Who Are We Now?

Birds and Bodies

The moon was a ghost in a sea full of stars and darkness cloaked the winter night as I strolled along the pavement. My heavy footsteps ran through the town, spooking a flock of birds. Their dark silhouettes were like specs of black ink lying on the dark blue canopy above me.

If I was looking where I was walking I would have seen it. As my knees collided with the uneven cobbles I winced in pain, my hands soaked in what I assumed was some spilled beverage. I glanced behind me to see what I'd fallen over.

His face was a canvas of indescribable pain and it had been painted with fresh blood. His eyes were empty, glaring holes. His head- his head was ripped, mangled, torn like paper and the sight of it burned into my eyes as I screamed, hysterical.

I stayed that way for twenty minutes before somebody came. He recoiled in disgust when he saw the gruesome scene but soon pulled out his phone. The police were quick. It was almost like they were just waiting for it to happen again, knowing that blood would soon run through the streets of Lytham once again.

People were wary around me at school, not because they thought I had done it but because they knew what seeing that could do to somebody. I saw him wherever I went. His slashed face gaunt  and immobile and those eyes like tunnels of infectious darkness. The thought of him devoured me, invaded my thoughts and taunted my sanity, leaving as a shell of the girl I had been only yesterday.

Anna saw me first. She looked away.

Chloe, Hallie and Millie all ran up to me, their faces full of worry and apprehension. They brought me into their arms and, as they did, I felt the constant, nagging dread leaving me. My friends were my freedom.

But I knew the questions were coming, and I felt like I owed it to them to answer.
"Yes, the police questioned me. They asked me why I was there and about the connections I had to him." I blurted out. My face was red and blotched, a victim of the tears that were rolling down it.

When the police questioned me their eyes were cold, accusing and intense. They looked at me like I wasn't human. They looked at me like I was a monster.

I felt alone, estranged from the rest of the world, like I had committed some unforgivable sin. My only crime was finding his body and my punishment was to be forever haunted by him.