SEVENS

BUTTERFLIES IN A BROKEN MIND

A|N: light gore, and mentions of suicide

The sound of a door opening woke me. I don't know how I fell asleep but at the familiar creaking of hinges I jerked a little and took a step back for balance, pulling on my hand. I hiss.

Marks office was dark, and I couldn't properly assess the state of my hand in the lighting. From the near numbing pain, though, I could guess that it was close to falling off. And if it weren't still stuck in the doorframe I wouldn't have doubted it.

I brought my focus dazedly back to the prospect of someone coming for me. It wasn't my door that had opened, or rather the door my hand was jammed in, it sounded like one of the large metal doors that divided the locker rooms from the school hallway.  Just one of three doors locking me in Marks office.
My head spun and I leaned into my door in hopes of easing the spinning. It was probably from counting all the doors, so many of them. And— I thought maybe from the cut on my head but it was getting exceedingly hard to tell anything from anything.

I opened my mouth to shout but thought better of it and shut my mouth before I could even gather enough breath. If it was- if it was- the bad one- Mark- coming back to check on me or grab paperwork from his desk then making noise would only worsen things. If it was some other teacher— well I didn't know what they would do but Mark would be brought into it. It was all around a better idea to stay silent.

I heard a little shuffling and then knob rattled, the sound loud as fireworks, and my heart shook in time with it. The small window in the door was covered with a piece of colorful construction paper and blocked who was behind it. Each second of waiting I could feel the room shrinking around me.

I just— I really didn't want it to be Mark. I bit my tongue to keep in a whimper.

The door swung open.

Light flooded in from the locker room.

My heart thudded to a stop.

My breath hitched.

I almost fainted in relief.

Max seemed to glow a little and maybe it was because he was magic.
"This some weird game of hide and seek or some shit?" Max asked.

I could feel my heart slow. I smiled and leaned my head on my door. "Yeah, sure."
If that's how he wanted to see it I was okay with playing hide and seek, because it was Max who had found me.

"Well come on then! I've found you let's get out of this whore house!" He complained.

I didn't move though, I couldn't. Not because my hand was jammed into the door up to my top knuckles, though that was pretty significant, I was stunned by this small bit of good luck that Max had found me and not Mark. I thought I would tell Max this, but my mouth seemed uncooperative so I let it go.

It seemed that my inaction annoyed Max because he grabbed my shoulder gently and began to pull like we were going to walk out like that, arms flung over each others shoulders—all buddy buddy like—some feel good movie ending bullshit. But he stopped when I hissed a little in pain, pressing my forehead into the doors grains like it would help.
I could feel Max go still, shoulders tensing.

My head moved with the guidance of his hand in my hair and cleared visibility to my hand. We both stared it down, him stonily and me detachedly. It was black and swollen at this point, at least the part of it I could see was but behind the warped piece of wood I couldn't tell if my fingers were as dead as my knuckles would make me believe. The door wasn't completely flushed with the frame, sure the lock was jammed into its spot and the lower half of the door was in its place but the part where I was stuck was bowed around my fingers. I never thought I would have been thankful for shitty doors before but this time I was. If it had been one of the exterior metal ones I would be missing several fingers now.