Stained Glass Souls (Wattys 2014, Collector's Dream Award Winner)

Ariel: To Live & Let Life

(Ariel: unedited)

The first thing that caught her eye was not the blood. It was impossible to miss – splattered across the floor, misshapen markings that looked like handprints smudged along the floorboards. But her gaze flickered over the wreckage, assessing the shards of broken china beside the bed; the broken window shade, dangling limply from its cords; the crushed flowers; the rumpled sheet. The sports jacket, hung by the doorknob; the black skirt, gauzy fabric in shreds; the untouched tray of cafeteria breakfast. A muffin, a Styrofoam cup.

It all looked as lifeless as the girl curled in the center of the bed.

A boy was hunched beside her. His hands covered his face, but the cropped hair, bound back by a bandana, and the thick silver ring on his forefinger, appeared familiar.

That was all she could think. At first. A room in shackles, a stranger at the bedside, a set of clothing torn almost beyond recognition.

But after the initial numbness dimmed, weight lifting from her eyelids, the horror of the situation struck her. Ariel teetered in the doorway, head spinning and nausea choking her. How could she enter? How could she accept that still, motionless figure as a reality?  

Katrina. Katrina. Katrina.

Her thoughts blurred together and danced about her brain, jumbling the words sitting silently in her mouth. She didn’t realize she had stumbled forward until the boy looked up, face slackening in warning. And then, suddenly, the room had tripped upon its side and she was staring into Price’s cold obsidian eyes. His hands were hot on her waist.

“Are you okay?” His voice was surprisingly gentle, belaying the tautness of his jaw. A muscle flickered in his cheek as she struggled to stand, hands grasping for the front of his jacket.

The fabric was sliding beneath her fingers, and she felt like crying, because she was falling again, and everything was wrong wrong wrong. But amidst her swimming confusion, Price anchored her back to the ground and pulled her into a standing position. He tucked his more securely about her.

“Are you okay?” He repeated.

“Katrina.” The words flew out before she could contain them. Out of the corner of her eye, she say the boy turn his head sharply. Suddenly, the pieces fit themselves together. The chiseled features, the discombobulated attire. Who else would wear a Highland Hills ring and hiking boots? “Mcclain?”

“I don’t think –” Price began, but Ariel pulled herself from his grasp.

“It’s Mcclain,” she said, as if that explained everything. She tried to smile at him as she approached, but her limbs and her mind were still disconnected.

“Hello, Ariel.”

“Hi.” She joined him at Katrina’s bedside, trying to avoid Price’s surreptitious glare. Her friend looked like she was dead – her skin was icy to the touch, and the pulse in her throat seemed nonexistent. Bandages mummified both wrists. A needle was stuck into her forearm, running into a machine that reduced her heartbeat to tiny red spikes. “What happened?”

Mcclain sat back down. The chair squeaked beneath his weight, but he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were intent upon Katrina. “She broke the pot.”

In that moment, Ariel realized why the full details of the room had not hit her, full force, upon entering. Because once the details emerged, stark and palpable against a blood-stained background, they hit her with enough force to send her to her knees. She sank down, the tiled floor sending a chill through her body.

It wasn’t quite pain. It was regret. Hard and strong enough to make her eyes water, horror clogging her throat shut. One Katrina became Four Katrinas, fragmented into the blurry squares of her vision. Her heart was racing so fast that it pounded a beat through her temples, tap-dancing on her skull.