Strange Beings

.On the Sheets.

I knocked at the door insistently, water dripping from my soaked coat. It felt like it was freezing over, but I didn't care. Hell could have frozen over, but I only wanted to get in. I swear, I was knocking for five minutes straight before a hustle and a bustle on the other side prefaced the door's swinging open.

His mess of hair and wild eyes were out of character. Instead of his demanding, in-charge persona, he looked scared out of his mind. His mouth curled in anger as he lurched out to grab my collar, pulling me to his eye-level.

"Jacob fucking Durante, what took you so long?!" he growled.

"I ran, shut up," I responded, pushing him off me and shoving past him.

The apartment was a mess, and if it was possible after my race here, my heart palpitated faster than it already had been. The owner of the flat wouldn't have let this happen in her right mind.

"Where's Macy?" I demanded, loud enough to wake the neighbors. At two in the morning, I could not have cared less about how people were sleeping; I just wanted to know what the hell had happened.

I spun on Harrison, radiating the same anger he had shown me, but he led me away to the single bedroom. I was all-too aware of the destruction on the carpet: shattered glass, broken art supplies, an emptied chest of drawers, with the drawers strewn across the floor, their wood splintering.

The scene in the bedroom was worse. The curtains had been torn down, the rod resting at the foot of the queen-sized bed, on which a being rested. The hair did not form a halo around her head, but was instead matted with blood and insanity. It no longer looked like pretty brown curls. Her face was dazed and drunk and asleep and conflicted. She looked like a broken horse; her will had disappeared.

I rushed past one friend to the side of another. My anger at the former dissipated as I kneeled by the bed, seeing her face and all of the things written on it.

"What happened?" I whispered. "Have you called 911?"

He shook his head solemnly, holding his hands up in a gesture that suggested, 'No dice.' "Phone's dead. Died right after I called you."

I didn't look at him, but kept staring at Macy. She looked battered, as if not only her home had been destroyed, but also her heart and mind.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, handing it to Harry. "Call them." My voice wavered.

I could only sit at her side, never touching her and constantly hearing the muffled sounds of the authorities of aid on the other end of my friend's conversation.

The blood on the sheets was what haloed her head instead of her hair, and though it was drying, it still reeked of an impossible truth.