By Ouanessa Nana
Woody dangles the edges of the window with a small duck of his hand. The wind lashed at our backs as the tinted glass gave way to a loose, slim awning filled with warm bodies, breaths tripping and catching over each other. Our freedom. He twists his fingers with mine, noticing my hesitation before I do.
It looks like it used to be an attic, the plush flooring of shock flooring and pads now filled with leaking, bleeding children, the room heavy and stale with grief as young boys and girls huddle together, the fear in their eyes haunting the walls and whispering forlorn memories into our heads.
Woody is giddy, almost jumping on his toes as he tries to yank me inside as if this is the beginning of something great. But I know the truth, my stomach is riddled with forlorn cramps that force me to breathe heavily.
“Bermuda!!” A small girl clattered towards me, wrapping her arms around me tight and I couldn’t help but smile. A nicked punch of pain still churns inside my chest, rough and uneven but I don’t let it bleed onto her. Instead, I narrowed my eyes at Woody as he grinned, slowly walking us into the small building.
Her loose curls wrap around her face, making her seem younger than she was but Sari, just a year older than her younger brother Woody, never let him forget it. I can almost forget what her face looked like when her skin wasn’t peeling from her skull. I tried to shove it out of my brain but the horrors of that day still lingered in me, my soul forever etched in triggering flashbacks.
“You didn’t tell me she would be here,” I said, offering Woody a small smile before narrowing my eyes at him, making sure he felt the full force of my glare.
He puts a hand over his sister’s head, ruffling her shiny hair into a knot. “If we’re planning an attack, everyone should be in the loop. We’re stronger together Ber,” His voice is a low rumble and I’ve been with him long enough to be able to catch the words.
I nod, holding my tongue for the sake of his sister. Something glints in the corner of my eye and I freeze. I bent down, hovering over a puddle of blood as I traced my fingers in it, my eyebrows furrowed. There were pieces of glass in it and it was warm.
Our blood was cold as ice. The veins stitched into our skin were linked to the moon and our internal heat was non-existent, it’s why we were constantly clotting. The sun bruised our skin and the slightest touch of anything could set our blood vessels off.
We were only safe when we were around each other.
Sari wears a set of gray flare pants with a matching loose-fitted shirt like everyone else. The sign of a shift in your bloodstream, the curse of the pulsing, of the daredevils that weren’t so keen on the ones that couldn’t conform. Woody and I are the only ones wearing red, the color of the disease that spills out of us when we least expect it.
I noticed her feet are speckled in dry blood, and the calluses around her ankles are purple. Knowing Sari, she must have snuck onto the mountains and high up into the trees to see what was going on in the sky. That’s where most of the commoners lived nowadays, while the rest of us, the ones that were tainted, stayed down here on the surface.
Adriel lies in the middle of the floor, his eyes fuzzy and blurred white like a thick mist. He glances at us, nodding hello as he gestures to his leg that is scarred black and hemorrhaging in spurts. People try to move around him, irritation etched on their faces as they scowl and shake their heads as he continues to block the entrance as if it were a regular day and he was lounging in his room, not seeking refuge in a safe haven.
He leans on his limp, flirting with a pretty brunette whose amused smirk gives me the indication that she doesn’t know his true identity. She’d have her hands wrapped around him in seconds if she figured out that his peculiar eye color and striking grey hair were because he was the son of a daredevil and one of the few whose atoms started splitting first and led the rebellion alongside Woody that saved millions but cost him his family.
A crowd starts to form around Adriel just as Woody clears his throat. I clap my hands together to stop the growing chatter. A shiver of a shadow appears in the corner of the room just as I blink.
My brain’s cells feel severely severed, each roaring cheer a slash of blood rustling and rushing through my ears. I try to be strong, to pull myself together, to hold my tongue, but I could feel the rot in the room festering, multiplying, stretching through each of us and I try not to let the loss of my consciousness show on my face.
I know Woody feels it too but I am not like him. He plasters on a pretty smile when he senses danger while my soul crumbles. I was only here beside him because he pushes me, fainting spells as a weakness, he sees them as my strengths.
My heart squeezes and I see the swarm.
Stifling a gag, I see it before Adriel does. His boyish charm falters when he feels the erosion, the tendrils of smoke gnawing off his pain. The force splits a wound, gushing and crimson, the skin swollen from the ache.
I reach for him but I am no longer in the room.
At the brink of my peak, my heart goes full scale. No blaring thought. No blow.
Perfectly impartial, a harsh vastness as I dive into the slump, swinging by the gullet, trying to gain back control.
THE END.
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