When Death Won't Take You

19: An endless ocean

Cinna threw herself against the door, and it flew open. As Cinna tumbled out onto the pavement of the picnic shelter, the door slammed back into her head, the wind blowing fiercely against it. Cinna screamed in pain. So that's why the door wouldn't open, the wind was too strong.

The storm had gotten a lot worse, and the trees in the park were blurs of sticks and leaves. Cinna, her head still stinging, got up, deciding it would be best if she stayed in the bathroom for a while. She tried to open the bathroom door again, but her energy and strength seemed to have drained away and she couldn't open it.

"What am I going to do now?" Cinna said frustratedly.

The rain seemed to be laughing at the young woman as she started crying, and the wind whipped her tears across her face to get caught in her hair.

"Well, I guess there's nothing else to do," Cinna said after a few minutes of crying. "I have to try to find my way back home."

With that said, the determined teen set off into the storm.

⛈

Cinna stood at the corner of a street. Her eyes were red from crying and her hair and clothes were disheveled after being exposed to the storm for so long. After hours of searching Cinna had made her way to a residential area, but the neighborhood in front of her wasn't the right one, and Cinna had no idea where Moraga Dr. was.

Cinna ran down the next empty, storm-stricken street, breathing hard. When would she find her way home? The clouds that covered the sky seemed to have come down to the ground, and they obscured her vision. What if she had already passed Moraga and hadn't noticed because of the fog? In this weather, that seemed very possible.

"I'll never get there," Cinna whispered as she came to another corner and peered at the street signs, none of which were named 'Moraga Dr.'. She took a deep breath, accidentally breathing in rainwater.

Cinna coughed on the rain, leaning against a fence around someone's yard. She had to keep going, to get back home, or she'd die here or something. Before she could start frantically running through the intricate maze of streets that made up San Fransokyo again, she heard a loud bark. Cinna looked down to see a small dog standing in the yard whose fence she was leaning against. The dog looked excited to see her, but it was the last thing Cinna expected to see.

Cinna, overwhelmed by the barking, stumbled. She would have caught herself before falling, but just then, a sudden volley of thunder sounded, and she went down right into the fence, which was already trying to put up with the tearing wind. The fence fell in with Cinna on top of it, and the dog leaped out of the way, running over to the door of its owner's house with its tail between its legs.

Cinna lay on top of the fence, the bruises forming on her back bringing her back to the time her father had dropped her.

⛈

Cinna sunk down, down, down, into the floor of her room, pain shooting through her as she went deeper. Above her, she could see her father's face, which didn't seem to be getting smaller as she fell, though she was leaving her room behind her, falling into an abyss beneath it. As she landed on a large rock, she saw her father coming closer, falling too, but this fall wasn't an accident.

As her father landed on top of her, she tried to run, but her back was broken, the shards of her bones scattered around her on the huge rock's surface. Cinna slipped into a stupor, drowning out her father, her world, and her life, as she had done many times when her father hurt her.

As Cinna slipped farther into her stupor, she began to feel as if she was drowning. She was in an endless ocean, struggling to reach the surface. Below her, Cinna saw only darkness. The darkness of death.