A War On Her World | TWD: D. Dixon

Ch. 9

The air was humid, the sky grey, and everything was still as if time had broken and seest to exist, leaving the grieving young woman in a constant state of desolation. She sat atop the roof of her childhood home, just after sunrise, staring down at her two hands with a glazed overlook. In her left hand sat an old fashioned lighter with the initials M.H, in her right -a half-empty pack of smokes. They were her fathers- Elizabeth's fathers.

It had been a week since Elizabeth lost her parents and she could no longer stand the sight of pity laced within the features of those closest to her. It made her sick. She had taken to isolating herself away from the stares but that only caused her stress levels to reach an all-time high as she let her studies slip, along with her emotional stability.

That's what brought Elizabeth to her current situation though. She had remembered that every time her father had felt his stress boil over, he'd go stand on the veranda when he thought no one was watching and he'd light a cigarette. It always seemed to work for him so she thought she'd give it a go -if not just to feel a little closer to her deceased parents.

Taking a shaky breath, Elizabeth opened the packet of pre-rolled smokes, lifting one up to place between her trembling lips. Next with unsteady hands, she brought the lighter up and cupped a hand around the top to prevent any breeze from blowing it out. She had to click down on it three times before a flame finally appeared, instantly burning the tip of the cigarette.

Elizabeth dropped the lighter into her lap, her right hand resting limply at her side, while the left one took the smoke between her index and middle finger. Letting her eyes flutter shut, she took in her first drag, expecting it to go smoothly, only to be proven wrong by the coughing fit that wracked her body merely a second later.

With her face scrunched up, she wrenched her hand holding the cigarette away from her face, trying to calm down the pains caused by the coughing. Elizabeth couldn't help the tears that fell from her face, thinking that nothing was ever going to go right for her.

She stared at the smoke hatefully, without much thought until the anger once again turned to sorrow. The darkness of the emotion felt like her blood thickened in the arteries -clotting. Thick, dark, red, arterial blood. It was hard to breathe, the oxygen felt like loose ball bearings formed on each red blood cell. Elizabeth felt suffocated and needed to get her heart pumping, she looked at the burning material. The woman was almost running on autopilot as she brought the smouldering tip swiftly down, connecting to her exposed right shoulder, right above her collarbone.

The searing pain that shot through her system caused her to cry out, completely shattering the dark place she was going to. Realizing exactly what she'd just done, Elizabeth quickly threw the small cylindrical object as far away as she possibly could. Her actions frightened her. The woman scurried off her roof and back into her house. She threw herself into her queen-sized bed and curled up in the centre, the duvet covering her body, tucked in at all edges. She was hiding; she was hiding from herself, sobs wracking her entire body.

Elizabeth stayed there for hours in the same fetal position, the now dull ache of her scabbing cigarette burn making her repeatedly promise herself, over and over again, that she would never repeat what she'd done that morning.

Ever.

●

It's been a few hours since the sun rose, now high in the sky and blazing down on the back of my neck without mercy. My joints ached from the consistent motion of crouching and extending, crouching and extending. The clothes were almost completely hung up but there was still a whole basket more to go.