Madness.

14.

In a different story, I run across an empty beach. The bright sun makes the tides warmer. The sand buries itself between my toes and stays there no matter however many times I shake my feet into the air. I run with salty winds billowing in my dress and in my hair and on my skin. My shoes have become like rockets in my palms and I have become a fool to believe my fingers will soon graze the moon.

Mama warns me that I will lose my shoes, and that if I do, she'd prefer I stay lost with them. Mama doesn't know how long I've been somewhere else. She doesn't know I am lost already.

I held my heart on my sleeves for her and for Papa and for sweet dear Melina. When the salty breeze turns hurricane and blows my heart from my sleeves like an empty plastic bag rolling across the streets, I stay deathly still. I watch. I let it go to a sunnier place. Fingers lace themselves into a cross behind my back and faith sews itself onto my thoughts as I pray that one day it will return to me.

The colour white wasn't very expressive, in this one. In my real story. Or the story of what happens after the hurricane. Or the story bent to my will like an iron rod. See when it's the first thing you see after being unconscious for so long, you feel nothing. The pale white ceilings above gave me no solace. They were imposing by nature. Demanding their presence in my tired, squinted eyes.

Had I been forgiven? Had I been granted mercy in judgement? I wondered why there was nothing holy about this place. Why there was no sun and no clouds and angels. Where were the streets of gold? Where was all my dead family? Why does this light bring me no warmth. The pale white light is as cold as my desolate grave - This couldn't have been heaven.

The light begins to fade out into the room and I want to reach out. Touch my drifting glimmer of hope before it leaves me here once more. A sharp and angry ache rested in my bones, hindering my fingers from moving.

Perhaps I hadn't been forgiven. Perhaps I had been damned to spend an eternity in hell. This was my hell. Here on earth. Stuck and bound on this bed with no escape.

I hear the beeping of the machine that tells me that I am alive. I want to scream. I want rage to become my only known language. I want the taste of my bitter survival to plague my saviour or my captor. I just want to die, dammit. I just want to leave this place.

I squinted my eye at the pale ceiling with the kind of scorn a woman nor hell should not know. Pain brewed inside of my chest and tears filled my eyes. Someone had saved me again. Someone fucking saved me again! I felt all that I had tried to run from claw at my skin, and feast on my flesh like maggots ravaging the scrapped carcass of something once living. I was nothing more than what I was, so why must they save me time and time again. Why cannot I not just be laid to rest in peace.

"Belle?" I heard Blue's hazy voice amongst the returning chaos. He had done this. He had saved me again and I hated him for it. "She's waking up! Someone get a doctor!" I heard shuffling and rushing feet head out from the room and bolt down the hallway. Screaming as if they truly gave a damn whether I lived or not.

The familiar warmth of a hand gripped onto my own and I stiffened, still barely able to move.

"Let me go! Why the fuck are you all here? Leave me the fuck alone! Stop pretending you care dammit." I tried to scream but it came out as a groan.

"We're here for you, baby" Blue told me. His voice sounded more broken than I was. But I wasn't going to believe it. Not this time "Wake up. Please wake up"

"Dr Morrison," The shrewd, taught voice of my mother greeted. Feigning worry. Feigning care. She never cared whether I breathed or not, so why did she care now. Why did they all care now.