The Last Of The Blessed

Chapter 2: That did NOT just happen

The entire way home I kept expecting someone to jump out with a camera crew and tell me that it had all been an elaborate prank, but no one did.

When I got back to my apartment my hands were shaking so bad I dropped my keys twice trying to get them in the lock. The moment the door opened I practically fell through and slammed the door shut behind me, locking it back as I went

I pressed my body against the back of the door and slid down it to the floor. What the hell just happened? That could not have been real.

My hands were shaking uncontrollably and I felt like throwing up. That poor girl was dead. Every time I shut my eyes I could see the look on her face as she stared up into the sky, the last look of terror forever etched into her once beautiful face.

Nausea rolled in my stomach as I imagined how scarred she must have been, remembered how scared and shocked I had been. I could still see the gaping wound in her chest displaying her insides like some macabre textbook. I pressed my eyes shut as tight as I could, as if by squeezing them hard enough I could somehow keep out the memories.

I tried to focus on nothing but the act of breathing. Deep breathe in, feel the air expand in my chest. Deep breath out, just focus on the sound the breath makes as it exits. Feel the desperate need to once again breathe and then fill it. That's it, I told myself, just breathe. In and out, in and out. Over and over again until there was nothing but my next breath.

Slowly but surely the shaking stopped. I opened my eyes to my apartment and did my best not to think. I pulled myself up off the floor, walked over to the couch, and sat down.

Despite my best efforts, a thousand questions crowded my mind as I sat there. What am I supposed to do now? How do you move on after seeing something like that? What if that thing wasn't dead? What the hell was that light?

I decided to explore that last thought because it seemed the most likely to preserve my sanity. I closed my eyes and took in another deep but shaky breath. I let my mind take me back to that alley and pictured that light. Did that come from me? It must have, but hell if I knew how I had done it. There was something about that light that had felt so incredibly right despite the fucked up situation and the mind searing pain.

I decided that I needed to distract myself so I reached over and grabbed the TV remote and started flipping through the channels. I decided to watch a show on HGTV about flipping houses. I was only able to watch it for about ten minutes before I started getting restless again. I changed the channel and this time I settled for a crime procedural. The team had been called to a crime scene underneath an elaborately decorated bridge. Do other places actually have bridges like that? And if they do why are people always getting killed under them?

I watched as the ace detectives walked over to a small stream and bent over to examine the body. Finally the screen panned out to show us the body for the first time. The second I saw her I felt my heart stumble in my chest. It was a young blonde woman staring with unseeing eyes.

Suddenly I felt like I couldn't breathe as another set of eyes flashed into my mind, but the eyes I saw were blue instead of the actresses own stark green. I quickly decided that TV wasn't for me and switched it off. As soon as I turned it off I was struck by the fact that I once again had nothing to do.

I felt an overwhelming urge to get up and move. I stood and began pacing back and forth in my living room. My apartment wasn't very large or very nice. It was a one bedroom on the fourth floor of a very rundown building but it was warm and it was near work so I had gone with it.

I started walking back and forth behind my gray couch, but there wasn't much space in my tiny living room. I wore a hole in the carpet for a while before deciding it would probably be best if I just went to bed.