Another Life.

Chapter 2

She remembered being sixteen, innocent, naive, kind hearted and compassionate. She also remembered what they had done to her. What she promised to never let them do to another soul. She coughed hard, hacking up nothing but a bit of old blood into her elbow, shaking her head as she stared at it. She reached for her face to lift her shades, her dry and bloodshot eyes straining to confirm the blood on her sleeve. She wiped it away and smiled back to the younger girls in the canoe with her, reaching to hold one girl's hand as her own left eye began to bleed from the corner, her nose leaking a bit as well. The girl's grip visibly tightened on the woman's forearm, distorted and strained pleas negotiating inaudibly from under the girl's gas mask as she struggled to take it off of herself. The woman put her finger to her own lips as the girl held onto that arm. Shaking her had, she stroked the cheek of the girl through the gas mask and tried to force a smile as her other hand grasped the girl's neck, squeezing her main artery for only six seconds before the girl's body went limp and her breathing calmed. The woman stroked her hair and the blood tear drops leaked onto the lens of the mask, making it impossible for the girl to see her if she did wake up any time soon from her induced state of unconsciousness. The woman turned her head to much younger girl wearing a mask, she just seemed petrified, not knowing what was happening. Little did the young child know she would never see her savior again, nor for many years would she see the older girl once more. All she knew is she could see the glowing condensed ball of an inferno growing in the older woman's pupil as blood mixed with water and everything became warmer. The world was suddenly dark and felt upside down, cold, the breathing apparatus sucked to her face as she tried to breathe in just to be greeted by charcoal flavored water. She felt her lungs burn even more than they had before she put on the gas mask. Everything turned to black.