Author Games: Red Room

Task Seven: Liz Regis

They left. They left, but I can't remember when because my hands were stained with scarlet and my soul was split in two.

I'd been curled into a fetal position for far too long, and it was a miracle I hadn't been sick and spilled vomit into the same pool that my brother and best friend's lifeblood lay in. I should have been sick. I felt sick. I still feel sick most times. Not all the time, but sometimes I'll be sitting or I'll be looking at a photograph or I'll smell the shitty coffee from that place down by the corner and I'll feel like doubling over and retching and wailing and shutting out the world. The small glimmer of relief, of hope, that lies within that feeling is one thought: at least I know I'm human.

Eventually, the last footstep faded. When it did, I uncurled myself from my position on the floor. There was an uncomfortable stretch to my limbs but I didn't wince at the tug of their vague attachment to the vessel I called a body. There was blood inside of me, you know. There always had been. Now, a part of me was aware of just how easily that blood could spill. Funny thing, bodies. They break so easily. All it takes is a stab, a swipe, a scratch.

My brother was still laying on the floor. I didn't vomit; I really didn't. But God, I wanted to, and I wanted to cry and I wanted to scream and sob and bleed. There was this emptiness in the depths of my soul, constricting my lungs and squeezing at my heart. It wasn't the indifferent sort of emptiness I'd grown used to. It was so much deeper. I was so empty, and I was so full, and I was so human.

"Henry." My voice cracked from pain and thirst and overuse. It was barely loud enough to be a whisper. But it was a name, all the same, and it was human. He was human; he was my brother. "Henry, hey." There was that cut in his neck. It wasn't bleeding anymore, but there was a kind of crust, dried crimson turned brown, hugging the wound.

He didn't respond. I knew he never would again, but I also knew that I was his older sister and I was the last face he'd seen and I'd meant to protect him. "Get up, Hen, yeah? I still have so many stories to tell you."

He didn't get up. Neither did Collins, whose broken body was splayed out behind me for the camera to see. They wanted to watch him rot; they wanted to watch me fall. "Jesus," I said, and it was a distant whisper against a silent room. A surge of anger swelled up inside of me and I slammed my palm to the ground, painting it redder, and I yelled at someone who wasn't listening: "Jesus."

And finally, I cried. I cried until my throat was even more raw and my cheeks stung with salt in scrapes, and my eyes were swollen with excess tears. It was strangely cathartic. All that anger, all that misery, all that pain. All that humanity. To care was to rebel against them. To cry, in a sense, was to be free.

To be fair, I was still locked in a closely-monitored room, hugging my dead brother's body to my chest. So I wasn't really that free.

I wasn't free, not truly, but I was alone, so I had a chance. There had to be a chance, buried somewhere in these walls. There had to be a chance for me to leave and never come back.

I pressed my face into Henry's hair and breathed deeply, but my nostrils were clogged with snot so I couldn't really smell anything. It was probably for the better; he probably smelled of the death he clung to. I squeezed him tightly one last time, before letting him go. An irrational part of me thought about bringing him with me--slinging his body over my back and making a run for it.

I climbed to my feet and slogged through blood and puddles. My hands, more blood than flesh, pushed against the door. Then pulled, to no avail. The doors, predictably enough, were locked. I couldn't wish for Collins to help me, not anymore. (And there was that numbness again, seeping like sand into my chest and settling there like the ashes of a fire.)