For A Star To Fall

Chapter 14: Breakdown

Chapter 14

With a gasp, Jordan leapt out of the chair, almost causing it to tip over and throw Emyle to the floor. She steadied herself with a hand on the armrest, but did not turn towards him to shoot him a dark glare. Instead, she pulled her knees up onto the chair and hugged to her chest, crossing them over her shins, as she rocked back and forth slightly to a rhythm only she could hear. After a few moments of silence, Jordan realised that he was breathing hard, panting like he had run a mile. Taking several deep breaths in an attempt to calm himself down, he practically threw himself towards his laptop and closed the video media player window, stabbing at the mouse viciously, as if doing that would actually help erase the images that still played over and over in his head.

Jordan kept seeing Katherine lying on that stupid steel table, wrists and ankles strapped to its surface as she writhed around, twisting and turning in her bonds, and screamed out in what looked like excruciating pain. Then, in his mind’s eye, the room was suddenly completely filled with dark blue, roiling water, and the table was now a greyish-silver coloured surfboard, floating atop the waves. Katherine’s brown locks seemed to have been bleached by the sun, turning golden and blonde as Jordan watched. Her eyes were a bright, almost glowing type of blue when she turned her head to the side to look at him. Mom! Jordan was shouting in his head now, pleading with her desperately to stay with him, to fight the current, as the waves rose and crashed against each other, carrying the surfboard, along with her, steadily away. In the blink of an eye, she was yards away, but Jordan somehow could still see her. Then, just as she became only a tiny spot on the horizon, Jordan’s mom arched her back and let out a piercing scream and he was screaming with her because she was gone. Just like that.

“You should calm down now.” The voice he heard was familiar and the tone calm yet forceful. For a moment he panicked, thinking that his mom was crying out for him, and he would have to relive those traumatising, helpless moments at the beach again. He would rather stay where he was now, enclosed in blackness, muffling everything around him. So Jordan did not answer, wrapping the emptiness around him, wishing that the darkness would just swallow him up, so he would not have to think, to feel, anymore.

“Jordan.” That feminine voice again. No! He would not allow himself to be dragged back to that place of constant pain and turmoil. He had to stay where he was, where all his torturous memories were kept in a box and suppressed, keeping them from reaching the forefront of his mind. It was hard enough trying to separate the images he remembered in the video from the horror of the past. Jordan screwed his eyes tightly shut. But then there was a hand gripping his shoulder firmly, fingers digging into his flesh in such a way that it bordered on pain.

“What?” His eyes shot open as he gasped and panted, drawing the suddenly blissfully cool air into his lungs. Distantly, Jordan realised that his chest was heaving and his hands shook a little when he raised them to his face to swipe at his burning eyes. His fingers came away wet with his own tears. Funny, he had not even sensed that he had been crying. “What happened?” He tried to meet her gaze, but found that he had to tip his head back quite a bit. Then his brain registered the fact that he was currently crouched on the floor, chin tucked into his knees.

“You were crying and shouting and kneeling on the floor suddenly,” she told him, shrugging. “There was not much I could do. Under most circumstances, I would have slapped you, but fortunately for you I felt that it would be unwise. Most likely, this rather sudden occurrence is considered an emotional breakdown, and I do think that the video triggered it.” Emyle had uncurled herself from her perch on the chair, and the vulnerability that had been filling her gaze was now gone. Jordan sensed that her emotional guards were back up behind her eyes again, and now the colour of her eyes was their normal empty black, no longer that surprising warm brown like her mother’s had been.