Femme Fetale

Twenty Two

The screams are overwhelming. They pound through my head like a hammer, trying to break through my skull. Like the pounding of music, they flow through the air almost in a rhythmic way, hypnotizing me to my spot. I can see the blood. A deep, dark red, pooling at my feet as what happened really registers in my now sluggish brain. All that blood, it had come from one person.

How could one person hold so much of it?

More importantly, why am I not screaming my head off?

It stained the tiles beneath my feet. It soaks into my flats, the puddle almost deep enough to submerge my foot. It's stench rises up like smoke, choking me, though I do not move an inch. The sight of it - in this quantity - would have made any normal person heave up any food in their stomach, but this is a sight I've seen since the ripe age of twelve. I stare at the body a little ways away, holes poking through as if it were a pair of old jeans.

The body of a woman who I once considered my second mother.

The woman who took me under her wing merely for the fact that she saw herself in me.

Her black hair was splayed over her face, those hazel eyes hidden from view. Any other person would be screaming, crying out for help. To please, please, please send help because my friend is dying.

But I know better. She's already dead, there is no use screaming.

They had come out of nowhere, brandishing guns and yelling at everyone to get down. Their masks hid their faces, only their eyes visible. Those cold, lifeless eyes. They were burned into my memory. The moment had gone by so fast, I could only remember glimmers of the scene, as if I'd viewed it through a veil.

Shouted words. Heated arguments. Bags unzipping. Gun brandished. Defiant voices. Shots fired. Screaming and running. And blood. So much blood.

I move forward now, stepping carefully so as not to get any on my bare feet. I kneel down next to the woman who I'd looked up to so much, push her hair out of her face, letting it flop to the floor beside her. Her wide eyes stare up at the ceiling - empty. The twinkle of stars gone from them, replaced with the coldness of a black hole. It sucked me in, taking me deep into my memories as I stared at the woman - Beatrice - and really understood that she was gone.

Just like mama.

Just like Papa.

Just like Lucianna. Like Giovanna.

Gone, sucked into the black hole of death, just like the rest of the stars.

I had seen death everywhere after leaving home. It had never bothered me, not as much as it had the first time I'd been witness to it. I watched people starve to death, bleed to death. I'd watched people die of illness. I'd seen so much death, I suppose I'd grown accustomed to it, in a way. But I hadn't seen it in someone I love for a very, very long time.

A drop falls from my cheeks, into the blood beside my knees. The skirt of my dress just barely touching it. When I reach a hand up, I realise I must have begun crying at some point, but I didn't make a sound. Instead I silently mourned the loss of a friend. A mother. A mentor. For the second time in my lifetime, death had claimed someone dear to me. This time I witnessed it first hand.

I come to realise that there are people yelling, coming back into the quiet hall of the bank. The lights had dimmed, somehow, as if just as affected by this loss as I was. The cold seeping into the once lively place.

I'm jerked up, and brought face to face with the beast. His eyes were trained on his beauty, lying on the cold, hard floor, having lost the majority of the blood in her body. Her hair splayed out beautifully. An angel among the chaos.