******
Blue. That's the last thing I saw before I died. Thick, encompassing blue. It enveloped me, surrounded me on all sides and dragged me down. It's jarring, to go from being able to breathe, to having it all taken from you in half a second. I was floating away, no sense of direction and without any safety to keep me tied down to the earth as I thrashed hard enough to cause the stagnant water to churn with foam, the taste of it invading my mouth. It's disorienting, not knowing which way is up, not knowing if you're struggling to the surface or just swimming deeper. It was cold, I remember that too. The kind of cold that spikes through your body and weights down in the pit of your stomach. The kind of cold that you can feel running throughout your veins, turning your blood into icy prickling shards. The kind of cold that settles in your very bones and doesn't go away. The shock from only being knee deep, teeth chattering, limbs shaking and knocking together like wind chimes, to having the icy lake blanket my body and drag me down made me open my mouth to scream, swallowing a gulping mouthful in the process, causing me to choke and gag as air didn't come.
I must have been panicking because I could feel my pulse thrumming hard and fast, the only indication that I was still alive tied with my own heartbeat pounding in my ears, reverberating like thunder in my skull, my body's way of telling me that something is wrong. And something was wrong, I couldn't find the surface, everything seemed dark, white spots flickered in my vision. My hands grasping at nothing, my feet scrabbling at the soft mud floor underneath me as my skin tingled, already cooling, as if I were already dead. I should be able to stand, why couldn't I stand? Why couldn't I move? My body was giving up, tired from struggling against a seemingly unstoppable force. My limbs felt like lead even as I continued struggling against the familiar, strong grip that held me just below the surface. Muffled screams echoing from my mouth that only resulted in more water pouring down my throat.
I remember my body slowing down, limbs getting sluggish and clumsy as my lungs pushed past the breaking point from the water that flooded into them relentlessly. It was painful, no one ever really talks about how painful it is to drown, how it burns as if you are being consumed by a raging fire from the inside out, as if you are being eaten alive. You give up, your body feels so heavy, helpless to what's happening, even when air is half a foot above, I could see the sunlight now, a pale yellow shining through the murky lake water, as if it were mocking me, taunting the fact that I was unable to move, that I was being held under.
In movies there's always a chance, the lead girl keeps fighting, plot armor causing her to gain inhuman strength to push the big bad monster off of her, letting her to reach the surface, letting her breath. But this isn't a movie, and my life won't be saved because the director wanted to keep me around for the end credits. In real life final girls aren't victims, and I've been a victim my whole life.
Yet all I remember thinking about in that very moment wasn't the pain, it wasn't Ashley or Lyra or the Group or even It. All I was thinking about was him. His betrayal running through my veins, burning worse then the fire in my chest, worse then the raw muscle of my throat as I opened my mouth in a garbled silent scream, inviting more water in. Isn't that was love is? Suffering? Pain? I had no one to blame but myself, I had trusted too easily, too fast, and now I was paying the price. The panic felt like a distant memory now, was I supposed to be hurting? Was I supposed to be feeling anything other than this eerie emptiness?
I was past caring, my brain shutting down, making everything seem hazy and slow. There was nothing else I could do. I couldn't breathe anymore, the water filled every crevice of my throat, pressing my esophagus and pushing its way into my windpipe until there was nothing left to breathe out. Choking me, filling me. I was dying. I was sure of it. My adrenaline draining as I realized fighting was getting me nowhere, there was no point anymore. So I stopped. I stopped struggling against the arms holding me down, the very arms that used to hold me so gently, the arms that had held me as I cried, the arms that had braided my hair and brushed stray eyelash's off my cheek, the arms that used to make me feel safe. His betrayal is what made me give up, it's what made me slump, worn out and weak, against his hold, succumbing to the unyielding suffocation.
I opened my eyes, not caring anymore about the dirty water of the quarry, no longer caring about the sting of it on my corneas. All I cared about was looking at him one last time. And as I turn my face to his, straining to see him clearly through the foot of stagnant water separating us, I was no longer a dead girl in her local quarry, I was a teenage girl hopelessly in love with who she though was her everything. And he was crying. He was sobbing, tears slipping down the angles of his beautiful face in rivulets, and I couldn't do anything but watch, a deep rooted instinct in me wanted to reach for him, to brush away his tears, to kiss his face and whisper that everything will be alright, and as I stare back at him, I make sure that feeling rips itself apart till it's nothing. And as I felt the last dregs of my life drain from me, I just stared at his face, warped and blurry from the disturbed water and the bright spots coating my vision. I looked for any sign, any hint of remorse that could be found on the planes of his face to show that he didn't want this, that it didn't have to happen this way. And though he was crying, I couldn't find any guilt, I couldn't find any regret, his cold eyes felt nothing, as if this was nothing, as if we had been nothing. Just staring down at me, staring until I'm gone. Their faces, all above the surface, all staring down at me, blurred out, blurred away, as my weak eyes fixated on him, going in and out of focus, all I had ever wanted was him.
The only person I'd ever truly loved, I'd thought to myself as I died. The only person that'd ever be able to hurt me. The only person I'd let get away with it. I go limp in his grip, my nails that had been embedded deep enough into the flesh on his arms to draw blood detaching, leaving red dripping crescents etched into his skin. My last gift to him, a symbol that I had been there, that I had been his. I knew there would be no one else for me. I know now there will never be anyone else for me, and my heart broke once more, my soul shattered. No one else would understand the feeling that came with losing something as beautiful as a soul, no one would ever truly understand how I felt in those last moments; trying to draw in a breath but only choking on the endless water that spilled down my throat. I could see bubbles escaping my lips, rising to the surface, going where I couldn't, mocking my pitiful struggles. Silly girl, you thought he actually cared about you?
My eyesight dimmed as the world under the water of the Baymont quarry turned dark, the faint sunlight I could just make out from the surface fading to a pinprick of light as I sank deeper into the water, leaving everything behind. My back colliding with the muddy bank as my thoughts grew fuzzy, eyelids fluttering, limbs floating around limply, my choking gurgles echoing underwater, lungs fighting for release but I can barely move, barely think.
Though the haze I pictured what my body would look like once it was dredged up from the bottom of the quarry, all blue tinged lips, mud streaked hair, splintered nails, waterlogged and cold. I wondered if my Mom would cry, how long would it take her to realize I was missing? Based on my behavior the past few months it might take a while. How many hours it would take for me to become a corpse? How long before my body truly stopped operating? Slowly rotting away in the darkness of the shallow lake, bones poking out of my translucent skin, I'm not a corpse yet, but I'm still rotting. Ive always been rotting, since I lost Ashley, since I first saw It, since birth. I heard once that when you die, your brain is still awake for up to seven minutes, that it replays all of your memories. I hoped for my sake that it would be the people I missed, the innocent ones that had been taken from me simply by being near me, because I am cursed, and to know me is to be cursed as well.
Somewhere in the distance, as I crossed the line between life and death, I would swear that I heard the familiar dull swish and thud of a crowbar followed distantly with the clinking of bullet shells being kicked across a linoleum floor. Old memories, ones that I couldn't place in the buzzing of my mind. In the corner of my vision I saw the tall pale thing standing by shore, the one I had been seeing for months, years. Watching me as static fills my ears as if a nest of angry hornets had invaded my brain, in a second It was gone and I with followed shortly after.
My eyes finally closed and the world faded away, darkness creeping into my mind like fog, and all I could feel were my heart pounding, the tempo to that of a funeral march, slowly getting slower, each beat sounding like it would be the last as my body became numb to pain. My mind slipping away into nothingness as the world around me fades, slowly dissolving into gray. I couldn't breathe, I needed to breathe.
I listened to the slowing thuds of my heart, and somewhere between life and death everything felt suspended; there was a strange peace, a sort of calm. I'd been close to death just once before and it had been different than this, more painful, more of a struggle to let go. I hoped that in whatever afterlife I was walking towards, wherever it was, it wouldn't be hell. I think I passed out then, the last few seconds of life flashing through the inner workings of my mind and out of my parted lips as the oxygen deprivation took effect, and that is the last time I truly remembered the pain.
******
My heart stopped for two hours and 36 minutes, at least that's what the nurse at the hospital told me. She asked me what I was doing down by the quarry in the first place, I tried to answer but it felt like my throat seized up before I could get out a single word. She told me it was a miracle, that I was lucky to be alive. I couldn't find it in me to agree with her. I'm still not entirely sure why I'd been dragged back into life. It felt less like luck and more like a sick joke. I didn't turn him or his friends in, I'm still not entirely sure why. I think I still liked to play pretend, make believe that in some other plane of existence that he was still mine.
The evidence of what they had done to my dead body was evident, dark blue and purple bruises decorating my neck and collarbone, littering my inner thighs. I had deep lacerations on my lip, cheek and eyebrow, cuts across most of my torso from dragging myself up the incline that lead to the road, and scrapes embedded into the palms of my hands from when I had grabbed onto a large chunk of granite to help pull myself up from the bed of the shore. Blood oozed out of the deepest cuts, staining the sheets below me, painting it an acidic reddish brown color that mixed with my tears. It was disgusting. I was disgusting. The blood, it coated my body, smeared over every inch of me. The room reeked of it, the smell permeating the air, coating my lungs, burning them. All I was now was burning. I was surprised whenever I saw my reflection that I wasn't charred to an unrecognizable stub.
I was told that when I first arrived to the hospital the doctors were considering just grabbing a fresh body bag and wheeling me off to the coroner. The nurse that treated me, a middle aged women who reminded me of my Mom in ways that made me ache inside told me fondly that I would've been the "prettiest girl in the morgue." Her southern drawl and her soft eyes did me in and I gave my first sign of life that wasn't just blinking and breathing, I looked up at her, I didn't smile and she didn't seem to expect me to, she thankfully didn't comment on the long scratches on my arms, ones that uncannily looked like they were created by fingernails, she also didn't mention how my own nails were cracked and bloodied. She just smiled sadly and put on fresh bandages, ignoring how I immediately flinched and tensed up. She was one of the only people I let touch me.
They told me that the police were going to need some explanation for my injuries, I didn't speak, I didn't smile, I didn't move unless someone tried to touch me, whenever someone did try I did everything in my power to get away, all snapping jaws and unbridled screams, swinging my bony joints in a desperate attempt to get whatever doctor it was to stay back. They told me no one here was going to hurt me, that I was safe. I had thought I was safe at the quarry with him. But here we are. My skin crawling and burning with the knowledge that I had been touched, unaware and helpless, and I couldn't even remember it.
But even as my body had ached in a way I hadn't known was possible, as my eyes had snapped opened and I jerked up, retching up lake water, before realizing that I was alone, that he had just left my body on the sharp rocks, sprawled out in a pool of my blood and their excretion, bra unclasped and underwear ripped along the seam. Water rushing out my lungs, finding a path from my mouth, my nose filling with the putrid spray of lake water. Spitting it out in disgust, coughing and spluttering, the taste of iron lingering on my tongue. Then my brain kicked back into overdrive and I started screaming, and kept screaming, my body shaking violently as more salty fluid escaped my mouth, splattering onto the rocky ground as my cries filled the silence surrounding me. My voice cracked and didn't sound human as my screams yielded to ugly wet sobs. Even as I retched and wailed, curled in a tight ball on my side, too weak to move from my place on the quarry's bed, my cheek prickling against the sharp rocks it was pressed against, I loved him, after all he had done to me, I cried for him, for the trust I had misplaced with him, I cried for my innocence that had been stolen from me, I cried because how could I ever love again? How could I trust anyone again?
I screamed to God, my throat raw with the effort. I screamed till my vocal cords gave out leaving me rasping, begging, pleading that I could go back in time,
"Forgive me Father for I have sinned. I am unworthy of your protection. Take it back, please, take it all back.." I wailed into the night sky. But I was wrong. I didn't want forgiveness. They didn't deserve forgiveness. I couldn't find anything pure left in me to forgive, all I wanted now was punishment, all I wanted was revenge. My pleading went unanswered. There was no god, I was alone.
I had no choice but to drag myself on my hands and knees up the steep hill,
my palms getting cut raw on loose rocks and twigs as I clawed my way upwards, towards the road that winds over the quarry's bridge in hopes that a car would pass by and someone would stop for me. I thankfully knew the area well enough but it was dark and the landscape felt different at night. The trees seemed to materialize right in front of me and my eye sight was limited as my head throbbed. The buzzing in my ears almost unbearable.
When I finally got to the main road I let out a relieved sob. It was raining and I lay there, hugging myself with my blistered hands, curled on my side in the middle of the road, shivering. The full moon hung in the night sky, a dead thing over a dying thing. I kept my eyes glued shut as another droplet landed on my forehead. It slid slowly downwards, past my ear and down the slope of my neck, causing my skin to crawl. It was touching me. My teeth were chattering together so much I thought they might shatter like glass, but I stayed awake long enough to count every star I could see, the moonlight shining down on me like a halo. The last thing I saw before I passed out for the second time that night was headlights beaming down on me and the screech of a dingy red ford SUV braking hard before my head hit the rough asphalt and I fell deep into the darkness.