Sometimes it feels like what you see, what is happening around you, can’t possibly be real. That the events happening can’t possibly be anything but a dream.
I felt that way as the reality unfolded, everything blurring and slowing down. Sam on the ground below me, in a growing puddle of blood, Henry just as shocked as he stood above us.
And then the knife. That goddamn knife, stuck in Sam’s stomach.
I was pretty sure I screamed, but I couldn’t hear anything. There was this weird ringing in my ears, panic making me rash and impulsive. I could see Henry reaching to yank the knife out, and I grabbed the nearest thing—a vase—and knocked him over the head with it. It seemed rather anti-climactic as he went down like a sack of potatoes. He had terrorized us for so long and then boom. Just like that, he was knocked out-cold.
A deathly silence wrapped around us. My brain was still in the middle of processing everything, of making sense of what I was seeing.
Was this real?
I remembered going to see my father in prison, returning to the apartment to find it was a mess. And then—then I came here, and what? I screwed my eyes shut. Was this shock? Panic? Hysteria? Maybe I had finally cracked and lost it. Whatever it was, it felt like my sanity was slowly unthreading, like everything that worked so hard to keep me put together was steadily falling apart.
Henry, my mind told me, and my gaze switched to the older man slumped on the ground. He was here, and he attacked me. He wanted to take me. I called 9-1-1—shouldn’t they have come by now?—and Sam—
Just as I was thinking of him, a groan punctuated the silence, tugging me back to reality.
I snapped my gaze downward, stomach plummeting. Sam on the ground, the knife in his stomach. Think, Elsie, my mind snapped at me. All those things I learned in the first aid unit of health class in high school—think!
Where were those damn ambulances?
I dropped to my knees beside him as he coughed, blood dribbling out of the corner of his mouth. Oh, hell.
“Sam?” I rasped fearfully, slowly brushing his hair away from his face. “Sam?”
Eyelashes flickered. His body seized, and then shuddered, and he moaned in pain. I felt a stab in the gut looking at him.
“Sam,” I repeated urgently when he didn’t open his eyes. “Sam, come on.”
I was given no response.
“Please, God, no,” I whispered, pressing my fingers against his neck, praying for a pulse. Out of everything I had lost in my life, losing Sam for good would be the final straw. It would kill me. It wasn’t something I could recover from. Not fully. “Please, please, open your eyes, Sam.”
His hand twitched and his eyelids parted, though it looked like it was the hardest thing he’d ever accomplished in his life. He stared at me, brown depths glazed over with unimaginable pain. “Hey, angel.”
“Oh, thank God.” I cupped his face with one hand. “Just hold on. Help is on the way.”
“Elsie.”
I pressed my hand against his stomach to help block the blood flow. He groaned again, sounding in absolute agony. It tore me apart inside. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”
His eyes squeezed shut, face devoid of all its color. His fists were clenched but I was met with some success as the blood flow stanched slightly. “Doesn’t even hurt,” he gritted out.
YOU ARE READING
Bruises
General Fiction(TH#3)“'If you can look me in the eye and tell me anybody has ever held you like this, kissed you like this, loved you like this, then I will let you go. I will leave and I will never come back.' And as much as I wanted to say that, yes, someone els...
