taste | e.d

thirteen

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Seeing Ethan cry is not something I want to see everyday. It's not something I want to see at all.

But my head always likes to play tricks on me, leading me into traps and giving me what I don't want.

So when my dream starts off with Ethan huddled in the corner of what looks like a hospital room, my hands automatically numb and my throat dries. Comforting people is not something I can do with ease.

Ethan is sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. His face is buried within his legs, his arms wrapped tightly around himself.

I approach him and touch one of his arms, but he flinches before looking up at me.

When he looks into my eyes, the terror sweeping over his face is unmistakable. He tries to press himself harder against the wall like he wants to shrink away from me. Tears gleam on his cheeks. Then, out of nowhere, his nose starts bleeding.

He lifts up a hand, dabbing his finger with the blood to examine it. Without any expression at all, he says, "This is your fault."

A hand grabs my shirt and pulls me back into an empty white room with padded walls. When the door shuts, it blends in with the wall so that I can't see it anymore. Eventually I forget where it is.

I raise my arms to slam my fists against something, the floor, myself, anything, but my arms are brought down and wrapped with white cloth, my elbows bent to cross over my chest. A straitjacket.

I thrash my body around, desperately trying to get free. I shout at nothing, pleading to whoever is controlling this to stop. My breaths become raggedy, my hair is sticking to my forehead with sweat. Then all the lights shut off. All but one, emanating from an observation window, where my father, my mother and my sister now stand.

I run toward them, but my feet stop just feet away from the window. Something isn't right. I frown. My sister's hair is parted neatly in the middle, my mother's fingers are thin and delicate, my father's lips are in an easy smile, the way they always were when we were at peace. At home. When I search for their eyes, my jaw drops.

They have deep, dark pits, and right after I notice, blood begins to seep from them, like tears. I scream, my knees collapsing below me, and I feel the hammering sensation in my head again, so excruciatingly painful that it makes me want to slam my head against the window.

"Kendall Rose!" His voice is hushed and begins to echo in my head, layered on top of the other sounds piercing my ears. "Kendall Rose, wake up!"

At the same time, my family speaks in monotonous voices, all in unison. "This is your fault this is your fault this is your fault this is your fault."

A door forms on the other wall, but the only way I can open it is if I turn the knob. I fight against the fabric of the straitjacket, screaming in exertion. I try to bend my neck as far down as I can to clamp my teeth down on it, but it's too thick for me to tear through.

"Kendall Rose, please!" His voice is filled with anguish now. How is he here? Didn't he leave?

With some miraculous rush of superhuman strength, my arms extend, ripping through the sleeves as smoothly as a boat cutting through water.

"Ethan!" I scramble to the door, a pool of white light encasing me as I go inside it, soon transforming into his arms, strong and comforting and lithe.