INSIDE THEIR MINDS

Eyes Shut Tight

ERICA

I remember almost everything and most of me wish I didn't. Thankfully I felt numb, from my fingers to my toes I couldn't feel a thing and I dreaded knowing it wouldn't stay that way.

Soon my bullet wound, such a weird thing to say, would burn with pain just as it had before I was thrown into the ambulance and administered some pain killing miracle.

I remember being awake as they strapped me to a gurney, bouncing up and down over the dirt and gravel of the driveway outside the cabin. I remember falling to my knees as the bullet tore through my arm quickly and violently. I remember the red and blue lights of both the ambulace and the police cars, as they parked awkwardly pinned between the trees lining the long drive. I remember gun shots and screaming and sirens. I remember driving down the road after Phil had asked me to come, or did he?

Did Phil call me to the cabin? Did he ask me to stay away? Why did I leave the safe space behind the tree along the side of the road?

"Erica." My thoughts were interrupted and after nearly ten years I could recognize Phil's voice anywhere.

"Mmm." I manage to mumble. It felt like I had a thin layer of duct tape over my lips and no matter how hard I tried to talk, nothing could come out.

I force my body to try to speak, which usually came so naturally. As my thoughts ran at an unsettling rate I wished more and more that I could set them free, vocalizing them to the world. But instead they stayed confined, in my mind, at least for now.

"Shhh." He says to me as if I was a loud stundent in a library causing a ruckus and deserving an unwarranted amount of detention breakfast club style.

If I could I would throw a slice of an unidentified lunch meat at his head and hope it stuck, thinking that meat throwing could be exactly what he deserved.

He starts to talk again but now it was hard to hear him. I wrestled with my hear drums hoping that his voice would coax some sort of switch in my brain, but the drums produced no such banging.

The room wasn't completely silent though, thankfully. I could tell he was talking but the sound he produced when speaking was like a earbud with a striped wire, barely useful and ready to be tossed.

Then I felt his fingers curl around mine. I couldn't flinch mine away, but even if I could I'm not sure I would.

DEREK

The bed was small but that was only because we had grown accustom to our king sized monstrosity. She hogged the space, which was to be expected, since even with practically two more feet of bed at home she still is able to do. I have been accused of being a blanket hog which though I continue to not admit to, I know for a fact that I can be a little greedy when it comes to blanket coverage, but it wasn't either of those that woke me up this morning.

I can already feel the stress knots tightening in my lower and middle back, just out of my reach. Just like dentists need dentist and doctors need doctors massage therapists need massage therapists. I could see the thin white paper from here laying neatly on the desk set up in the far right corner of room.

They were asking quite a bit more than my hourly rate but then again their target audience is quite different than mine. They cater to the stuffy business man that consistantly talks about money that isn't truly his, or the vacationers that decide that they would prefer someone elses hands on them besides just their partners, or there's people like me; I crave the after effects.

I dream of the knots being completely broken apart, the muscles massaged and relaxed and sometimes even pick up an idea or two on how to better my own massages, in secret of course.