Free

Then - September 22 2012

"It's your fault."

I lay in my hospital bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to ignore the increasing pain in my stomach and the voice that floated towards me from the windowsill that was the cause of it. She wouldn't leave me alone. She just sat there, on the windowsill, tormenting me. I kept my face impassive and did my best impression of a dead fish lying in the hospital bed instead of a person but I knew that she knew that she was getting to me. That's why she did it.

Plus there was the small problem that she could read my mind. I couldn't think anything without her picking up on it and talk to me. So it didn't matter what my body language said; she was able to read what my thoughts said and that was enough to tell her that she was getting to me.

The problem was, it didn't matter that she was getting to me, that she'd got what she wanted, to torment me, she just wouldn't leave me alone.

"Is it any wonder?" I heard a noise and looked up. She was walking towards me, the cool anger that was everpresent in her eyes glaring out at me. I wanted to cower away from those eyes, but they had a power over me I could not hope to control. So I sat there, paralysed by eyes I knew so well but that were compleetly foreign to me, thinking that this was why I never made eye contact. I ended up just sitting there staring. At least I hadn't started screaming this time.

She was stil advancing on me, looking angrier by the second. It was almost like when she got within a 2 metre radius of me her anger reflex, which was on full all the time, hit the roof. "Is it any wonder?" Her voice was rising to a hysterical shout. I looked around nervously, somehow finding it easier to look away now, hoping no-one would come in to see what a l the commotion was about. That would be an awkward one to explain.

She let out a strangled angry scream. "Look at me!!" she screamed with so much anger I flinched into the adjustable settings, causing the back of the bed to jerk forwards, giving me no choice but to look forlornly at her face. It was probably intentional.

She was breathing heavily now, right at the foot of my bed. I was curled right up at the other end of it in extreme fear. The closer she got to me, the colder and more scared I got. "Is it any wonder I won't leave you alone, Johanna?" she implored of me, looking slightly more normal for a split second, her head cocked to the side. Then, just as I was relaxing, her lip curled in extreme hatred. "You made me into this!" she screamed at the top of her voice. Then she lashed a out at me visciously. I cowered and covered my head with my arms to shield myself from the blow. I waited and waited but it never came. It looked at her apprehensively through a chink in my arms. She was just standing there, staring at me distastefully.

"I don't know what your cowering for," she said. "I can't touch you." then she spun away from me, suddenly weary, back to her bloody windowsill. Literally. 

Dripping form the sill onto the floor was bright crimson blood. All the stuff I had been trying to hold back nearly came flooding back. I refused to let it. It didn't stop the blood flowing silently onto the floor from imprinting on my eyelids and running down  my vision.

Just as I was recovering, my mother walked into the room. How opportune. I waited to notice Amber sitting on the sill, in her own blood, but she didn't. She just walked into the room and sat down on one of the visitor's chairs, her eyes never leaving mine. Since I had been admitted permanent lines of worry had taken up residence around her eyes and between her brows. She tried to reach for my hand but I hid it under the covers. I tried to pretend I didn't see the look of hurt flash through her tired eyes. I just couldn't summon the energy to feel anything towards her anymore. I could still feel the love that I used to feel for her, but it felt like it was far away, at the end of a tunnel I could never hope to trek through.