OBLIVION [Thomesa]

twenty one

Beep,
beep,
beep

the heart monitor commented, loudly and annoying.

"I can't heal her." Brenda said, quietly.

"In order to heal someone - they either have to let me in, or I have to force entry . . . And she's completely destroyed."

Beep, beep, beep.

Marking, once again, the slow beats of her heart,
"I don't recognize her - " Brenda continued. "She's not the same girl, not anymore. I know it's her, because it's her blood and her face, but her mind - it's touch is completely different. She won't let me in, she's too scared, I don't think she can feel me, and I can't force myself in because
I can't find the door, in all the wreckage. I can't help."

Beep, beep, beep

"I can't help." The words wavered in sadness.
A machine pumped her heart,
and a machine breathed breath into her lungs.

She was asleep but they didn't know if she'd ever wake up from the nightmare she lived in.

Thomas was awake, and he couldn't wake up from the nightmare of his reality.

Beep, beep, beep.

Newt had somehow found a way to hate himself even more. He could see the marks left on her; the long trailing scabs that swirled on the skin of her arms, like the curling tendrils of smoke from his cigarettes.

Another inflamed line, like the rough stroke of a paint brush, moved
from a nestled home in the crook of her neck, over her shoulder,
all the way down the length of her arm to her middle finger,
where it tapered off the end like a dying breath.
These scars would never heal.

Minho knelt by her bed, holding her hand,
And stared at her like an older brother would.
His face twisted, and was bowed over hers in pure sadness.

Brenda mourned for Teresa,
and her pain and her wounds and her eternal sleep,
wondering if she would ever wake up.

They mourned for Teresa,
who would never get to see it.

He would be facing the same tortures now
that they could see written on Teresa's skin in
permanent scarlet ink.

Newt wanted to talk to her.
To wonder if she could hear.
He wanted to tell her he was sorry.
To tell her how hard he had been trying.

He longed to be at her side,
as her friends were -
to be sure of the warmth of her skin and the rhythm of her heart,
because he didn't trust those machines with their loud
beeping and
whirring and
buzzing.

As if pulled in by a hook pierced through his lip,
Newt stepped toward the bed and where she lay, bruised and broken,
as if the hooks had been born through her and pulled her apart and held all her pieces together just to torture them again.

He stepped forward.
Minho stood up quickly, nostrils flaring madly as he raised a large hand toward Newt. "Get away from her, you son of a - "

Newt shoved the hand away aggressively,
sliding back a foot and falling into a crouch.
His left hand jumped to his back denim pocket where the handle of a gun protruded.

Minho's fingers curled into a fist,
The barrel of Newt's gun was aimed toward the soft face of Minho's face. A cold smirk curling at the corners of his lips,
Newt scoffed at him. His own gun would go off with only one casualty.