All That's Left (The Walking Dead FanFiction)

Chapter 17

Eli returns with the bandages and the antiseptic, placing them on the table. I don’t make eye contact with him: I’m too afraid I’ll give away what happened. He stays in the kitchen with us even though he’s not needed. He’s afraid I’ll say something when he leaves. It’s weird, I never thought Eli and I would share the same fear.

Daryl starts cleaning the wound on my cheek and the antiseptic makes my skin feel like its burning, causing the whole left side of my face to wince. His fingers are gentle against the line of my jaw and I try to focus on that. His face is so close to mine.

“Okay, let me see your hands,” he instructs.

He holds my wrists as he looks at the other cuts. My hands look awful. I don’t think I can physically close them, I would want to vomit from the pain. When the antiseptic glosses over the palms of my hand, I bit my tongue, allowing more blood to leave my system.

“How come you wasn’t watching where you were going?” Daryl asks, his eyes flickering to mine for a small moment.

“Too focused on finding food I guess,” I answer.

Not a lie.

“Well don’t do it again,” he huffs. “You use your hands too much, a band aid ain’t gonna work.” He rips the hem of his shirt and wraps the cloth around my hands.

“Thank you,” I murmur. He’s so close I can see the small lines on his face, and the scars around his eyes, and the freckles across his nose. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone so perfect.

He catches me staring and I wait for him to break our gaze. His eyes never leave mine as he says, “Anytime.”

I lay awake, with a candle on my nightstand that Daryl had brought to me earlier, and still I struggle to fall asleep. The light dances across the ceiling, shifting every time a breeze from the open window comes through. Despite the cloth wrapped around my hands, I keep forgetting about the cuts and end up clenching my hands by accident, wanting to scream from the pain. But it’s not only the pain that makes me want to scream. I think about Eli. I think about his voice shrieking at me, and his arms throwing me off the counter into the shards of glass.

The old Macy would have told someone. She would never keep something like a secret. She would have gotten herself help, she would have never let someone treat her like that. But the old Macy never ate innocent people. She never watched someone she loved die. She never stole, she never let someone commit suicide.

The pain I feel is unbearable. I can feel it leaking from my heart, into my veins, spreading throughout my entire body, dripping from eyes because there’s not enough room in me to contain it all. I can’t breathe. What happened with Eli is what I deserve. The way Sasha died is what I deserve. I can’t breathe. I hope the cuts on my hand get infected so I die. I hope Eli hits me so hard I go unconscious and never wake. I could never kill myself. I need someone to do it for me.

I deserve so much more pain than what I’m feeling right now. I need to feel so much more pain than what I’m feeling right now. I get up from the bed and pad down the hallway to the bathroom. I see razors on the counter. I find more razors under the sink. I realize what I’m thinking and realize how pathetic I must seem.

There used to be people at my high school who would cut themselves. I always saw it as a cry out for attention or a way to fit in. I never understood it. But now, as I’m staring at the blade in my hand, I do get it. I realize that not every person did it for attention or to fit in with a certain group. Maybe they did it because they feel like I do: maybe they did it because they felt like they deserved the pain. Maybe they did it because they made mistakes that no amount of time could ever heal.