Chapter Twenty Five} $kęłętøń

92 12 11
                                    

<><><>

Tiptoe
through the window
by the window
that's where I'll be
come tiptoe
through the tulips
with me

<><><>

The girl sits in her cell, head bent low, shoulders curved high. Her breaths are ragged between salty rivers of tears that spew down her face, tearing up the skin beneath it with every drip from the corners of her eyes. With a shuddering breath, everything stops. The crying, the shaking, every last thing. The girl holds her breath, waiting for the tears to force themselves down. She looks like something out of a horror movie. Maybe she is.

     Knock.
           Knock.
                Knock.

     "Grace Briella Black?"

     Hold on a fucking minute. You're telling me that her name is Blaze Briella Black? You have got to be kidding me.

     "Yes?" Her tiny voice came out low, more like a growl than her usual melody.

     I step up to the bars, nearly pressing my whole face against them. Instead, I wrap both my hands around two of the poles, gripping them until my knuckles turn deathly white. "Blaze?" I call to the girl, her back hunched into a curve that cant be comfortable. "Blaze, it's me. It's Emma."

     At that, her slow breath stops altogether. There's a long pause- a silent one. In the distance, hundreds of cells over, a blood curdling scream rips through the air, fading into a dull echo.

     "Emma?" Blaze whispers, the growl turning something more like a choke. I can't get a clear view of her. She's sitting right in a shadow, in a place that the dimmed and flickering lights don't catch. Not even her strawberry blonde hair is visible. Just a bent over skeleton figure, one totally unlike the one I had seen just a tiny bit ago.

     "Emma." I finish. My hands shake so hard against the metal that I have to grip the bar tighter just to steady them. "Yeah."

    Blaze then stands up, her spine uncurling like an angry snake. Her hair hangs in front of her face, the stringy locks blocking me from seeing her face.

     Jesus Christ, what could they have possibly done to her in the last hour?

     Her right hand is linked to a long pole that's attached to the wall. It wraps all the way around the cell, allowing her to move around without escaping.

     She steps towards me, the cuff banging loudly against the pole as she walks.  Blaze's eyes are cast down at her bare feet, where her toes point toward each other unnaturally. Her gait is more like a limp than a walk as she stumbles toward me, her skeletal body shaking with every step.

     As she clambers into the soft glow of the lights, a shadow is cast over her entire face. Blaze's eyes look replaced by empty sockets, and the usual red of her lips has been pushed aside to make room for the blood she's smeared across it with the back of her hand. With one last clang, she stops in front of me, wheezing as if the walk from one end of her cell to the other was a climb up Mt. Everest. Her one free arm hangs limply at her side, unmoving.

     We lock eyes, her soulless ones linking with mine. "Shit, Blaze." I breathe. "What did they do?" With another wheeze, I watch her lip twitch like she wants to say something, but can't.

     If I reached through the bars of her cell, I could touch her. I could run a finger over her scar, letting my thumb trail over the side of her face just to know it's still there. I need to know if this is real. Without her scar, Blaze is nothing more than a figment of my imagination.

Salted Caramel Coffee (COMPLETED!)Where stories live. Discover now