The Eyes of Men

Three

We had both been dead by the time the snow melted. The part of us that had learned to be careful and be prestige had long been removed, leaving a dark mass of a sort of lawlessness deep inside of us. The part of us that had always laughed and smiled, destroyed in a matter of seconds. Together, we slowly transformed into something we had never imagined, but the emptiness seemed less lonely with one another.

The only difference was one of us wasn't dying. We just didn't know it yet.

The morning began as all mornings had, with her blood curdling screams. As always, the sound sent me flinging me from the cot in which I had lay, running to her side. Her face, contorting with an unspeakable agony, moaned and whimpered between the cries, her irises white from her recent and random blindness. I placed my hand in hers, tenderly rubbing her fingers, watching the way she was so afraid between screams. As her second scream before dawn broke loose, her hand tightened around mine, squeezing my bones with an audible pop. My gasp of pain was lost among her cries.

This isn't uncommon, I reminded myself, as a wave of unease was sent over me, my heart racing which each noise. Still, the idea that something was off let a part of me fill with an unknown fear. The fear which I now know all too well know.

For hours, the screaming went on, empty and broken, tortured with utter fear and sprinkled with an incredible agony. Her body writhed in her bed as her ever present pain punctured the stillness of dawn. With the last of my brain power, I tried to count the minutes that her torture lasted, but knew that each time I tried to count, I would only forget.

I waited eagerly for it to end.

Petra. My best friend sense I was waddling around my run-down town. The only friend I needed, and the only friend I had left.

As tears came to her eyes, I wiped them away the way a mother would for her pouting child. When my fingertips touched her face, I felt the immediate warmth in her cheeks, melting the chill of the spring air. A part of me deflated, filling with a sort of resentment. Despite all the blankets piled on top of her, she still had managed to get a fever on my watch. Something about her fever was odd though, leaving me to blankly guess what had gone wrong.

My mother would be beyond disappointed.

"How do I look, Ambrosia?" she croaked, swallowing painfully as her blank eyes glance into nothingness. I reminded her not to talk, but I knew there was no way in hell she was going to ever stop talking.

I looked over her broken body, skin pulled so tight over her bones that her once pale skin has turned an eerie translucent. Blue veins danced across her, making patterns and spinning webs that I would trace with my finger to calm her down. Her eyes had glassed over, the once vibrant blue fading to a grey more like my own eyes, but clouded and blinded. Her long black hair laid in tangles, without brushing, my fear of ripping her thin scalp overwhelming.

But, as Petra was one who always valued beauty, I whispered instead, "Beautiful."

She let out a broken laugh, my mouth pulling into a tight line at the broken sound of her voice. "You're full of shit, did you know that? If I could see where you are I'd slap you."

There was the smallest laugh that bubbled into my throat, but it only died in my chest. Petra was the one never to go along without a joke, yet the way she spoke of her illness broke a part of me. As if she could feel the sadness radiating through me, she only drew away, resting her head against the bunched up blanket we called a pillow.

"I'm making breakfast," I said after a beat of silence, pushing my chair away from her bedside. Still, she tensed as she heard me standing, and her hands twitched as if they were to reach out and grab me. She feared losing me just as much as I feared losing her.

There are certain people that you cannot let leave you, no matter what the cost. The one person that keeps you alive. For me, that had always been Petra I put all my faith in a girl riddled with an illness even my medic of a mother would've never seen.

As I began to throw logs into the small stove in the corner of our house I cursed whatever god is in the works. Killing off our town, then making my best friend sick? If my very faithful mother had promised us that someone was going to save us, where was he now? Or had the Puppeteers taken the spot of any lord?

I didn't want to know the answer.

The stove roared as I pitched more and more logs onto the small fire, placing a gritty pan onto where the stove would warm it. Our house was barely eight feet by eight feet, but small enough that any more people would suffocate the space with air. Wood made up everything, and the rusted stove constantly worried us that we would be consumed in the flames. Two walls were covered with our bug ridden cots, the other with a small stove that heated the tiny cabin. In the center, a large wooden table, nicked from all the times me and Petra spent practicing throwing knives. A lonely chair sat tucked into it, the other one sitting beside my ill friend's bed.

That house was a nightmare waiting to happen. We should've known when we found the dead couple who had used it as the home before us. Gunshot wounds had splattered the walls red, both their fingers still on the trigger. Petra had made an uneasy joke about cabin fever, and I probably laughed along, trying not to think about the gruesome scene before us.

We should've known when we hadn't been able to wash the red away.

Staring at the smear for too long made me nauseous, and instead I threw our last remaining piece of bread onto the sizzling pan. I watched, my stomach ready to launch and eat it, as the soft white began to firm up, becoming a soft brown. Petra and I used to scavenge together, thinking we could fight tooth and nail if anyone crossed our path. When she fell ill, I was worried that I would be killed by other rouge humans, though we had never seen them.

If I died out there, it would complete her biggest fear of abandonment. If she died while I was out, it would complete my biggest fear of failure. All in all, I decided it would be best to stay.

Yet as I watched the toast burn I knew I'd have no option but to leave. I glanced over to Petra, whose hands were pulled against her chest, her eyes squeezed close as she tried to chase down the sleep she lost. Though I'd given her all the small medicines I had rummaged around for, she only gets worse. Through the sheen of sweat on her brow and the near-grey of her skin I knew with a grinding certainty, death was on her doorstep. Yet, it is my job to chase her away.

It was here I stood, watching her with a gentle glare, when she began to scream again.

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I realize this is much longer then I expected and it probably makes no sense at the current moment BUT let me just say this:

This is my first flashback chapter if you couldn't tell, and actually there is a second part to this. I was originally going to publish them together BUT I figured it would be way, way too long. So, next week it will make sense why I wrote this, I apologize if it's confusing and/or boring.

Secondly- writing in past tense isn't my forte so if you see ANY MISTAKES please point them out to me and I will fix them asap. Thanks for reading!