His Collection

THRITY-FIVE

My feet kept going as I walked further and further away from the place I could only escape from if my eyes stayed open, because the second they would close, I would be back there again trying to collect my heart from bleeding in the kitchen.

Lance. You...

Crying I sharply sobbed as my limbs started to feel the cold. The weather had turned against me, begging me to return to the land where butterflies eternally fluttered in a room only meant for two. Hail tapped at my forehead to see if it was hollow or not, but my spirit fought to keep going.

Move, gotta keep moving.

Dark smoke clouds spewed far behind me as I reached the gaunty, bare trees. Using a stick I swished it slowly in front of me to make sure I wouldn't step on any traps. Luckily there were none, and I hoped there wouldn't be anymore tricks.

Wolves? Let them come, there would be no way I would stop them. I was unarmed.

My frozen cheeks didn't even burn as thoughts of my head nestled against Lance's chest flickered inside me. They would suddenly be washed away with despondent nights spent in the shed, and my longing for home.

An hour or so later, and my breath stopped appearing in the cold. My organs had frozen just as the snow that began drifting down.

Finally, a season to match my insides.

My eyelashes were coated in flakes, allowing almost no real sight of what was ahead. All I could really see was the vast emptiness of white. If I had reached the road to town, I was unaware of it. No one could see anything out here. If they could, they would think of me but a simple ghost walking amoung the sleeping trees, and dead insects that had long died during every single winter.

"Mom, Dad, sorry..." my weak voice rusts as I apologize for not being the daugther they had hoped for. "I just never could walk away from someone in need of my help. Be proud, somewhere, be proud of me for making it out. Even if I die right here, at least, please...be proud I got out on my own."

No tears showed. My eyes were icy lakes as I walked toward the birds that flew ahead of me. Soon after they got bigger I made out that they were coming towards me.

Swallowing my fear of death, I smiled inward while I stumbled with my steps. "I think," my throat hurt as I tried to hear the last bits of my voice. "I think I'm pretty strong."

Biting my lips, a jolt on my foot causes me to look down. A bear trap had dug into my boot, and punctured my ankle. Though my foot was numb, I could slightly feel the chilling metal sink into my flesh. The boot offered a great deal of protection, but there was now way I would walk any further.

This is it. Just go to sleep, Blanca.

"Okay," a child-like note escapes my lips as I nod to the bleached skies.

A voice in the distance rings in my ears as the snow becomes thick fluffs. Tilting my neck up, I see the birds had turned into trucks, a dozen of them, and from them out came even tinier specks. One was quickly making its way to me. It sped through the crowd, and called out my name.

Lifting my arm, the tug of the trap on my ankle made me flinch. I was tired, cold, and heartless enough to be claimed dead. Even my mind wasn't holding up as I parted my lips to the sight of two blue butterflies flying through the snow towards me.

"Go away, please," I whispered while shying away. Again I hissed at my foot, then fell back while trying to balance my weight. My knee had given out then caused my foot to twitch into a useless stand that caused me to slip on the lumpy snow.

A hand caught my back while another pulled me up by my coat. I wanted to open my eyes and see Lance. He had been there to catch me every single time while I had been his that I almost forgot who else was always there to catch me.

"Kyle," I softly muttered as my lashed weight my lids down in a sleepy vision.

"Blanca," he wanted to smile. He wanted to cry. So instead he knelt down, and embraced me while I placed a cold hand over his cheek. He repeated my name so many times that with every syllable, my heart began beating with life.

"Y-you're still here," I said, then he paused. "You didn't leave. You didn't go away." Wishing I could cry, I simply shut my eyes, and let my lips dip into a frown as I whimper. "I thought you had left."

Kyle dug his face into my hair. "How could I leave you behind."

My nails dug into his coat as I my eyes glued into my own darkness. Though he was holding me, someone else had their arms around me, and I feared that no matter how much help I would get, nothing could erase him from my mind; that butterfly boy with the honey eyes of spring.

I could see him as the mint sized moths crowned him prince of the small paradise he had kept in his room, then a transparent replica of myself standing besides him, wearing the white dress he loved to see me in as we both sit along side each other with own wings pinned back to the wall. It was reality; a piece of me had been left up there in his collection; pinned back, and frozen in time.