Blame

Blood-Soaked & Cold

Elizabeth wasn't sure how long she stood outside of the hospital by herself, but it just might've been an eternity.

She kept her arms folded across her chest, and her nails digging deep into the bare skin on her biceps.

Her eyes repeatedly scanned over the trees that lined most of the parking lot, although she couldn't really see all that much in the darkness.

She was now almost positive that the dark shape she had seen among those trees a few days ago was that blue-eyed creature.

It probably would have been better to just go inside.

After all, she was now feeling incredibly paranoid, and still unable to fully process everything she had seen in the past hour.

She was shivering. The wind was blowing, and she no longer had her jacket since she had put it on Arlen while she waited with him for help to arrive. It was mostly an attempt to stop the various stab wounds on his back from bleeding as much as they were.

It would have been smart to just go inside, but she didn't.

For whatever reason, she simply wasn't compelled to move.

Despite the various negative emotions and thoughts that ran through her head at a mile a minute and collectively screamed, "don't be alone right now!" she stayed that way.

Maybe she just felt wrong standing in one of those pristine, white waiting rooms in her mud-caked jeans and boots, and her slightly blood-stained t-shirt.

Or maybe it was something else. She genuinely couldn't tell.

Elizabeth had been asked a few things by a couple of police officers (the same that had questioned her) already.

She blurted out to them that the suspicious character she had seen didn't look entirely human, which only made them exchange odd glances, as if to silently agree with one another that she sounded a bit nuts.

She neglected to mention the window message, and that the blood message didn't initially just read, 'I hope you're happy.'

She tried so hard to force the words out, but they simply remained caught in her throat, and she continued to just stand there and silently choke on her words up until the moment they left her alone.

Was it because she felt that, in a way, she was responsible for what had happened to Arlen?

Because they already looked at her weirdly when she started talking about inhuman creatures?

After all, who was going to hear those things together and believe them as they came from Elizabeth, someone who had been constantly labeled as strange throughout her life, often by people she didn't even know.

Inhuman creature...

Perhaps she hadn't actually taken her meds like she thought she had.

Blood began to form around her nails as she dug them into her flesh even harder.

No, she knew what she saw. It was very rare for Elizabeth to forget to take her meds.

Various people had passed through the hospital doors as she got lost further and further in her thoughts.

They either hadn't cared that Elizabeth was standing there, or they didn't see her due to her being half-concealed in the shadows.

"Liz!"

The air in her lungs left for a moment.

"Have you been out here the whole damn time? What're you doing? You're all by yourself, it's cold as fuck and you don't even have a jacket on..."