Ashes Of Angeline

Part II

            I ran past the boy at the top of the stairs, running for the light and away from the dark basement. Running away from my literal skeleton in the closet. The light that greeted me was blinding, and for a moment I thought perhaps this was heaven. Perhaps I was finally free.

            But my eyes adjusted, and my ears picked up on the sound of the downstairs closet door being slammed shut. A broken image of my living room was spread out before me. Throw pillows had been tossed aside. The bookshelf's contents had been spilled over the floor, probably during one of the many earthquakes from the Beginning.

            Pain stung the bottom of my heel as I took a step forward into what was my living room. I pulled my foot back in confusion, discovering a large glass shard protruding from the flesh. It hurt, more than I imaged it would because I was dead. How could such a thing hurt me now?

            I pulled the shard out, unable to withstand another moment of it just being there. Ruby blood beaded from the wound, and I felt my face shift as my eyebrows knitted together. The blood, my blood dripped onto my mother's expensive carpet. I twisted around, afraid to move from my little island of floor that wasn't covered with broken glass. The object in the boy's hands caught my attention. It was my old rubix cube, the one side of it now completely green while the others still a mess of color.

            That was when you returned upstairs with Dem, the weight of the boxes with your chosen goods making the muscles on your arms bulge. You looked older than you were then, appearing as though you were in your early to mid twenties. Your guard was up, perhaps seeing me in that closet reminded you of how fragile we are. Perhaps it brought back unpleasant memories of the Beginning, or even of things occurring around you. Even you must admit that you cannot run from death.

            Dem looked at the puzzle in the boy's hands as she made her way by him. “Where did you find that Noah?” She raised a single eyebrow, a tick I had never been able to master.

            “Upstairs, in one of the bedrooms.” He responded idly, twisting the middle section of the cube.

            Longing wound its way into every fiber of my being then, the desire to see my room overwhelming me. I stepped forward, glass or no glass, deeper into the room. When I turned back, there was no evidence of my previous mishap with the glass, no blood stains on the cream rug.

            Inhaling slowly, I walked across the room and into the hallway. A slick layer of crimson appeared to be painted to the bottom of my feet. As I walked up the wooden stairs, I left tracks behind me.

            As sick as it may sound, I liked the pain in my feet. The sensation of fake life was dizzying; the feel of pain somehow fascinating and pleasurable.

            My door was ajar, and the light from the window created a streak of hazy yellow across the hallway floorboards. I couldn't remember if I left it open the day I had died or not and it bothered me. Who was the first to trespass into my bedroom? Who was the first to pull apart my belongings in search of something they desired?

            I'm not sure what I had expected. When I left it, chances are it had been a mess. CD cases left open, clothes spilled across the floor and overflowing from the open drawers, my schoolbooks resting in a pile on the floor.

            My fingernails bit into the inside of my palm as I looked at my room for the first time in months. The baby blue curtains had been pulled away from the window, left in a tattered heap on the floor. My bedroom had not been an exception to the muddy footprints that had been trailed throughout the house.