Phantom Bride

Chapter 5- Earthquake

As quickly as my world had shattered, it chilled me how suddenly everything was okay again when I heard that same slightly nasal, raspy voice of my 40 year old bitter roommate. Okay even as I side stepped burn victims, completely unrecognizable as my neighbors. I don't know many of them very well, but that could be Mr. Stevens across the hall, retired and always home. That ambulance could be rushing Susan Hart away, the hairdresser that lives underneath us and has her boyfriend over every Saturday night, her two girls over every Tuesday and Thursday.

It chilled me to the bone that when I sluggishly came to the realization that it was Thursday and that one of those bodies could be one of the little Hart girls... I quickly pushed aside any humanity and focused on the fact that I didn't know them. That Shannon is alive. That nobody I knew died.

As the EMT led me to the ambulance parked by the largest of the fire trucks, rushing first responders cleared away and I finally spotted her mousy brown hair. Her voice became clearer, except her normally unamused, apathetic tone was replaced with a mumbling, incredibly disturbed utterance. Her normally  boring brown eyes were wide saucers, pupils dilated to eerie proportions. Over half of her eyes were black, swallowed up by her reflective, shimmery pupils and showing me nothing but myself as I looked down on her rocking form.

A shell of my roommate, she was pasty and slightly green, her white knuckles locked and chilled fingers digging into the flesh of her arms. She spazzed out every few seconds, shooting frantic glances behind her and yelping as if she had just been burned.

The EMT grabbed my elbow and leaned in, her wide, gentle face unobtrusive and professional as she rushed through a quick explanation and implored of me, "First responders were able to get her out, no visible burns, but we don't know how much smoke she inhaled. She's in severe shock, we think. She appears to be stable, but we won't know of any injuries for sure until we get her to the ER. Witnesses pointed you out. Are you her first of kin?"

I ripped my eyes away from the train wreck that was Shannon, deeply unsettled by the fact that she kept muttering something under her breath with chilling speed. It was as if she was fiercely and vehemently determined to not forget whichever words she was flying through again and again. I met the EMT's eyes, seeing her frustration etched in her jittery fingers and clicking pen, the chart just about shaking in her hands. I shook my head and rushed out a response, "No, I'm her roommate. I left the apartment at about 8:30pm. She wasn't there and-"

The EMT snapped, her patience gone as another EMT sprinted by her and nodded, whacking the side of the ambulance once. The lady EMT shoved me inside the ambulance and slammed the doors shut behind us, slapping the back of the door three quick times, to which the blaring vehicle responded to by screaming off into the night.

I kept to the back corner of the ambulance, roughly shoved out of the way as clear plastic tubes were unwrapped and monitors began chirping. Needles disappeared into Shannon's arms and hands, her upper body and appendages beginning to be fully restrained as the monitors suddenly began wailing. Her arms ripped away from the man EMT and bone white fingers gripped deep into my flesh, my body roughly yanked towards her. I toppled over her reclining form and ended up centimeters from her bugged out, blood shot eyes and red face, skin smudged with a thick grimy film of ash and some sticky goop.

"What? What are you saying?!" I shot back at the almost incomprehensible psycho screams that were now being blared straight into my face. I searched her suddenly laser focused eyes and felt my spine melt into a million shivering bolts of electricity as she let the EMTs pull her arms back and begin to lock them into restraints.

Her screams abruptly strangled off, the monitors dipping into eerie calmness. I leaned forward, scared stiff as her eyes shifted to the ceiling and her lips barely quivered, and struggled to make out what she was repeated again and again under her breath.