Prologue: Gone

Warmth spills down her cheek and a hand, so strange and unfamiliar, touches her forehead.  Voices unknown to her hum  in the background.  Her eyes veer right and left, searching for the arm connected to the hand and the person connected to that arm.  Her vision goes black and her breathing speeds up as sirens screech through the fog that is her mind.  Raspy gasps are heard and she wonders where they're from.  They fall in step with her rushed breathing and she realizes she's causing the horrific gasps.  Dizzyness overwhelms her senses as a voice, as familiar and common to her as the sun, forces its way into her brain.

 

"Save her!! Someone, please!"  His desperate voice pleas to no one in particular.  The humming of voices grows louder, they're approaching her now.  The siren implodes in her head and she screams out in agony as a pang echoes through her body.  Two pangs, three. 

 

"HELP HER!!"  He yells again as her mind drifts.  She feels warm and cold.  A sense of hollowness overwhelms her.  Blood is leaving her body, she realizes as more of the warm liquid from before covers her head...her body.

 

"Bu...bullets"  She gasps, weakly attempting to grasp the hand on her forehead - a restraint again the gushing blood.  Three shots, one that skimmed her head, and two to the chest.  There was no way she was going to make it.  There was no hope.  She sighs in resignation but the pain won't reside.  The shock from the bullet wounds pounds into her with every ragged breath she takes.  A sob breaks through the sirens, the humming chatter, her breathing.  It was his.

 

"Please, no.  God, please!"  He sobs and leans into her.  She can feel the pressure of his forehead on hers.  Another type of warmth fills and covers her.  His salt water tears run and fuze with her blood.

 

"Don't take her from me..."  He whispers into her hair.  Her eyes search for him but she is blind.  A numb tranquility takes over her mind.  She feels hollow all over, the blood steadily leaving her useless body.  A ringing, different from the sirens that overwhelmed her eardrums, consumes her.  She closes her dumb eyes and sighs once more and for the last time.  

 

"NO!"  He cries but it is too late.