Lips Like Coffee

cup: 4

Pen

How can someone who seemed so harmless and fragile, be able to kill me with their bare hands? It was crazy to think, that had she had been in the Army, practically trained to kill. Not only that, but she was also in a commanding rank. It truly blows my mind, that this small woman is cable of leading troop.

"Okay, so that explains why you can break my arm so easily, kind of. But what about the train," I asked, leaning forward on my elbows.

Norma-Jean began to twist at her finger, and I guessed a ring had once been there. I'll ask her about it later. Right now, I wanted to find out why she freaked out so bad on our train ride. A tear dropped from her eye, and she began to rock in her seat as she shook her head softly. It was like the memory was physically hurting her as she recalled it, and I didn't know what to do to stop it. So I sat in my own seat, watching her panic in silence.

I wished I never asked her about it, that I had just let it be, but it was too late to take it back. She trembled in her seat, then rested her hands flat on the table as a sad smile crossed her face. That was the first time my heart broke for her. When she looked up at me, there was so much pain in her eyes I damn near felt it.

"It was like being in Quentin Tarantino movie," she chuckled without humour. "One minute my squad and I are riding a train out of Khost, then the next I'm laid out in scraps of metal and scattered body parts."

My eyes widened at this, and I didn't know how to react at all. That sounded gruesome, even without explicit details about what the scene really looked like. I couldn't imagine being subjected to something like that; I'd be petrified of trains as well. A waitress brought us our drinks, giving Norma-Jean a worried glance as set the hot chocolate in front of her. She kept her head down, but thanked the girl quietly before she left.

"How many were with you," I asked, bringing my voice down as to not alarm her.

"There was four squads, each with twenty-five members. Out of one hundred of us, thirty of us made it from the wreck alive." Her body was now pressed against the wall, but her head was still hung low as she spoke.

She was reliving the moment, with each word she spoke, I could see the memories come alive. I wanted to comfort her, but I was afraid if I touched her that she would panic. Norma-Jean​ heaved as she tried to keep herself together, yet she couldn't stop the tears from streaming down her face. Why something so tragic had to happen to someone so fragile, is beyond me but I wished I could have changed it.

"Thirty of us lived through the accident, nineteen of us got to come home from the hospital. Somehow, I got lucky: the only one to survive from my own squad."

"When I came back home, my parents had moved and no one had heard from them."

Wiping her face free of tears, she lifted her head as she picked up her drink. I furrow my eyebrows in confusion, because she was smiling now. How could she have been smiling after telling such a horrible story? I didn't think I could ever stop crying if something like that had ever happened to me and I had to retell it.

"So what's your story," she grinned, head tilted as her eyes crinkled closed.

"I think, we've had enough of story time for one day," I said, patting the table as I hoped she couldn't hear the shake in my voice.

Norma-Jean laughed at this, then sipped at her drink as she glanced out of a window. Her eyes lit up as something caught her attention, then she turned her head in the opposite direction while licking her lips. She reminded me of a wolf; when our food was set on the table, her expression didn't change and I couldn't help but laugh a little.