infection | D. Dixon

chapter fourty-three

fin

Brown hair laid out on the ground, dirty, matted. Blood smeared across the green grass, running out of the body that pressed against it. Shallow breathing filled the air, stopping only momentarily to sing. "You are my sunshine."

The girl on the ground sucked in another wheeze. Her eyes stared up at the sky as clouds gently moved across it. The sky appeared so peaceful compared to the ground. Somewhere out there, her family lives on. She lay dying here so they can go on, and there isn't a better way to go.

The girl's mind drifted like the clouds to somewhere a little less peaceful. Home. She remembered all the people that had become her home. The way they smiled through the storm they had been facing, the way they protected each other as though each person was the most important person in the world.

But most of all, she remembered him. About her love, and the secret she didn't tell him. Another wheezing breath, another line to a song that didn't matter. "My only sunshine."

Her secret was her only reason for the fight she refused to lose. Every move she made from the day she met him, it all amounted to this one secret. Every touch, every kiss, every stolen glance. Her romance with the man resembled a novel, and yet it was their own.

She thought of the leader of their group, and how he and his family had become her family. And the peacekeeper of the group, the mother, and the child. They had become somewhat of a secret of her own. Like she had to keep them from the monster that was the world. "You make me happy," she wheezed. Her eyes fluttered closed, a tear sliding down the side of her face.

All her thoughts led back to him. His hands, his touch, his breath. She had been childish to keep this secret from him. To keep herself from him. She had been foolish to keep anything from him. Yet she didn't stop. She pushed him and pushed him until she couldn't push him anymore.

She tried again to pull herself off the ground, but she couldn't. All her muscles screamed, her bones felt like shattered glass. Her fight was over, she could sense it. "When skies are gray."

Her skies were gray now. Now that she was dying. All her color drained from her eyes and then filtered back into the world. She closed her eyes again, waiting, but another breath pulled itself into her chest.

She felt the world slipping away, and she let it. "You'll never know, dear."

Another moment and she would be gone, and so would her secret. The thing that no one knew. The words she never got to say. The fights she didn't win, the ones she didn't even get to fight. A story that would go unfinished. She tried to scream, but the only sound she made was a wheeze, a squeak, and a cough so violent she was sure it would kill her itself.

She sucked in another breath, her eyes opening to stare at the sky. Maybe if she could hold on, she might be able to survive this. But the blood pouring from her side told her otherwise. She would die here in this forest opening, along with her secret. "How much I love you."

Her mouth was dry now, and her pulse slow. She knew that at any moment, she would close her eyes and she would die. It was beautiful, in a sense. She would meet her maker, she would be destroyed, like everything else she knew.

She nearly forgot the reason she agreed to lay down in the first place, but then she remembered. Oh boy, did she remember. It hit her like a bus, the pain. She laid there, dying alone so that he didn't have to watch her demise.

"Please don't take."

She regretted not telling him. She breathed one last time. She closed her eyes.

"My sunshine away."

Because he was gone now, and so was she.