ANATOMY OF A GIRL

part four, ii

Sapphire Gracen had a tendency to invert her emotions, turning them into herself, when they fought to be let out. Fought to be released from the cage that was her chest.

She waited for Flair to be taken by sleep before she got out of bed.

She walked to their bathroom, closing the door behind her. As she stepped onto the cold tiles, she peeled the still-wet clothes from her skin, and did just the opposite of what her head told her to do. She let the clothes fall to the floor. On a normal day, Flair would find the clothes on the floor and yell at her until she picked them up, if only to shut Flair up. But it was not a normal day. It was as if she'd stepped into a horror movie, and instead of running away from the thing that would cause her harm, she faced it. It was a terrifying thing.

She stepped into the shower and her trembling hand found the silver knob. The metal felt like ice beneath her skin, and she shivered. She turned the knob ninety-degrees and let the hot water sear her skin. It burned, and her skin screamed, but she didn't care. Her head told her to be stronger, to not show what was buried inside the organ she called a heart. The heart that screamed more than it hummed. The heart that held onto every little emotion because Sapphire wouldn't let them out. She had two choices: to hide any trace of weakness, and let them saturate her too-heavy heart, or to pour them from her heart and show the world she wasn't strong all the time. In the past, she'd take the first option. The one that made her look strong when she was nothing but rubble and ashes inside. But after tonight, after what happened to Arlo, her heart wouldn't let her take the easy way out. No matter how much her head pushed her to. There was a war inside her.

She listened to that organ she used to keep on mute, even if it was for just a night.

The warm air filled her lungs and she took deeper breaths, and deeper yet. It was hard to breathe within the glass walls, and for a half a second – no more than that – she thought about what it would be like to not breathe at all. Would death be painless, and would the afterlife be an empty blackness? The permanent darkness of night without the hope of stars and moons. There were theories of course, that the goddess of war granted the virtuous an afterlife. Other theories that suggested there was what the humans called "hell," for the criminals and the murderers and the immoral. She'd only heard whispers of a place. An entire realm of its own.

And for the others, those that lived neither virtuously nor immorally, she heard there was nothing but the dark left for them. It was no hell, nothing like that. Just a quiet, empty nothingness.

She knew where she fit in the grand scheme of things. Where she was heading.

But they were just rumours, of course. Old stories grandmothers told children late at night to keep them quiet.

She closed her eyes and let the water run down her body. When the pain subsided, she made the water hotter. Why did she deserve to live pain-free?

She focused on the pain rather than what she felt beneath her skin. Her breathing sped up, and she let herself cry loud sobs. The warm tears that rolled down her cheeks and neck were no different from the shower's downpour.

She knew her crying could be heard from the room next door, and while she might wake Flair, it made no difference. Because for the first time in what might have been forever, she didn't care what the people next door thought of it. And it felt good not to care. It felt better than it should've. It made her feel free. She didn't often feel that way.

*

She ran faster than her legs should've been able to. The trees rushed passed her. Until her legs finally gave way beneath her and the grainy dirt of the floor welcomed her with cold arms. Grains of dirt bit at the exposed skin of her elbow and knees.

She inched forward, touching something hard that lay beneath her. But it wasn't a thing. It was a cold and pale someone with eyes like midnight. As she stood, she felt a bone crumble beneath her weight. She was sure she saw the body flinch.

Their face was a mess of mangled ivory features. She wouldn't even know the pile on the ground was human at a glance. She didn't know what she'd think the body was. Definitely not something that was once a living, breathing human. Someone with skin and bones like her.

The body was infested with maggots and every inch of skin was covered in a layer of dirt. More maggots climbed onto the body.

She could almost feel the maggots on her own skin, tiny legs scuttling up her arms and across her torso. She swore she could actually feel the bugs on her body, climbing up her legs. She looked down. The lower half of her body, her shaky legs, weren't the colour of her bronzed skin. There was patches of milky white, dull steel and russet all down her legs. She could see more moving towards her. She screamed and tried to throw them off of her, but she couldn't move. They pulled the flesh from her body. Her arms were stuck at her sides and she felt the tears building up but they didn't leave her eyes. Tiny legs crawled up her neck, closer and closer and closer to her face. And then they were in her mouth and she was suffocating.

Sapphire woke to her blanket wrapped around her leg, her face flushed and her forehead glossy. The room felt smaller than usual and the air she breathed seemed like the hot, ashy smoke that a dying fire let off. She was sure that the fan in their room blew hot air at them the entire night. Her heart beat fast in her chest and she was breathing heavily, her breaths uneven and lungs burning.

She told herself it was okay, that it was just a dream, and that when she went back to sleep she'd dream of something happier. But she knew dreaming of something happy was a stretch. I'll settle on not dreaming anything, she thought with a drawn-out sigh, as she lay back down on her feather pillow.

But she started to think even getting to sleep would be a feat. Every time she closed her eyes, angry thoughts attacked her and she couldn't seem to block them out — no matter how many happy, blissful thoughts she tried to think of instead.

She tried to block the bad thoughts with thoughts of her and Flair watching movies late at night, and the times her and Ayden went ice-skating when they were fifteen. Everyone else had cancelled (Sapphire thought it was quite suspicious) the first time they planned to go skating, so she'd gone with Ayden alone.

Ayden had tied the laces of her skates for her (saying she tied them too slowly), and they'd held hands when she nearly fell and when her hands got cold. Sapphire didn't think much about it — they held hands all the time. It wasn't a conscious thing. Then she said something tremendously not-funny, and she actually got a laugh out of him. Out of angst-ridden fifteen-year-old Ayden. He had a beautiful laugh. Soft and rounded.

She wished she could hear it more often, and vowed to make him laugh when she saw him at breakfast the next day.

Sapphire leaned over and grabbed her phone from the table beside her bed, putting her earphones in and turning the music so loud that she was sure her hearing would never quite be the same.

She closed her eyes and let the music wash over every other thought — thoughts of Arlo and Flair, death and endless water, suffocating beneath a swarm of infinitesimal beasts and never inhaling again, being alone and never returning — leaving her head as close to quiet as she'd ever had.

*

hellooo! its finally here, I'm sorry for the wait <3

okay so lemme just explain... my appendix gave out on me so i had to have it removed. i was stuck in hospital a few days and then stuck in bed a few weeks so yeah... but IM BACK and i hope you enjoyed this!