Run

Abscond • 2

FOR AS LONG as Kiera could remember, she was alone. Her father had been arrested when she was five years old and her mother spent countless hours wiping tables with a dirty washcloth and tolerating nagging customers with a spurious smile so she could take care of her two children.

She loved her father dearly. Maybe it was his face she'd see before she died.

Some of her earliest memories of life revolved around him; taking walks while holding his hand; being taught how to ride a bike; having someone to balance out her seesaw, even though she would always be lifted up; taking her to the pet store so they could admire the puppies they could never afford.

When she lost her father to a crime she knew he didn't commit, the neighbors made sure to keep away from the daughter of a madman. So she grew to love the silence instead. It was one of the few things she could hear clearly.

But the silence she heard after the accident made it an unbearable agony.

Her hands and legs felt liquified from the inside and the limpness of her muscles made moving excruciating. The airbag against her upper body felt like concrete had adhered to her permanently. It took a while to grasp physical sensation, but Kiera eventually was able to get her face out of the cushion and lift her eyelids.

Blood.

Blood stained the airbag and red had been flicked onto the dashboard and windshield of her car. She craned her neck to peer at the passenger seat, only to see a trail of blood starting from the seat to the flattened, muddy greenery. The same side window the woman had knocked on was shattered and large pieces of sharp glass jutted out from the corners of the window rim. Yet, that was nowhere near as horrific as seeing the door wide open and realizing how vulnerable she must've looked to the dark.

Kiera found in herself enough strength to push and deflate the airbag. She did not want to think about someone dragging the woman's body out. Instead, she imagined that the law of physics became as dysfunctional as she felt.

Luckily there were no other airbags to wrangle out of because of how outdated her car was, so she could easily open the door. Once she stepped out, her knees almost gave out on her and she had to bring out her arms in order to find some balance. After taking a couple of baby steps, she looked around, wary of what could possibly be hiding in her barely visible surroundings.

Kiera stepped around the front of the car and surveyed the damage. The moonlight provided enough clarity to discern the shape of the bruised vehicle. The left headlight was cracked and there was a large, irreparable dent that made her wince, but she retained her will to continue walking.

She almost fainted when she saw the body.

It didn't matter if she had seen several cases of disfigurements and bleeding while working at the hospital. There was something frightening that made one's guts churn and senses go into overload when realizing one is responsible for suffering. If she hadn't noticed the woman's dress before, she would've said she wore a deep red, decorated with red ribbons of the same shade. The woman's face was colored with mud and her hair lay in tangles around her. Her body lay the way the actors that played the dead victim of a crime show would–perfectly oriented, but like the dead nonetheless.

Kiera rushed over on instinct, being careful not to lose her footing near the steep slope. It seemed to be inviting her for a long fall onto protruding branches and wet earth. She didn't bother to do a double take, concentrating on the patient in front of her. Going onto her knees and bending down, she scrutinized for serious injuries. She wiped the woman's hair from her eyes to check her eyelids.

Closed.

She took two fingers and pressed it to the nape of the woman's neck. Her fingers trembled violently. The wind blew and she wondered if the devil's whisper was carried with it as she was reminded that the woman's blood was caused by her hands.

This wasn't a patient. This was her fault.

She couldn't check if the woman had a heartbeat.

Kiera released a shaky breath and ran her fingers through her hair, but her fingers were tangled in what she assumed were knots. She brought her brown locks between her fingers. A sound that must've been between a horrified gasp and cough blocked by a lump in her throat slipped out of her mouth. The woman's blood had gotten all over her hands and made her hair sticky as if her sweat hadn't done enough.

The girl, all alone in the woods left with a barely breathing body, felt as it the world truly hated her.

And it probably did.

Slowly, she got up from her knees. It was as if she was in a trance. Any guilt and moral obligation left in her conscious had been beaten up by fear and replaced by tortuous anxiety.

Kiera looked down at what she had done.

Her feet moved by themselves. The bottom of her sneakers dragged themselves off the dirt and made contact with pavement. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the image of the woman's body never left her sight. By some force, she felt herself being turned on her heel.

And then Kiera Cohen ran.