❝You play with fire because you want to get burnt.❞
Ever since she was a child, Roseanne Song liked to play with fire. She enjoyed the warmth it spread, how the flames would lick the tips of her fingers as the match became smaller. After the deat...
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The scent of blood bothered Roseanne Song. It had always bothered Roseanne, to the point where she had been terrified of having her blood drawn. The bother became disgust since she came home to see her family covered in it. Ever since that night, blood became a trigger of thoughts.
She remembered her mother's face. Her brown eyes were wide and her mouth hung open, frozen at the beginning of a scream. The simple silver wedding band on her finger was stained red, its perpetrator a long gash on her arm. She laid face down on the kitchen floor, arm extended towards the entry to the living room.
She remembered her father's face, eyes closed as if he were asleep. His mouth was agape, an arm reaching out towards her mother in the other room. His other hand clasped a scrunched up piece of paper, stained red. With trembling hands, she reached for it and read his scratchy writing: Run, Hae-soo. It was written in messy Hangul, the Korean alphabet. Although he had learned to read, write, and speak English, he had always preferred Korean when at home.
We are Koreans, he had told her once in the middle of the supermarket. Korean should be your first language, English second. It's in your blood, Hae-soo.
She remembered her older brother, body slumped on the stairs with his hand hanging between the bannister. His blood slid down the dull, yellow wall and onto the carpet on the floor, sometimes a dull drip echoed in the silent house. Just like her blood then.
She remembered her little sister, face down in the upstairs hallway, just in front of her bedroom. There was a long gash on her back, mirrored ones on her legs and arms. She had died screaming, crying, fighting. Her blood pooled around her, like a small lake that made its way beneath the doors and into the close bedrooms.
A scream tore from her chest. It was sudden pain and harsh as if someone had cut from below her breasts to the top of her belly button. It echoed around her like the drip of her blood and the howling of the wind. Leaves rustled around her and against the windows, another shiver tore from the small of her back and made her gasp in pain. If she counted correctly, she had been there for more than half a day. She had been in and out of consciousness ever since that woman brought her to the room, saw the shadows dance against the wall as the sun came and then disappeared behind clouds.
Time became transitory. One moment it was night, the moon shining through the window, the next moment the sun was high in the sky and birds sang their merry songs. But she had felt those moments pass. Each agonising second.
Roseanne decided to roll out of the bed, landing on the floor on her knees. The sudden impact caused her to choke on a breath. She bit back a scream. It was like suddenly standing and the heels of the feet got the impact, causing one to stand still for several moments as the pain subdued. For her, the pain was everywhere. She breathed in and pushed herself up to her knees. Breathed again, and stood. The room swayed around her as she leaned against the bed, the small bit of sunlight coming through the dust-covered window. It was a hospital room, old and abandoned by the amount of rust and dust.
