Nyx Red's Salvation (Draft)

c h a p t e r. 4

Wouldn't save him quick enough.

She was covered in blood too, but the only difference was that it wasn't her own.

It was happening all over again.

She couldn't stop it.

Why couldn't she stop it?

"Eva, Eva," Teddy said, barely able to keep his eyes open, voice slurry from blood loss. "Let me go."

"No, no," She sobbed. "No. You can't leave me. No."

It was fair to say that she was in shock.

"Eva, I love you. I love you." He said, green eyes slowly losing life. "The notes... the notes are on m-my desk, Eva-- the notes. I love you. Eva, Eva, I--"

That's the last thing he would ever say.

Nyx woke up in a cold sweat, gasping as she sat up, her hand over her racing heart.

She felt like she was going to throw up.

Melinoe, a sweet pit bull she got when their older dogs died, was sleeping on top of her but Nyx quickly wiggled out from under her and ran to the bathroom, skidding to her knees in front of the toilet, and then puking.

By the time she was done, it was mostly stomach acid and it made her throat burn.

Coughing, she grasped the edges of the seat as she tried to breathe.

The only thing she could be grateful about in that moment was that she had put her hair into a braid last night so she didn't get vomit in the strands. Other than that, she'd fight God at the moment for making her live through what she had.

Nyx was trembling throughout her whole body.

The nightmare— it wasn't just a nightmare.

It was memories.

It was— it was when Teddy tried to kill himself and Nyx tried so, so hard to save him but she didn't know how. Their other best friend, Axel, had already ran for help and was trying to find the first aid kit but she had been left alone.

She was left all alone to watch him die. To watch as they brought him back in the ambulance, only for the relief to be crushed as suddenly her world was turning on it's axis.

A heavy pressure on her chest, warm liquid filling her mouth and tasting like iron, pain spreading through her body and then going numb. Spinning and spinning and spinning then they just-- then they just stopped.

She doesn't remember who found them.

She doesn't remember being saved.

She doesn't remember getting rushed into an emergency surgery that left her with three metal ribs and a screws in her jaw.

She doesn't remember the fact that when she woke up, she looked in the mirror and thought that her mother was right in front of her, the scar over her face stitched and covered in a clear cloth.

But she remembers that she was the last person that he ever saw; her eyes, her face, her shaking and bloodied body. She remembered his last words and the last message he told her. She remembered his suicide note but not the funeral. She remembered the sting of her bloodied knuckles and the cool wall of the jail cell but not what Teddy's abusive parents looked like broken and bleeding from her hands alone.

It wasn't fair.

Teddy, Axel, and her had a plan. They had a plan. They were going to tell her father and they were going to get his sibling's in a good spot. They were going to make it. They were going to get him out of the house, they were going to make sure that their best friend would be safe.