HIS SALVATION

Chapter 11

"I felt like crying but nothing came out.

It was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can't feel any worse.

I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then.

But I think I have known it pretty often, too often."

~ Charles Bukowski ~

***

As soon as he is gone, Salem is running. She races to the bathroom door, slams it closed, and locks it.

For a little while, catching her breath from the effort of simply moving, she rests her forehead against the cold wood and fights against the dizziness from the rush movement.

Turning around, she hugs herself and leans back against the door, sliding down slowly until she is sitting on the floor.

And then she drops her face into her dirty bloody hands.

It feels like her head is stuffed with cotton, and she can barely hear anything apart from her ragged breath and the blood pumping into her ears. She feels numb and so very empty.

For a few seconds she tries to sort the chaos in her brain, but it seems impossible when the adrenaline keeps pumping in her muscles, and her head is pounding, and her wrist is hurting, and everything seems so surreal, and the memories are flashing into her mind, and there is a lancing pain in her heart from the distance between her and the Lycan, and the bile is rising in her throat, and... and...

I can't breathe...

I am going to be sick...

I am drowning...

Ok, ok... Stop, stop...Breathe in... Breathe out..... Breathe in... Breathe -

Finally, her eyes drift open, and she sits up a bit more, her gaze wandering to the shards of the mirror still hanging on the wall. Blinking in shock, she stares at her face, surprised to notice her split lip, the deep purple bruises, and the dried blood on her temple and her chin. Her neck is an odd mix of mauve and black, and she can see the indentation from Dean's fingers tattooed in purple on her skin.

Shadow marks of his disgusting hands imprinted on her chin, her thighs, and her forearms.

Her once ruby red skirt looks almost black matted by the foreign blood and mud. Reaching with her hand, she extracts her phone from her bra with difficulty, the fabric sticking to her skin and having to be peeled off.

There are splatters of blood everywhere.

Her calves are covered with it and bruises.

Olive skin clashing with a palette of red and purple.

Purple... it's been a long time.

At the sight of her hair, she barks a sound that is probably supposed to be a bitter laugh - but ends up sounding like a choked up cry. Messed up curls drenched in blood, hair stuck in every direction, she looks like a picture-perfect psycho coming home after slaughtering her fellow high school students, or like the last victim in a horror movie, waiting for death to happen finally. Shaking her head and trying to swallow the knot in her throat, she looks at her eyes.

And the knot explodes in her throat, making her choke on her sobs.

There is something seriously wrong with her eyes.