Handle With Care

Shards of Stone and Hot Chocolate

A long and deep, jagged scar ran from my shoulder all the way down to the bottom of my rib cage, and it couldn't have been more than an inch wide, though it wasn't easy to tell with the several knots of stitches pulling the skin closed. The flesh around the lengthy gash was also red, and appeared very irritated, like an angry bull ready to charge at the slightest sign of movement, or for the incision, the slightest touch. It had to have been where that sharp broken branch decided to scrape into my flesh. It was quite the unfortunate coincidence, for that to have happened.

Remembering the most sensitive of the injuries, I turned my back as much as was bearable to fully reveal the third bullet hole, the one near my spine that seemed to cause so much trouble. Upon first glance, it was obvious that that wound was the most repulsive of the four. It was an even darker shade of red than its brothers, burgundy almost, with the same sickly black charred flesh around the edges. Unlike the other wounds, though, it was accompanied with a worrying dark purple that reached out with ominous claws over the skin around it. This wound appeared far more than irritated, no, it looked utterly enraged. No wonder the wolf within me acted out whenever it was touched.

Continuing to sweep my gaze over the wounds, I felt a growing guilt towards anyone who had seen them at their more previously damaged state. I felt guilty that they had to look at something so utterly grotesque.

Just as I was about to turn away from the awfully repulsive sight, no longer wishing to gaze at such a thing, my eyes caught something else out of place. Down on my hip, another scar just shyly showed itself above the hem of my dirty and tattered pants. It wasn't as deep as the others, nor as red, but it still appeared as though it would scar just as much.

Probably from the first time, when a bullet just barely grazed me....

Deciding I was finished with looking at the proof of my failure to evade the hunters, I rewrapped the gauze around my torso in the same pattern Elric had made, and turned away from the mirror, not planning on ever looking at it again.

As an alternative, my gaze roamed over the empty room. There was hardly anything in here besides the three pieces of furniture, and there was absolutely no sense of decoration besides the thin flowing curtains that covered the window. The plainness of it all, though, had me feeling rather calm. It wasn't loud, in the visionary sense, but simple and peacefully quiet. I found that I didn't mind the emptiness so much, like others who would prefer more eccentric things probably would.

However, I was disappointed with the fact that I didn't have much to do before I left. I certainly didn't want to try sleeping, not with the fear of waking up from another nightmare and someone coming in, alarmed at my whimpers and stifled screams.

My eyes slid over to the large window once more, the thin curtains hardly swaying with the air pushing up from a vent on the floor, making them look as though they were a ghost. Swaying, whispering, beckoning me. I complied to their beckon, stepping up to them and gently brushing them aside to have a clearer look at the outside world.

I wasn't sure what I had been expecting, but I could say I was pleased to see that the house was surrounded by miles and miles of pine trees. They were the only color seen in the vast blanket of white that covered the land, and, thanks to the light reflecting off the snow, the ever yellow night sky. It reminded me vaguely of my old home, a small one-story cabin no less than ten miles from a small town. We, too, preferred to live in solitude. It was easier back then, since we, my family, had each other. But, I couldn't say the same anymore.

A small spark of pain stabbed at my chest, almost similar to the self-hatred that befell on me earlier, and I winced. At the thought of my family, I was reminded of the vampires.