Page 16 of Collateral Damage

She’s still out, unresponsive, nothing is happening, why isn’t anything happening, surely something must have happened by now!

“Come back to me!” I’m quivering, riddled with the past, plagued with the images of my dead Mother, how she laid there on the wooden floor and choked up blood into my lap, unable to speak, unable to move. All I could do was accept that those were her final moments as I pressed my fingers against her open wound. I couldn’t do anything. Only watch as the life drained from her body. Nausea crawls up the centre of my chest, nuzzling its way into the back of my throat as I roll her on her side.

“Come on. Come on. Fight it!”Fucking wake up!Anger consumes my actions, and without thinking my fist hits the wall, puncturing a hole in the plaster. I can feel unwanted sweat building beneath my eyes, squinting to hide the evidence. Evidence that is very much noticeable. Feelings that are too present for my liking. All of this isbullshit!

“Stay with me!” I’ve spent my entire life pushing that night down, locking it in a box so it didn’t destroy me, but the way her dark locks are resting against her porcelain cheeks, the freckles splattered against her soft face, cut out from clouds, sculpted by angels. I miss those damn eyes. I need her to wake up and fuckingLOOK AT ME.I need her to fuckingsee me. See me for what I am. What she is doing to me and punish her deeply for it.

“God dammit, don’t you dare fucking die on me!”Not now. Not ever.I shake her relentlessly, digging for a breath, a sound, anything.“I hate you for making me give a shit!” I hate it. I hate it. I hate everything she is. I hate how she’s crawled under my skin like the flu. Trembling to chase life back into her inanimate body.

An audible gasp inhales beneath me as she sucks in a deep breath, not chasing it fast enough as she chokes on air, grabbing her throat like I'd slit it open. I wish I had. It means I wouldn’t of just had to relive the worst day of my life with a girl I shouldn’t even give a fuck about. I’ve known her for 24 hours.I’m pathetic.She claws at her skin, eye’s bulging out the sockets as she glares at me and I let go of the heavy breath I’d been holding, exhaling relief as she gawks at me with pits of fear I’ve never been so happy to see.She sees meand I don’t know which eye to look at first, bouncing between them like if I look away, I will die. I felt like I was dying all over again, over a timid hostage that should be dead and buried in my back garden.What the fuck is wrong with me?

“Hello Stranger…” My voice is calm, deep, most likely shaky. She searches around the room for a reason as to why she should be alive right now, looking into the eyes of a killer who just saved her sorry life.

Because I’m about to make a fucking promise to her.

That the only person that will take her miserable life is me, when I see fit, not when she fucking chooses.

C H A P T E R 10

NOT EVEN IN DEATH

Puppet

Am I dead?

I'm choking on life as it suffocates my airways, seeping back inside my throat.My nightmareis glaring back at me. Speaking foreign tongue as she comforts my panic, the clown is watching me, studying me as I gasp for breath,how? How am I even conscious right now? My blurred vision squints to adjust my fuzzy sight as I pan the room. I'm still here,why am I not dead?Darkness cocoons me, but a glint of orange catches my eye.

MyHypopen?

“I thought I’d lost you there.” I'm still drowsy and my hearing is muffled only just about making out her words. Fuelled with every emotion as my body accustoms to the air around me, my heart shallow but beating, my breathing gentle but heavy.

I need to eat. I need sugar. My arm climbs through the gravitational pull as I lift it in an attempt to make contact but my words are timid and breathless, rolling my head like a stiff doll. I'm seized up and brittle, beyond freezing and trembling at the thought of breathing oxygen. I was ready to let go. I was ready to die.Why am I still alive?

“You didn't think I'd let you slip away from me that easy did you?” I barely have the energy to scowl as I roll my stiff neck,facing her with only protruding hate. I don't understand, why couldn't she let me go. I was making her life easier!Not that she deserves it. And for that, I will make her regret my kindness.

“Why?…” I ask in search of an answer but I don't know what I want to hear. I don't even know what time of day it is, or if I'm dreaming. Is this my eternal loop of misery for choosing the easy way out? I'm stuck with the monster who is going to grant me pain for trying to run away from my body. Not even in death can I escape her.

“You need to eat and then rest.” She speaks so formally and without care, yet the contents of her words speak something entirely different and I cannot work out if I should be angry at her for saving a life that did not want to be saved in some freak attempt to win my company back. She is delusional if she thinks this will change anything, and if anything it’s made me resent her more for taking away my death as well as my life. What is she playing at? But right now, I have no energy to fight with her, only succumb to her twisted submission.

She vanishes for fifteen or so minutes and although I am currently uncuffed with a means to finally escape, my shrivelled-up corpse like state with a weak pulse is craving the comfort of this age-old bed with my sweat, blood and tears etched into the mattress that I know has seen far worse than me. I can feel it in the ridged springs beneath me, years of sleepless nights. I nuzzle my head into the stained pillow, crawling underneath the crumpled-up duvet at the end of the bed as she walks back in with a bowl of something steaming from the rim and my body heats just looking at it, although the thoughts of consuming it leaves me heaving. I’m currently stagnant with little life inside me and my body is fighting just to keep me breathing. Let alone eat. I stare down at the bowl of pasta she puts beside me and a subtle soft smile slips, one I didn't intend on, but I'm embarrassed to still be here. I was hoping I would have kickedthe bucket by the time she came back. In fact I was, until she plunged a needle inside me.

“Where did you get it?” I glance at the pen on the bed side table, racking my brains trying to understand where the hell she got it from.Does she have contacts?

“That's not important right now.” There are so many secrets she's hiding. Things she doesn't want me to know and it only makes me more frustrated. There is no way she went all the way back home?Right? That would be absurd.

“Now eat.” She glances down at the bowl, directing me with just her eyes through her black holes.

“How long was I out for?” I don't remember when she left, I barely remember our previous conversation, did we have one? I hope I didn't say anything stupid.

“Enough questions.” I barely have the energy to finish the bowl but I manage to take it down leaving me more exerted than before. She has stood watching me the entire time like a creep. Not uttering a word. She's used to the silence but so am I so it's strangely comforting, when you ignore the fact that my blood is heating my body purely through rage. I want nothing more than to hurt her but that is not possible right now, so I place my half empty bowl down on the bed side table and let my exhaustion straddle me, cupping me by the throat, squeezing until I see my temporary end to seek momentary peace. Darkness pokes at the corner of my eyes until I see black.

??

I’ve been in and out of consciousness the last few days. And every time I wake, she's either sitting watching me or there is remnants of her presence scattered across her room, glasses and wrappers on the floor. She's barely left my side and I don't know if I should find comfort in that fact. Being watched by a serial killer for days on end without my knowledge is practicallystalking. She is afreak. I go to rub my temple to shift the stiffness of my face and my disorientation when I look down, reacting to the heavyweight binding my wrists.

Chains.

She's extended my restraints with chains?How considerate.At least I can move a little more freely now I guess.

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