by C.K. Bryant
Chapter Eleven
Kira opened her eyes expecting to see the clearing. It took a moment for her to focus, but when she finally saw well enough to recognize her surroundings, she lay on her bed, staring up at the two kitten posters tacked to her ceiling.
Kira blinked hard.
It can’t be. It was so real. Did I dream it all? She threw her legs over the side of the bed and sat up, catching her reflection in the full-length mirror in the corner of the room. She was a wreck. Not only was her hair a tangled mass, but her clothes looked as though she’d been dragged through a marsh. She glanced to the left of the door where her jacket hung on a hook; below that sat her white sneakers. Bits of grass and dried leaves covered the shoes.
She closed her eyes and tried not to think about what the physical evidence meant. She didn’t want to know how much of it was real and how much may have been her overactive imagination. She was home. Safe.
Kira brought her right hand out in front of her and turned it over, exposing the jagged scab that trailed across her palm and the tiny thread of silver that wound around her wrist, more solid proof that what she’d been through was real.
A sudden surge of bile rose in her throat. She jumped to her feet and ran to her bathroom just in time to flip up the toilet seat and heave the contents of her stomach into the bowl. She fell to her knees and placed both arms on the rim, waiting for another rush of vomit to swell in her throat. When it didn’t come, she turned to sit on the floor, leaning her back against the wall.
The house was eerily quiet. She listened for any signs of her mom or Paul, but heard nothing. A cold shiver ran up her spine. She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them. She couldn’t think. She didn’t want to think. When she began to shiver, she stood and turned on the shower, then stepped in, clothes and all. She stood under the spray until the water began to cool, then adjusted the tap. One by one, she peeled off each piece of clothing, letting them fall to the shower floor in a heap. Streams of mud flowed away like blood seeping from a wound.
When she’d used up all the hot water, Kira turned off the valves and opened the shower door. Across from her hung a full-length mirror—a stupid place to put it, really. Who wants to look at themselves, naked and dripping wet? Kira swiped the mirror with her hand, only to see that the blurred image before her seemed different somehow. The subtle change wasn’t in her face—it was in her eyes, the way the small stream of light coming from the window made them glimmer and shine. Okay, Kira, snap out of it. She wrapped an oversized towel around her body and walked back to her bedroom.
