Blue Fire

Chapter Thirty-Four - Bye, Bye, Birdie

SARA

I had fallen asleep.

I knew you could cry yourself asleep, I had ample experience with that phenomenon; Cry enough and you'll black out. I'd done that a million times. I had never known that panic attacks had the same effect. As soon as Harts walked out of the room I freaked the fuck out. I clawed like an animal at the ropes tied to my legs whilst hyperventilating quietly since surely there was someone out there listening. I scratched my legs bloody before I even got functional enough to realize I had to work on the knots.

I then spent twenty minutes bloodying my fingers, blinded by tears and choking on my despair as the rope wouldn't budge and I couldn't figure out the knot at all.

I kept at it, a picture of my baby girl held in the arms of my man prominent in my mind.

I would fight, I would fight and I would fucking get through this. I had given birth, had been homeless, had been raped, beaten, stripped, overdosed and done most things that religious people prayed about.

And I was still motherfucking here.

There was a reason for that, a reason I had made it through all of the nasty shit that was my life.

So I would fight until my fingers were no more.

Time passed as I internally sobbed and choked on my tears whilst my fingernails broke off one by one. Eventually they broke at the root and I kept on clawing, trying to figure it out and trying to get back to my family. My teeth got involved as much as they could but my flexibility was shot and my vagina was sore and I couldn't get much leverage at all.

Sweat broke out over my shaking body. I needed to get out, I was more scared than I had ever been. I wasn't this scared when a grown man stood above me and raised his fist to eventually hit me when I was five years old.

You cannot change the past.

Those words flew through my mind as it was breaking apart along with my body. You cannot change the past....

A man in Fresno California had said it to me about ten years ago. I was in Slab City, a place where people gathered to live free, love god and smoke weed. His name was Xavier, he was old as dirt, long beard and beady eyes.

I'd gone there on a whim after a thing happened to me. I'd thought I needed cleansing and as a woman who didn't really believe in god or a higher truth, I needed to surround myself with people who could believe for me.

The group who were there with trailers and tents, campers and caravans were intimidating to a girl like me. I was cut off, sheltered off into my own mental capacity of what I could deal with. I wasn't a spirit who was free, I was a spirit who was wild and at that time I was a spirit who was broken.

I'd parked my car and gotten out, seen the dirt, felt the beating sun and the heavy heat, looked over the endless shoddy artwork done to everything stationary and I'd smiled.

"Spirit, you came here for a reason, and I'm glad you did."

The voice didn't startle me, it was soothing enough that I turned my head with a smile.

"Come take a walk with me, bare your soul or hear an old man's stories. Whatever."

He'd walked away and I'd followed.

Now, I heard him saying to me the words I needed to hear as my world cracked.

You cannot change the past.