s k i n s

SEPT

"Honey come here, I think we found somebody?"

"What?"

"Oh my god!"

"What the hell?" 

"I think she's alive, help me!"

• • •

I have a metallic taste in my mouth, and my head feels numb. A headache pounding. 

I feel like I was hit with a sledgehammer and then run over by a train. 

I don't open my eyes, I don't want to know where I am.

I don't want to see the green walks and door of that house. 

I don't want to know if I didn't make it. 

I don't want to k n o w. 

I can't feel my fingers. 

• • • 

I go back to sleep but wake up to voices. 

A man's. 

And I feel my whole body shake from it. 

I didn't get out, he found me and dragged me back there. 

I didn't get out. 

And all of it was for nothing. 

A hand touches me and I try to jerk it away but can't. 

And so I open my eyes, bracing myself for whatever hell I'm in.

Am I in another room? Did he strap me down?

What happened? And what do I do now?

And so I open my eyes. 

I'm in a hospital. 

And then I'm crying.

• • • 

My whole body is wrapped up in white gauze and casts practically. 

A doctor sits in a chair beside me holding a clip board asking me questions I don't have the answer to and telling me things I don't understand. 

"Can you tell me your name?" 

And then it comes out again, "Shadow." 

He raises and eyebrow at me like I'm crazy. 

And maybe I am for saying a name that's not mine. 

But for some reason it feels like it defines me, and in print upon my flesh that's there forever. 

"Can you tell me exactly what happened?"

I shake my head. Because truthfully, all of it seems blurry. 

"Ok, Shadow, to inform you of your medical injuries, you have a broken leg, a broken arm, sprained wrist, twenty-five stiches on both arms from two slits, a mild concussion, a bruised rib, a gash on your cheekbone that was sewn with five stiches. You were obviously malnourished wherever you came from and from your injuries we can assume you were in a car crash though that would unlikely considering you were found in a forest, but it was by a highway, however no crash was found there so your injuries have not been determined."

He looks at me with dull eyes, and I don't know what he expects to do with this information. 

"Who found me?" I say, and my voice cracks. 

"By a Mr. and Mrs. Ofwell, the couple was hiking there and found you around 8 a.m." 

"It wasn't a car crash, I fell down that hill when I jumped out of his car."