell.

But they are just dreams.

No, they are memories.
But whenever I think of that, I feel the familiar burning, soul crushing acid that is only supposed to exist in my corrupted battered head rise up in my throat.

So, I lie to myself and everyone else that they are just nightmares.

Andrea and Jackie are sitting infront of me, checking things off list as T-Dog and Morales bring more scavengenged goods over in arm fulls.
They check off the beans and the ointments and pills as if I'm not aware they were just watching my body thrash around like some kind of demon possession just moments earlier.

They look up and smile kindly as if they weren't just terrified of the sight of my frail body against cement floors. They smile and I smile back because I prefer their acting over their genuinelity. Because their genuinelity is fear.

I wince as I very slowly rise to my feet.
My ribs throb and my back aches as if it was kicked repeatedly.

I'm killing myself. Everytime I close my eyes, I'm slowly beating my body down to shambles. Slowly marching down the path to my final breath.
It's like this every time I sleep.
Everytime I try to escape the terrors of the real world, I just fall into the terrors of my mind.

Lucky girl, I am.

T-Dog sets a bag full of cans infront of Andrea as I stretch my arms above my head and he sneakily pokes me in the center of my belly.

I don't wince like my muscles tell me to. Instead I smile like my soul tells me to.

I laugh, pushing his hand away, smiling as he turns in his heel, smiling as he marches back to scavenge for goods.

And as soon as his back is turned, I frown.
He worries about me. He said I remind him of his baby sister before everything fell apart.
He always gives me kindness and care and respect. And I always feel bad because I know he feels how bad I hurt.

I try to hide it from him, but he knows. And he always puts himself before me. Which I admire, but hate all the same.

I walk over to the wall that is nothing but a large window, looking down at the streets on Atlanta.

I close my eyes, leaning my forehead which his gleaming with a layer of sweat and burning up, against the cool glass.

I massage my sore muscles, and soak up the cool touch of the glass.
I unbutton my breezy white button up, wrapping it around my waist and adjusting the straps of my pale pink tank top, enjoying the cool air blessing my skin in a very much invited hug.

With my body relaxing and my nightmares receding to the darkest part of my mind and the sweetness of laughter from my friends behind, I allow myself to believe everything will be okay. That everything is okay.

That I am alive.

That I am safe.

That I am cared for.

That I am healing.

And that everything really, honestly and truthfully is going to be okay.

And as soon as a gunshot echos through my ears, my eyes opening up and the sight of a man crawling under the tank in the street all becomes a reality before my own eyes: I realize... I've never been more wrong.