For Every Lost Soul (PAUSED)

C H A P T E R | T W E N T Y {To Not Know The Warmth}

do vote and do comment babe 

 plus this has not been edited a single bit, so i do apologise for any ridiculous mistakes and now I take myself to bed. g'night beautiful earthlings!

 C H A P T E R | T W E N T Y

 {To Not Know The Warmth}                  

                        

 Outside the window, behind the thin curtains, the sun was warming the cloth. It dipped to signal the end of the day and beginning of the evening. I sat on a huge arm chair with my legs tucked into my chest and my head resting on my knees, trying hard not to think.

 Carter was lying in his bed, rolling, tossing and turning causing his sheets to tangle and fold. His head was barely seen from behind the duvet and his breathing was heavy and wheezy. I watched him for only a second at a time in fear that if I looked at him for too long he would wake up.

But as hard as I tried to keep my head clear, the weak barriers I placed would just slip from underneath the weight of my conscious train of thought. It was a leakage of words and feeling, a weeping storm of faces and warped moments that struck a pang inside of me. And it was so overwhelming that my body didn't know how to react to anything but the moment in front of me that very second.

I took a deep breath which shook me from the inside-out, causing my shoulders to shake and my knees to tremble.

And then slowly I was falling; the darkness catching at the corners with the light dimming and the warmth climbing.

*            *             *          *

 When I opened my eyes it was dangerously black all around except from streaks of light from the window. I realised why I woke only a second later as I heard a grunt from the bed and I unfolded myself from the chair. I hurried to the bed, hearing the mutterings and I peered at Carter in the darkness, grabbing a plastic bag from the table side.

 "Wait, just take this," I whispered and as the light shone on Carter's sleepy face he covered his mouth with his hand and I urged the plastic bag in front of hm. The plastic was cool in my hands and as Carter spat and spluttered into it, the plastic grew heavier in my hands and the stench of sickness was hung in the air. 

Carter slumped back onto the bed on his back and I placed my palm on his blistering cheek. Biting my lip, I tip toed towards the door and eased the door handle slowly as to not make too much noise. I had to squint as the light bulbs in the hall glowed fiercely, and walked to the bathroom. I dumped the bag of sick in the bin and washed my hands. The mirror on top of the sink was slightly smudged but I could still see myself through it. It was only a second I glanced at my self; my eyes tired in concern and nothing other than that.

Not wanting to disturb or answer to Carter's grandma I moved quickly, flicking lights off behind me. I headed to the kitchen where I filled a basin with water and hesitantly pulled drawers and opened cupboards looking for a clean cloth. On the wall the clock ticked in the silence and it read a late one twenty- five.

When I found a cloth in a drawer full of pencils and rubber bands, I climbed up the stairs to Carter's room again. He lay there sleeping once more and as a dim lamp was switched on, I sat on the bed with my water and cloth. The cloth was dipped then soaked in the water where I continued to wring it and gently fold it. The damp cloth was then placed on Carter's forehead.

My finger tips pressed down gently and that's how the night went.

In the lamp light I soaked and wrung the cloth and placed it on the boy's skin. I yawned and my heart blew and grew with the ache of that noxious feeling of sickness.

Suddenly I remembered a lonely thing from years ago, when I was all on my own, scared and ill. It brought tears to my eyes and a throb to my heart. My throated swelled and closed up, making it hard for me to breath. I had to wipe my eyes and press down hard on them to stop the welling from continuing.

I swallowed repeatedly to clear my throat and started to choke involuntary. It took what felt like centuries for the gag to clear up and it left me with a raw throat. 

Carter shifted in the bed beside me causing the mattress to dip underneath me. He wheezed and coughed before rolling himself into a ball near the edge of the bed. He was only a second from falling off the bed. 

I tugged at his arm and shoulder to force him into the middle of the bed to which he groaned and attempted to pry my hands off of him. After his head rested on his pillow upright I let go of him and retreated backwards. Worry gnawed at me; it eat up the lining of my stomach, gurgled in my stomach and drenched my body. With each breath I took, the harder the nausea hit me. I squeezed my eyes shut and wrapped my arms round my stomach tightly where it stung insistently.

Don’t be sick.

Don’t be sick.

“You’re okay,” I muttered, “you’re okay...”

Don’t be sick.

But I feel sick, very sick.

But don’t be sick.

Don’t be si-

“Norah?”  Something enclosed my tense arm and when I looked to see what, all I saw were marks of pain afflicted on a sleepy face with eyes that seemed to read to be unhinged. Carter’s face was a canvas that held a collection of bruised flesh which flushed red and a starkly molten palette that hurt you deep down. My eyes didn’t meet his but they did not leave his face though I thought he was doing the same, before I realized he had already fallen asleep once again with his hand loosely by my waist. It was like the worry had evaporated suddenly and the only thing I could feel was the mix of missing something but not knowing what. 

Quiet then proceeded.

The arms in the clock on the wall shifted sharply, its sound ripping through the fabric that wrapped around me; the cloth I hid behind because it was so cold out there. The tear in this fabric was growing and the tiny threads were slipping out. The cold seeped in like a treacle of ice that never stopped and it was soaking my ankles, crawling up my arms and chilling me from the outside-in. Sitting in a room with a clock so strident it broke things inside of me, all that I could see was the cold. The cold and what it brought me. The cold and the loneliness. All I could think of was how lonely it could get at three am in the morning where even the sun rested behind black clouds. And you realise that the whole world is sleeping gently and your voice is searching for words to say while you’re eyes and heart look for a soul to share these words with.

As the clock strikes for three- the hour of melancholy for the lost and lonely- that’s when the past comes to haunt. The kind of past where you know how it feels to not know the warmth and only the cold the darkness bleaches steadily upon you.

 I know it all.