DEATH JUNCTION

9

A myriad of tremors rushed down my arms. Heat racked my chest, the sight causing the bitter sensation to envelope my taste buds. The collage of images stared back at me, unblinking, taking me through journeys that had death written all over it.

Flames of unrest danced to life in my chest. Each section of the collage had a back  and front view of a person, their bodies a mess of blood and scars that caused my stomach to roil while their faces were mostly blurry. But that wasn't what made my heart burst, not entirely. It was the fact that each blurry figure had exactly the same injuries that mummy had.

Do you think they're all connected?

What is going on, who would do this?

This is downright disgusting.

How could so much blood be split?

The thought alone brought a fresh spray of bile over my tongue before the plumes of a familiar scent came through. One that had become a companion, stirring nightmares that plagued me when my eyes were shut and aroused blisters, each time it shuddered back to life.

All I could see was blood.

The nauseating smell permeated the air, allowing the invisible tendrils of the breeze to gain a murky red. The red liquid formed wispy shadows at the sidelines, the world roiling as everything within me gave into the foulness that dressed the atmosphere.

My hands trembled as I gripped her pale body, her skin latched by streaks of red that scorched my palms as soon as the liquid made contact with it.  The white of her eyes bled out a haunting chill that encapsulated me, toying with my heart and mind.

The gaping gash in her stomach looked on in oblivion, blood gurgling loudly out of it like a fountain that could never dry up. Tears burnt my eyes again, searing my world in dots of blues as I tried to rescue her. I turned her over in this swamp of blood, attempting to rush her to the hospital when the lash marks on her back stopped me dead in my tracks.

I let out a heart wrenching scream that bounced along the crevices of darkness, thrumming against the dim hum of blood that sat by us.

The only witness to my plight as the world darkened around me.

I forced myself to breathe.The colors of the world muddled together, swirling around like paint that had become too runny. Panic stashed a weight on me as I felt my mind continue to be pestered by an avalanche of thoughts, each carrying contrary opinions that thickened the bricks that  were sprawled along my chest. After another blink, I was drawn into another memory.

I sat, hunched over, my eyes aching from the tears I had shed. Grime still wrapped me tightly, my bloodied clothes a closure of what had had  happened this night.

The surrounding noise of the outside and everything else  faded in and out as I toyed with the reality where my only companion was my step father who was just as lost as I was. The side door of the waiting room shrieked open.

At that moment, everything snapped back to realization. Step father bounded up to his feet, meeting the gaze of the doctor that trudged in. Something in me knew she was .....

The thought caused my throat to lurch for a second time. Yet, I held onto this fool's hope that maybe, maybe just maybe I was wrong, that I had miscalculated. I hoped that they would tell us that she would be fine, that she had incurred some serious injuries but that wouldn't matter. At least she would be alive.

I had always thought myself to be someone that liked the silence but the silence that consumed us now felt like it was eating me from inside out. I wanted it to be broken so desperately that I ground my teeth in unmasked agitation.