Chapter Twenty Nine

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They all think it’s going to work out. Coral keeps mumbling in her sleep, I recognize her brother’s name. Our brother. Blaze and Mark are smiling, Rippir is his usual optimistic self, but with a hint of true emotion. He probably thinks we’re going to leave together and live happily ever after.

But all I can see are the flames. The rippling frantic waves of heat and the screaming. The screams of the angels, and another distant one. Coral, maybe? Blaze? Both?

When I close my eyes I see them. I see my body slicing away to muscle and bone, blood seeping as I crawl away from the blade. It’s cruel, to know when your own death is coming. To know how it happens, how it feels. Time’s stopped feeling linear, it’s just blank spots in an already filtered spotty memory. The other’s don’t ask where I go when I disappear, so I don’t say. I don’t tell them that even my breathing gets stuck in my lungs, shortening and quickening. The thoughts prey on my mind every waking and sleeping moment.

My hands shake. Uncontrollably, like the anxiety in my body is trying to tear itself out. I can’t stand to see their happiness, when I know fate cannot be avoided so easily. There must be a cost. A price to pay to change it.

I remember, at eight. In my old Romanian house I had a constant reoccurring vision, like this one. Of taking a kitchen knife, and stabbing it into my stomach. Not once, but 5 times. Repeatedly, I woke up vomiting from pain I thought I’d felt, I stopped sleeping because I knew I would see it again. That made it worse. Time stopped existing and only fragments of my life can be remembered. 

I didn’t know when it would happen. I spent every moment in terror of the blood spilling over my own hands. When the day came, I didn’t recognize it. It seemed normal, though it wasn’t. Looking back, it’s as though there’s a filter over everything I saw, a red hue. Like my life was blood stained.

Standing in the kitchen, I was cutting a slice of bread. Dad said he wanted a sandwich, and at eight, the approval of my distant father meant everything to me.

The red hue faded, and with it so did my vision. The blackness overcame me, like it does when I have a vision. I knew then, what I had to do.

A voice. It was genderless and rough. Inside my head it whispered in a language I didn’t know. And my hand raised shakily towards the knife on the counter. I tried to scream, to cry, and to yell. But all I could do was move my hand, my mind blank, the voice getting louder in my head.

Right before my hand plunged the knife into my stomach, I jerked my other arm awake. With that arm I pushed the knife downwards. My other hand fought back, I bit back the now palpable taste of terror in my mouth. My hand unexpectedly pushed forward, the knife was now dragging down my thigh. I watched the prickles of blood as it drove deeper.

I knew it was going to keep pushing. I couldn’t pull it any lower and it hovered over low thigh. With one last sob I hurled the knife out of my grip and across the kitchen. The tension in my body flew away with it.

A tortured sound crawled from around the counter. My whole body was shaking, ready to collapse. But I pulled myself up by my left arm and looked towards the sound.

W

Whipper was a black cat, one my dad always said used to be my mom’s.  He was always running away then returning a few weeks later, mewing for food. I loved him, and at 8, I watched the cat collapse to the ground. It’s horrid crying getting louder and louder. I ran to him, but my knees locked and I fell too. The sweat and tears mingled on my skin.

<“What the hell is going on here?”> The familiar voice of my dad said, like I could hear him. I could only hear my own sobbing.

My dad stared at the messy kitchen. And his cat bleeding on the floor, a knife still protruding from its small stomach. Then he looked at me. I could visibly see the horror overcome the curiosity. He never asked, just buried Whipper’s body in the back yard and never looked at me the same way.

When I open my eyes now, I can still hear my eight year old voice echoing, <“I’m sorry, I’m sorryI’msorryI’msorry.”>

That haunting feeling is the same one I feel now. The feeling of helplessness and the grip of terror in my throat. I know it’s coming and I know I can’t stop it.

The car ride is bumpy but Rippir puts the music on, it obnoxiously rings around us. I’m the only one who doesn’t think this is going to work. When we pull up to the reserve, the sun glares off the car’s window and I suddenly don’t want to get out. But I do.

Coral tries to make me feel better, she doesn’t understand that I can’t. For one moment, I think about telling her. I don’t.

Surprising to everyone who isn’t me, it doesn’t work. The queen of the forest isn’t real, it’s just a sick f*****g deer. Any hope I tried to keep buried inside me is snuffed out in a second. It’s almost like I can tell the future or something.

When Rippir goes crazy and the atmosphere shifts, I have to look at the ground to avoid their eyes. 

My hands are still shaking. I shove them in my pockets, fingering my gun.

The walk back to the car is claustrophobic I have to walk a few paces away from the group so my breath doesn’t get caught in my throat and choke me.

“Hey Fabbie, you want to get something to eat?” Coral pokes my arm, she looks horrible. The sickness seems to have crawled over her skin and left a pale shivering girl in it's wake.

I don’t try to smile, “Sorry. I need some time alone.” I can’t look at her anymore, there’s no hopeful sparkle in her eye. She knows she’s going to die. I know I’m going to die. I guess we all do, but this is personal. For both of us, we know it’s soon and it’s painful.

I walk to the edge of the forest. I sit behind a tree, the bark scratches my skin but it’s so far away. My breaths start coming faster and faster. My vision blurs and my legs shake, trembling too hard to walk.

I grasp my hair in my fingers and whisper, “I don’t want to die-” I muffle my sob, trying to breathe evenly again.

Just when I think I have peace, the darkness behind my eyes turns into my own screams. Again, I watch myself bleed out, alone, surrounded by flames.