Cuddle Application

19 - Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

"Here, from her ashes you lay. A broken girl so lost in despondency that she will never see, feel, taste, or touch life the same way again."
~Amanda Steele

➳♀♁➳

"Help m-me," Cora stutters again, hiccupping through an evident panic attack.

The tears fly down my face, escape pilots fleeing to deliver bad news, and land in sporadic drops on the ruffled bed sheets. The mattress springs scream as someone tumbles onto the bed, jostling me and Cora, then again when the body is thrown off. I turn away and draw Cora's face to my chest so she can't see the fight behind us. Grunts and uncontrolled sobs fill the room, a juxtaposed symphony of horror and pain. The only light slices through the open door, and unforgiving ray reaching half way across the dirty floor.

Something topples, and a book flies across the room, another one landing next to me on the bed. Lolita. I can't help but notice the irony.

Cora screams. Maybe I scream—I can't tell. There's so much noise. It mixes in with the stereo downstairs, the loud music blasting through empty halls.

At some point, I begin singing. "You Are My Sunshine" had been Cora's favorite since she was a young girl. I rock her body and mine in rhythm to the song, voice cracking with each slam, punch, and crack I hear behind me.

"It's gonna be okay," I say, a salty tear slipping through my lips. "It's gonna be okay."

I murmur the song through the noise, trying to be louder than the fighting. Cora shakes, huddled up in my lap, and whimpers. My heart breaks, shattering like the shadowed vase in the corner. The fight feels like hours, but I know it lasts only a minute.

Someone swears, so angry his fists hit their target and the target cracks.

Cora sobs. I rock us, stroking Cora's head. Her blonde hair is ratted into knots, wet with tears and an act that cannot be undone. Finally the room falls silent. No more screams, no more fighting. Cora seems to hold her breath.

Oliver comes to the foot of the bed, fists clenched, seething. He sits calmly on the mattress, shifting the weight, running a swollen, red hand through his hair. When his fingers fall back into his lap, I notice the cracked skin around his knuckles and the bruises already forming. A story unfolds through the marks on his fists. In the shadowed room, I see the clench of his jaw, the anger in his eyes. I shiver at the emotion he tries to hide.

Gratitude warms a small part of my heart, surprising but present nonetheless.

I know there's a body, unconscious, behind me on the floor. Cora knows it, too—I can tell by the way the muscles in her back relax. She buries her face deeper into the fabric of my shirt.

Everything stays silent - the whole world - for a moment. The hot blood that pumps loudly through my ears is the only thing I could register. Everyone breathes in and out, filling the room with shallow exhaling. The choppy breaths taken by a hiccupping Cora, the air sticking in her throat like thick honey. Oliver's ragged breathing, accelerated by the fight and his own anger. Mine, which was slow and disbelieving.

Even the body on the floor. His breaths are whispers.

My best friend's face hide's in the crook of my body, my shirt stained with her tears and mine. Hurt spreads through my chest. No one deserved this, least of all Cora.

Park was going to murder.

Park.

This was going to break his heart even more than it was breaking mine.