in which a girl with a heavy burden tries to find her way through the trials and torments of the earth they've come home to.
OR
in which she must rebuild.
EMBERS
JOHN MURPHY
DEATHLIES 2016
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN T...
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F O R T Y O N E
Althea barely slept. How could she when there was people dying all around her? Giving up, she sits forward and rakes her hands through her hair, rubbing her eyes and then standing up.
Bellamy was still here. He was alone and he still looked like a corpse. Althea sighs softly as she collects the small bucket of water and a cloth. Trying to be as light-footed as possible in an attempt not to wake anyone else, she carries the water over and kneels beside him on the floor. It presses into her knees, harsh and cold, but she put on a smile as Bellamy's eyes flickered open.
He grimaces, letting out a groan, and lusts to close his eyes again and sleep until there was no more pain, but there was something about that smile that made him force himself to keep his eyes open, looking right back at her.
Althea draws her eyes away from him, looking down at her pale hands as she wrung out the cloth of excess water.
"How're you feeling?" She asks quietly as she begins to wipe away the dried blood that plastered his face.
As he attempts to talk, she is wiping the blood, which muffles and distorts his speech making it sound nothing like English.
"I'm sorry," Althea says between laughter. She sits back, holding the cloth in both of her hands as Bellamy watches her with a smile that would have been followed by a laugh if he wasn't so terribly tired. "Let's try again: how're you feeling?"
"Better than before, but still like shit," He tells her. There's a small, awkward lapse of silence as Althea makes sure he's done talking before pressing the cloth back onto his cheek to begin to clean him up again.
"I'm glad you're starting to feel better," Althea says, but she can't look him in the eyes. She has to tell him that Murphy knows. Even if she'd never had experience with such, she thought he'd better know in case. "I told him about what happened when he was gone."
"Why would you do that?" Bellamy hisses in frustration. It could have been a secret locked away forever, but Althea didn't seem to handle guilt as well as he'd hoped.
"He needed to know."
"No, he didn't."
Althea drops the cloth back into the bucket and folds her hands in her lap. They were cold, always cold, and nothing seemed to warm them.
"If you really need to know, I did try to lie to him, but he's not stupid," Althea mumbles unwillingly. To get caught in a web of lies was the path to a lonely life of misery and despair. Althea didn't want to be alone, nor did she want the latter, so she wasn't a liar. If a lie didn't have a solid, full-proof reason then she wasn't going to let the syllables fall from her tongue. "I should go."
"Al," Bellamy utters, his shaking fingers lifting to her cheek. He wipes two fingers across her cheek, just beneath her eye, and when he pulls them back they're coated in a gloss of crimson blood. "You're sick too."
And, if she hadn't already looked broken, she did now. The red against her pale skin was angry and vicious, making her look more ghostly than she already seemed. It looked like cracks on her skin, running down her cheeks to her lips and to her jawline. Frozen as she tasted the blood on her tongue. It was sickeningly metallic. It burned her raw.
"Am I going to die?" She manages to ask as her bottom lip began to tremble and tears mix, running down the rivers of blood that carved her hollow cheeks.
"No, no, of course not," Bellamy tells her, but she knew he could never know for sure.
"Go and lie down, Al, get some sleep and when you wake up you'll be all better, ok?" He pushes, wanting to have the power to assure her, but she was not filled with confidence by his words, even if she did nod her head ever so slightly.
She doesn't risk standing up. Instead she crawls to a free space, pulling the blanket over herself and rolling onto her side. But her eyes do not close. She didn't want to spend her last living moments in the ocean of hell that was her mind.
Althea thought of her family: her mother and her father. How much she loved them and missed them with all her broken heart. She was a tragic case; a girl torn by her own mind, but she was getting better by herself. She didn't need anyone but her own self determination and want to do good to get her through the trials of the mind. Her father would have told her that time and time again if he lived to see her now. He would kiss her forehead and tell her that she was strong and mighty and would figure it out because she was smart.
And Althea would love him for it, adore him even, because that's how she functioned before he died. He was everything she aspired to be: cunning, brave and heroic.
Right as she lay praying for life, Althea was brave.
And maybe that was enough. She smiled softly through the pain, whimpering as a pair of hands roll her back over and as they sigh with relief as they see her still to be alive.
"If I'm not allowed to die, neither are you," Murphy tells her, brushing her hair from her face and holding her cheeks in both of his hands. "Be a survivor, Thea, please."
But she was already asleep before he could finish.
