THE BADLANDS

I

I used to be the kind of person who could fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Granted I'd stay up late each night waiting for Dad to come home and by the time he did I was exhausted, but still. I had a positive relationship with sleep, the kind someone can only have when they haven't seen enough of life yet.

I never knew of an alternative until the accident. It happened so quickly and suddenly, entirely unpremeditated. It was a long time ago, but I still remember the important parts: seeing the man, seeing the truck, and running. Then a pain so terrible I couldn't voice, only live through. My dad, gripping my shoulders and shouting my name. Sirens. Other voices. Pain.

The world was on fire, and I could do nothing but bear the unbearable.

The accident changed everything it could get its radioactive fingers on. After waking up, I went days without sleeping. I remember lying in the darkness of the hospital, cotton sheets scratching my bare skin like sandpaper, and hearing police sirens. I wasn't able to block out the cries for help or mercy. I used to come up with reasons for all the noises, tell them to myself like bedtime stories. It made hearing them easier if I could pretend they weren't real. A car alarm was a neighbourhood kid looking for spare change in the Quick Mart parking lot. A fire truck siren was an elderly man leaving the stove on. No one got hurt in any of these imagined crimes. It was all so loud, overwhelmingly loud. Worst of all was my own heartbeat, louder than any siren. Thump thump, thump thump. Right there, a few inches away from my ears, pounding. Muscles contracting as I inhaled, exhaled. Joints softly popping at every movement. My body was my biggest enemy. I could smother pillows over my ears to block out the noise, but my own heartbeat? Relentless.

Now I can block all of it out. It takes concentration, but it's possible. Necessary, actually. Otherwise I can't live in my skin. It becomes a cage, like Lucifer trapped beneath the Earth, burning. Like standing in a room with a dozen radios, the sound turned up too high on all of them, and trying to focus on anything other than the pounding headache that ensues.

I used to believe that this was God's will, all of this. The nuns at Saint Agnes told me that He has a plan for all of us, that everything that happens to us is not without meaning. I thought this - my abilities, the accident, my dad - was a part of his plan, and I was made in His image, and if He wanted me this way then I had no right to complain.

But my grandmother was right; I learned that the hard way. I'm like my father, a spitting image: I have the Devil in me, and whether God put it there isn't something I'm capable of figuring out. I just know that all of this feels like something dark and tainted, something forbidden, unholy.

Was this a part of His plan? Did He choose this for me? Did He have any say in this, or is it in my blood, my DNA. Maybe the accident was His way of prevention; maybe He hoped it would trap the Devil inside me, keep it from getting out.

Maybe God knew if I clawed out of my skin, the Devil would follow.

- x - x - x -

"How on Earth did you manage to do this?"

Colin lightly presses his fingers against my shoulder. The wound is deep, throbbing, and stretches from my left shoulder to halfway down my back. It's moments like these where I'm glad I can't see just how gory and terrible everything is.

I make up for it in feeling. Everything hurts worse than it should. A punch rattles my bones, bruises my nerves, pushes blood from the surface. I feel it all inside me, moving unwillingly, painfully.

I suck in a breath as his fingers touch my ragged flesh, pain instantly shooting through my torso. "Ow," I manage, gripping onto the back of the couch for support.