Legend & Lace

3. The Secret Of Happiness Is Having A Bad Memory

Chapter 3

The Secret Of Happiness Is Having A Bad Memory

It usually started the same way. I was drowning all over again, choking on the combination of blood and water. I knew I shouldn't inhale, but it was impossible when the darkness was never-ending and I never broke the surface.

My body was bashed against the rocks on either side. I felt my skin shredding, bones breaking, and the impact of each made me suck in water, even though I tried my best not to. I knew I was going to lose consciousness at any moment...

Waking up on the sandy bank of the river, time must have passed. The sun was high in the sky and a cold breeze brushed through the trees above me. It seemed oddly calming as I lay there, completely still.

The metallic taste of blood was still in my mouth along with that of water and dirt. I couldn't move, could barely feel the ground beneath me. It wasn't because I was numb. No, it was because if I moved even the slightest bit, pain radiated throughout my entire body.

But even when I wasn't moving, the twinge of pain grew on my side where Vince had plunged the knife into my side. Warm blood had begun oozing from the site again...and finally replaced with another pain, one I wasn't prepared for.

The searing pain added to the wound itself...and then came the smell of burning flesh. I tried to scream, but my throat was too raw from inhaling the water.

"I know, I know, I know...so sorry."

The voice...I knew it. I would know it anywhere, even with the scratchiness in it.

"I've got to do this, though. I've got to."

My eyes had been squeezed closed as my scream tried to escape. The burning on my side continued, though the flame wasn't there anymore. And the voice tried to sooth me, but it wasn't working. Not when the pain on my side made everything else seem to multiply.

My eyes flew open from the pain, only to see Drake had been the one holding the fire. Or, more specifically, the thick piece of wood that he had kindled in the small fire beside him. It was that piece of wood he held into the flame once more...before turning it to the identical wound he had on his side.

He wasn't holding in his painful cry, though, but rather letting out a string of curses and shouts.

He'd already had tears streaming down his face from doing the same to me. With several cuts and deeper gashes on his face and neck, and even ones that were showing through the tears in the fabric of his shirt and pants, he was covered in blood. His nose was obviously broken and one shoulder dislocated, several fingers and his left wrist in unnatural angles, and he was also favoring his right leg. If he looked that way, I could only imagine what my own body looked like.

After cauterizing the wound on his side, he threw the burning wood back into the fire where it popped and sizzled. My eyes were going in and out of focus and the look on Drake's face, even all battered, bruised, and bloodied, was one of pure fright.

The last thing I heard was him yelling my name...

Then I was waking up in the back seat of an old car, head pillowed on a jacket that smelled of cigarette smoke and aftershave. Drake was in the driver's seat...though there wasn't a key in the ignition, but rather wires sticking out from below the steering wheel. He'd cleaned off most of the blood somehow and had on a shirt I didn't recognize.