Chasing The Dead

A Story by Cookie

This is a short story I wrote about a young girl caught in a moment of extreme mental illness.

Well... now what? I think it's over... everything's quiet again, at least. Silence has been few and far between since the first attack. When the bombs dropped... the chaos, the screaming, yelling, painful cries...all of it blended together in a chaotic almost-music to her ears. The tiny girl barely dared to look up, should she be wrong, and see more of the bloody, fiery explosions. She took a few minutes more of listening, oh so carefully...listening for even the slightest noise of distress. After a while, listening for even the quietest hint of any other life, anywhere in her vicinity. Not hearing anything for an hour or so, she figured she was safe to look up...at least the likelihood of more bombs went down the longer she heard silence, she assumed.

But when she lifted her head... bright, blue sky, flourishing wildlife...small wooden structure in a clearing to her right, door slightly ajar. She could even see, through the crack in the door, the telltale lights of a TV flickering. Confused, she tucked her head back under her arms, and tried to drift off again, but to no avail. She lay perfectly still, her only movement the gentle rise and fall of her back as she breathed.

In the silence, hours later as the sun was starting to set, she was startled by her stomach growling. She lifted her head, slowly...rubbed her eyes...looked around. Everything looked the same as it had the first time: full of life, beautiful, bright and cheerful. But...the bombs. I know there were bombs! she thought. I watched my family die! She curled up into the tiniest ball she could, and sobbed her heart into the soft earth.

She must have fallen asleep out there, her mother observed. I wonder what's up with her lately...

The little girl had been acting increasingly withdrawn and strange, talking of destruction and fires, screaming and explosions. Her parents, for a while, thought it not unusual, as their daughter had always had a wonderfully active imagination, spending most of her time in the woods that surrounded their house, building forts and playing with the squirrels and rabbits, and even the occasional bird that would land on, or get stuck in, her forts. The older she got, though, the more she seemed to fixate on her imaginary worlds, to the point that her parents had begun to worry about her, talking of sending her to doctors.

She awoke with a start, screaming at the top of her lungs. Not more bombs! she thought. I thought that was over! But, when she opened her eyes, the world appeared in grey ash and black dust, falling around her from the charred trees as the wind blew. But what hit her most was the view of her old, tiny house...charred, burned...holes in the walls, the door falling off...the glass on the windows broken into pieces, torn fabric from the furniture strewn everywhere. No! she cried out, almost refusing to believe it had happened.

Her parents burst out of the house, almost jumping over the porch steps entirely, at their daughter's mangled screams. What's going on? her mother asked, eyes begging her daughter to be able to tell them, but the girl just continued to lay on the ground, curled up, screaming, as her father ran back inside the house to call an ambulance. Her mother tried to get closer, to touch or hold her and help her, but she only screamed louder...

No! Why... people lived through this? she screamed at the sight of the two people, a man and a women, skin burned and peeling, clothes only there by a thread that somehow hadn't burned...no hair on their bodies, anywhere...walking hunched over, but shockingly quickly, almost running, toward her from the house. Are they ghosts? she wondered. But a ghost wouldn't be in this condition of appearance.... The woman kept grabbing out for her, as if to touch her, to tear her skin off and use it to heal her own. Nooooo! she screamed, louder and more forcefully, but still helpless as the sickly woman, who was still somehow much stronger than her, tore her skin, tearing it away from her body..ripping her hair out...trying to attach it to herself. The woman's skin was so hot from her burns that it burned the girl's body when they touched, and her skin started to slowly fall away from her body as well. The scene she saw was grotesque. And then it got worse with the renewal of the bombings... explosions blocked out every other noise she could hear, everything else she felt, as she threw herself back over and into the hole she'd dug in an attempt to protect herself. The ground shook with the tremendous force, and it only seemed to get louder and louder...

The ambulance sped down the dirt road to the house incredibly quickly after the call was placed. Oddly enough, that still only made the girl scream more. There were no breaks and no coherence in her screams at this point...just jumbled sobs. The EMTs jumped out of the truck, one almost tripped over himself in his hurry. He asked her if she was in pain; she screamed. He asked where, she screamed; he tried to touch her and she cringed away. I've never seen anything like this... he muttered quietly to his colleague. Me either... I have no idea what to do. They grabbed a syringe, quickly, filled with a triple dose of the strongest sedative they were allowed to give. It affected her almost instantly, her body relaxing into a crumbled, sobbing heap on the ground. This allowed the EMTs to take her vitals and get her on the stretcher, and into the ambulance. As soon as she was up, they instructed her parents to jump in the back with one of them, while the other ran up front to drive. Slamming the doors, they sped off down the winding dirt road, back towards town.

There was one particularly loud and close explosion that just seemed to go on and on and on, to her... while getting closer and closer...eventually coming to rest only a few yards away from her body. No... I don't want to die! Oh my God.... she breathes as two men stumble out of the blast, burnt so badly they have no skin, no eyes, no blood...they're all but skeletons. How are they still alive? she gasps, panicked. They, like the other two people who somehow still lived, immediately walked over to her. No... don't touch me... don't touch me! she screams, but again to no avail, they seem to ignore her, or not even know she's talking. Suddenly she feels very weak, and the noise around her softens to a loud roar rather than the deafening blasts... then she can no longer move, no longer hold herself in the safe position she was in, and she collapses to her side, to silence. Her body burns slowly, charred bones falling apart in the flames.

S**t! they yell. She's unconscious! The EMT in the back of the ambulance moves quickly to wake her. It only takes him a matter of seconds, and she starts whimpering painfully on the stretcher. No... don't let it get me! they can make out. What's going on? her parents ask, frightened. We have no idea, the discouraging response.

Why am I in an oven? she wonders, looking around... the heat lamps above her are hot, so hot... No... don't let it get me! she moans. She vaguely sees the skeleton-people in the background of the heat waves, hears a panicked voice... what's going on? But she's unable to focus for long enough to hear the answer, she's too exhausted from the years of war, and she just falls into darkness on the rack.

Weeks later, she wakes up, in a cool room, with white walls and pale green curtains. The sun is shining through the window, casting a comfortable warmth across the bed. She stretches, and moans gently in bed, smiling at the tiny kitten sleeping next to where her head was on the pillow. She rolls over to cuddle her baby for a few moments before she slowly sits up, looking around almost disoriented at the plain surroundings. She moves carefully, and slowly, as though she's afraid of breaking the air. Gently wrapping a pink robe around herself, she shuffles to the bathroom...and, for the first time since her ordeal, turns slightly...just enough to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror...and gasps softly, barely daring to breathe, slowly turning, dropping her clothes away, staring at her startling reflection. Staring back at her, was a young girl, with long, messy hair, hanging thin, with clumps ripped out...pale, scarred skin, her whole torso darkened by burn scars... her cheeks and neck covered with scars from deep cuts... her eyes, bloodshot red, but bright blue.

The doctors don't think the scars she has from trying to scratch her own skin away will be gone for several years, if ever. The burns she has down her arms, sides, stomach and back from the burning pile of wood she laid upon will always be a reminder of her illness as well. But the worst scars...those are the ones the doctors can't see. She can live, now, yes. She can function as any normal, healthy human being can. But she will always be afraid.