The Life of Jezebel Firetongue

15

I disentangled my feet from Jake and felt for the door. Once I found it, I kicked it open and pulled Jake out. He slumped to the ground, covered in blood and glass. My face was paper white, and I fell to my knees beside him. "Jake," I whispered frantically, gently touching his bleeding face. The splinters of glass were threading it, making me cringe. "Don't do this."

I moved fast. I grabbed the towel I had swiped from the hotel this morning, and began to pull out the glass. Once I had it all pulled out of his face and gathered in my palm, I wiped the blood off his face and found only minor cuts, already healing quickly. He was only damaged from when he had tried to protect me.

Reassured that he was safe, I stood and allowed a moment for myself. A tear ran down my cheek and I covered my mouth. In the wreck, I had managed to unzip my jacket and whip out my wings to shield Jake from the impact. Despite that, he was still laying broken before me. How did we get back here? Jake was injured again, and I stood before him, safe and sound.

In the split second I thought that, I felt a flash of pain from my left arm and right wing. Disentangling my jacket from my wings, I stretched them out and winced as my right wing bent the wrong way. It was definitely broken. Then I dared a glance at my left arm, to see a slowly bleeding deep cut there, with a large shard of glass sticking out. I pulled out the shard and winced at the fresh spurt of blood and the short blur of my vision. Stay awake, I told myself. Jake needs you.

I looked for another hotel towel and found one that would work. Ripping it in half, I tied one tightly around the wound. Then I searched the ground for one of the branches that had been torn from the tree. I found a long straight one and stretched out my right wing, moving the bones back in place before tying the branch to it as a make-shift splint. I felt my bones settling back in place, and knew they'd heal enough to be tucked away again tonight.

Then I turned to the car. It was totaled. The window shield had poured inside the car, and both sides were dented in. A massive scrape spanned the left side of the car, and the popped air bags lay like carcasses on the front seats. The other guy was gone on the other side of the road, slumped over the wheel. I didn't check if he was alive. To be honest, I didn't want to.

My moment was nearly up. We'd have to get going soon, before somebody drove by and reported the crash. I walked towards the car and analyzed it. How would I start?

First I placed my hands on either side of the car and pushed it back into a straight shape instead of the bent-around-a-tree look. Then I trotted around the side of it, pulling each side back out and pushing the dents back into place until it resembled the car it had been before. Then I started picking up glass, from anywhere I found it. Once I had gathered it all in my hands, I melted it with fire and began fixing the window.

Stepping back, I smiled at my product. The window shield was a little warped, and it looked like the car had experienced a bad hail storm, but it was acceptable. I shoved the air bags back into the cubbies they came from and turned to Jake.

It wasn't a good sight. He looked utterly lifeless, as if the crash had killed him. Filled with apprehension, I slowly walked over to him and kneeled down, slowly placing my ear against his chest.

There was a steady beat there, and I sat back, filled to the brim with relief.

Gently as I could, I picked him up and carried him over to the car, placing him in the backseat. On instinct, I covered him with a blanket and closed the door, making my way towards the front seat. As I sat down, I turned on the radio, trying to block out the memories of bloody glass that filled my mind. No use in freaking myself out. I needed to take Jake somewhere he could recover. Shards of it flickered in my vision, screams burst in my ears, but I briefly closed my eyes, silencing them. Think of Jake, I told myself. His smile lit up my mind, and I could hear his voice now. You look out for me when I'm in trouble, and we trust each other. He had been so sweet and sincere last night. Now I felt as if I had to prove his statement was true. Not just to save him, but for my own sake. My chest tightened at the thought of losing him in the most peculiar way.

As we neared a town, I spotted a phone booth at the edge of it. I stopped the car next to it, as close as I could, and reached out to pull the phone into the car. Two quarters and a dial later I was on the phone with the police department. I reported the crash, for the sake of the guy who hit us, then hung up. When I started up the car again, I began to wonder about the guy. Did he have a family or friends? Someone who cared about him like I cared about Jake? How would they react to what happened? I had only known Jake for a few weeks. How much more did you care about a person when you had known them longer?

There was that funny feeling in my chest again. Hopefully it wasn't a panic attack or something. That would impede our journey even more.

Finally, a few more hours of driving later, I found a place with thick woods where I could hide Jake and the car, and it was close to a small town. A perfect place for Jake to recover.

I got out of the car and searched for some soft, level ground. After a few minutes of searching, I found a place in between two trees with few rocks or roots. I took a pillow out of the car and placed it in a hollow between two roots, then carried Jake to it, covering him with the blanket. As soon as I was pleased with his positioning, I slumped against the tree and began to watch him sleep.

He looked cramped between the trees. Should he have been sleeping on an actual bed? Was his head high enough or too low? I shook my head and ran my hands over my face. Don't think I didn't care about him enough to take him to a hospital; I wanted to take him to an actual hospital so bad. But my wings couldn't be hidden in this condition, and even if they could be hidden, I doubted that the hospital wouldn't have a look-see at me. Yet, it still pained me to have to treat Jake myself. He'd be better in the hands of a responsible doctor than mine.

As I contemplated this, I found myself running my hands over the two scars on each of my wrists. Healed now, but always sliced open by the memories that plagued me. Every time I thought of it, I shivered with horror. The extents I had been pushed to were not pleasant, and the car crash brought back one of the worst of the memories. A day when I truly had the drive to kill myself.

Not that I wasn't planning to now. No, as soon as my job was done I wanted to take off, see if there's any afterlife waiting for me. But before, I almost killed myself just to escape, without having done anything good or fixed my situation. I didn't even explain as I was pulled out of that family's house to never return. Not that they seemed to care until I saw them yesterday.

If I were being honest, I had long decided I didn't have a drive to live after The Incident. In fact, I was pretty prepared to head to the afterlife.

I just didn't expect to see Jake there.