Fractured | Tobias Eaton ✓

28 | Please

TW: descriptions of blood, exposure, and illness

The first thing I'm aware of is that I'm no longer in that room with Four. I'm standing upright with a wall of glass between me and... my family? There's something wrong with how they look though.

David is more than half his normal size, lacking any of the muscles I know line his body. Everyone looks like they're crumbling into themselves. Like they're bound to blow away with any sudden wind. Tammi's eyes are even further sunken into his skull and the lack of color in his lips makes me pause.

"Baba?" I call out and he turns his head toward me but his expression doesn't change. His cheeks are sullen and he's as white as a sheet. I move toward the wall and try to push on it as Ada collapses. "Ada!?" Her eyes are lulling backward in her eye sockets and I bang on the glass helplessly.

"Ada!?" I'm shouting as nobody else reacts. Then my mom drops, her dull eyes boring into mine. Dull eyes. Realization hits me like a train as I scream. Tamino leans on nothing before slamming his face on the wooden flooring.

I hear a sickening crack and then so much red begins gushing from everywhere on him. His eyes are leaking blood, his mouth is, his nose is, every hole on his head is gushing red, red blood. I fight the urge to vomit as everyone in my family begins to bleed profusely.

Their anemic skin is covered in it as the room they're in begins flooding with it. How could they have so much blood in their starving bodies? My aunt Enola's afro deflates as it becomes saturated with blood, I can't shut my eyes. My body won't let them shut as I try to break the glass between us.

Ada floats facedown in the growing tide of red but I still feel her eyes on me. Baba's hand is pressed up against the glass below mine and he's looking forward. I kneel down and bang my head on the glass, "Baba?! Can you hear me? Baba, please!" His eyes are colorless and the skin under them is bruised purple beneath the blood that's leaking from them.

I choke on air as I hear gurgling. I have to help them. I can't let them die like this. Some part of my brain seems to turn back on as I glance around the room they're in. I see a door on the far wall.

Now I look around my room. It's empty but there's a door on the wall and I run for it, yanking on the handle and it opens easily. I step into the empty hallway and turn left, seeing another door.

This one is locked and it makes me kick the wall. My foot catches in the drywall and I see that its integrity is very weak. I pull my foot back and kick it again when a hole forms beside the door, I shove my hand through and reach for the handle through the inside.

A wet something yanks my wrist and through the hole, I see David's thin face–he's red now–staring back at me. He shakes his head and the tears finally break past my eyes. "Please!" I beg and fight against him, he's so much weaker than I remember. I push him back into the growing pool of blood and twist the lock with my now bloodied hand.

It takes some effort but I manage to get it unlocked and turn the knob on my side. The door pulls my way quicker than I can help and I'm thrown back by the force of the tall pool of blood. I fall on my ass and it covers me in less than a second. I cough as some of it gets into my mouth.

The coppery smell makes me gag and I twist away from the flowing red river, trying to get away from it. I vomit before I can stop myself and it burns my throat. I hold a red hand against it, trying to soothe my pain as I bring my eyes to the inside of the room they were held in.

I see that the glass wall I was looking through is a mirror on their side and there's a harsh line where the blood stopped flowing, staining the white walls and mirror. There's so much blood I can't stand it but I push myself up slowly. Pressing my back against the wall, my clothes are heavy with the liquid as I walk into the room.