Silence.
Its weight is crushing and its edge is blunt. Never has there been anything more difficult, more agonizing.
Silence from me. No sound comes from my throat as the shards of glass travel down it, ripping me into shreds as I swallow them. Turning my organs into a mess of ruined flesh.
He spills more broken pieces into my mouth and makes me chew it. Blood sprays on his shirt. I cling to it with my fist.
"Kingsley," he says kindly, and I smile. He grips my jaw so hard it cracks, shattering like the glass jutting out of my cheeks, dripping with blood. "Kingsley."
I gag inaudibly, the pain erupting inside me like constant explosions.
Silence. Silent tears of blood down my cheeks. They make no sound as they hit the floor, as if they weren't there at all. "Good girl," he says.
Then, darkness. The pain is replaced by an emptiness, in which a hollow ache still echoes. Echoes like a voice in the darkness:
"Kingsley."
Maya's white hand is small. A child's. She is nothing but a child.
"Maya..." my voice echoes weakly as I lie still, paralyzed on the ground. Her fingers are cold on my cheek. Her eyes are colder.
"Maya!" I cry, and a murderous bruise grows around her neck, staining her fair skin.
The screams rip themselves out of my body with claws; violent sounds of grief, of pain. "Maya! No, Maya!"
Her eyes roll backwards in their sockets, and a dying wheeze leaves her discolored lips.
"Maya! Please! Maya!" I struggle against my own body, but it's heavy. It's unmovable. It traps me in place, unable to reach out to her as large, dry hands grab her by the neck—
"Maya!"
"Good girl."
I awake in a lurch forward, my stomach emptying itself of its water onto the floor.
It burns, but it continues; it grips my organs so tightly I hit my head violently against the floor in a gag.
I can't stop it. My body seizes and aches and jitters until there is nothing left. Nothing left of me. And the sound of my gagging subsidies slowly, leaving me gasping on the floor in the silence—
Tick.
"Get out of my head!" My throat burns at my shout. A sob erupts out of me in a painful convulsion. "Get out!"
Tick.
It continues, it resonates against the walls of my room, surrounding me. It feels like a wound inside is being ripped open.
"Please..." I whisper, shutting my eyes tightly, but the images project against my eyelids as vividly as they do in the room. Maya's eyes flash red. "Please."
Tick: it won't stop... it won't let me go. So there I kneel, clawing at my head. At the noise, tapping against my window—
My window.
My head whips to the blinds in a painful jerk, just as the sound comes again.
Tick. Tick.
From outside my room, in the night...
Tick.
A rock against my window. And another:
Tick.
Sky.
Pain ripples through my torso as I stand from my blanket on the floor, hating the way I shake. I don't dare steady myself against the bed, just like I haven't dared to sleep in it. I squint and lift my hand before me, watching as it reaches the moonlight from the outside: it illuminates my skin in its pallor.
YOU ARE READING
Asunder
Teen Fiction"Promise me. Promise me you'll never beg someone to stay when they're already gone." Tangled up a million knots, Kingsley has lost faith in happiness. Her heavy heart struggles to continue to beat, and she is slowing down. It seems to her that the w...
