by Riley Mason
As her fists beat on the protection of glass that separated us, I can see sheets of blood clinging to it once her fists are removed. She was breaking herself to try and get to me. Then the lights began to flicker. Drowning the connection of rooms in darkness before re-firing, bringing light back.
“Please, no,” I said, then I realized that I was still wearing the protective mask and tugged down on it with my bleeding hand for her to be able to read my lips. For her to know that I never meant to hurt her, for her to see that there was something wrong with me.
Then the lights burn themselves out and darkness clouds the two rooms, drowning us in black
Suddenly, all those noises that remained silent in the light come to life in the dark when the cloud of ambient noise doesn't dilute them down.
For a second, I could only hear the sounds of her body attacking the glass, hard punches knocking on the pane, screams erupted, curses, the thick layers protecting me from her rage, but I couldn’t imagine what she would do to me if she were able to get through. To get her hands on me, to punish me, to kill me.
After a few seconds, the emergency lights activated and shed some spared light into the rooms, the lab got most of it, the viewing room got whatever was leftover in the lab. It was enough for me to see her, standing there, a fit of anger in her eyes that was so sure I didn’t think that it could be turned off, calmed down, or settled.
She’s wasn’t alone though, even though the landscape of shadow stretched out behind her, I could see that she’s not the only one in the room. There was a figure there, lurking in those shadows, not hiding, not still, but moving with patience toward this little shred of light that’s been offered.
I saw it before she did, her eyes, her hatred, are still all focused on me. I knew that she wouldn't even know it was there because I saw my disfigured face walking up behind the woman. That lost soul with her rotted features, the skin, and bones moving toward her. That image of a woman that I had wished for so long had gone too far and actually taken what life she forced me to take, what crime she forced my body to commit.
Her dead eyes stared at me and that’s what drew my focus, it was no longer the mother and her breath of hate that she was huffing or the tears that were falling from her eyes. It was this figure of mine that watched me as she whispered something into this woman’s ear, grabbed her by the side of her face. Through the dark it was hard to tell what was happening, it was almost like I could hear that feral hiss, absent of words or meaning but more like a signal of pain and depression. Something being impressed into this woman against her will, forcing this message into her head, her face changing. The anger dulling, her features becoming calm, docile.
I watched as the woman's eyes morphed to a cold and lost black and then her features were no longer framed in anger, they were framed in nothing at all. Her palms pressed up against the glass where the evidence of her fists and blood hung. Then her head smashes against the glass so hard that she splits the skin against her skull.
CHAPTER 52
I re-covered the baby on the table, gently placing the cloth back up over his sleeping eyes and pressed down gently on the corners. My hands rested on one another in front of me as I stared at the mother, alone on the other side of the viewing window. I watched as they all held one another, sharing the sadness that was infecting that room. The connections that each of them had to this child who was laying in front of me are broken, severed.
My tears fought and some of them prevailed, but I fought harder to keep myself together and to hold what composure I was trying to keep, despite it trying to abandon me.
I watched as a family broke down as they saw a teal sheet that housed what remains there were of their family, their child, their nephew, their godson, their grandchild. This little figure in front of me was all those things to all those people, taken so much sooner than his time.
When I pulled back the sheet, it was hardest to watch the mother. A woman so consumed by her own sadness that it almost put the rest of the family in the background. She so recently carried this baby inside of her body, only so recently releasing him out into the real world and now that story had ended faster than it was supposed to.
My respect for them left me like a statue, I didn’t interfere, I held what emotions I could to myself with the exception of a few tears that came out of my eyes and quickly hid behind the surgical mask that I wore over my nose and mouth.
When it was over, and the blinds had closed on that family and their child, I knew that the next time that scene would unfold would be at the wake or the funeral. When the rest of the family and friends of that group would have to come together and bear witness to an accident of nature that never should've happened.
It was the same mistake of nature that had happened to me. My hand went to my stomach as I left the room, pressed to where it had once held life and I could almost feel the heat even through the layers of clothes and the rubber gloves that hugged my fingers. A sharp, raw pain where the life was once being cultivated inside of me, growing until it was supposed to become its own person with its own memories, his or her own stories.
I rubbed at my eye with the back of my wrist to wash away the water coming out of them. Neymar was standing there, I know he was concerned, worried that I might not be able to see this through to the end. He knew as much as I did what hurt me, what my points were, and where my stress fractures could come from.
He was there to console me once I left the room. Usually, it was him that explained to the family what the next step was for their loved ones, instead, he had given that time to me. To explain to me the words he felt I needed to hear to help me walk through this moment in time.
It hit me harder than I had expected, I was proud that I had endured as much as I had but the second I was out of that room, it was like I had fallen apart. That fortress inside of me that had kept me up and whole was decaying.
I bent down to my knees, my face poured my feelings into my hands. Neymar went down next to me, his hand on my back, silent as I let go of everything I was holding onto. “For a woman that walked in on the murder of her whole family, I’m surprised she can lose it this hard for a miscarriage,” his whispers floated into my ear. “You were always meant to be fucked up.”
CHAPTER 53
I can't believe what I'd just heard as the words settled in me. I lifted my eyes, the tears were sticking to my face but they no longer fell because of the shock of what I'd heard plugged them up.
It didn’t make sense and for the briefest of moments, I was stuck in place pondering what he’d just said to me.
I looked back at him, a man that I'd trusted and respected for years who would let such disrespect for my history spill out of him. As I looked at him, my eyes curious, searching him for some reason that I could identify that made any sense at all, he backed away from me. His face filled with a disgust that I'd never seen before.
“You’re a failure,” he said to me.
I went to get up, to confront him, to put my face to his and forget for a moment that we were professional, I needed to address the line that he’d crossed. The second I’m on my feet, that sadness from the lab dying inside of me as it was swallowed by the anger that was coming out of me, I realized that he was gone.
I took a few steps, around to where the bend up ahead curved out of my vision to see if I could see him there. It wasn’t like him to run, not if he was so liberal with his words. To let something like that come out meant that he had been feeling them, he was holding them, they didn't just come from nowhere.
“NEYMAR!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. My voice floated down the sterile hall ahead of me.
I picked up the pace, walking faster around the bend to find him. There was no way he could vanish that quick, not without me hearing him. Why would he say that to me?
“NEYMAR!” I screamed out again, this time louder, my voice traveled further, down the dead halls ahead of me, vibrating through the silence, not a single noise ahead to kill t
he echo as it bounced through the emptiness of the halls. I heard my voice floating down distances that I hadn’t walked yet. Moving like ghosts in the abandoned halls, housing someone I wanted to kill for what he’d said to me.
Nothing came back.
I stood there for a moment, frozen as if I were lost. My head was light, it was like my mind was rattled around in the bowl of my skull faster and harder than it could handle. I was dizzy and my weight and balance felt like they were leaving me.
“Hello?” I found myself saying. I was no longer the engine charged with anger but instead my voice sounded lost, innocent, abandoned as it moved down the hall with far less conviction and force for the man that it was hunting. I felt alone and isolated, almost forgotten in that wing of the hospital.
I was in this maze below the levels above where people moved around freely. An entire city of patients and hospital staff wandering and busy as they moved here and there adhering to schedules packed with more tasks and to-do’s than hours and minutes to allow them.
I was by myself surrounded by the dead and I turned to go back to a place I was more familiar with. Back to the lab where I spend my hours.
I suddenly felt a chill that slid up my back. Almost as if it slithered up the calcium of my spine, against the bone, rubbing awkwardly on the ridges at the center. Something wide and slimy that burrowed under my skin.
I was suddenly terrified of halls that knew me. Ones that I knew well enough to see them by any single sense of my body. None of them looked right anymore, all of them seemed so out of place, misaligned with how they sat in my memory. They were no longer walls I recognized but strange walls belonging to a place I'd never been before, housing something which terrified me.
I pushed my hand into the door that connected this hall with my lab and as I pushed back through I realized not only was I right about the walls, I was right about everything. What was waiting there for me took another stab at my heart and twisted and dragged whatever weapon was in my chest down into the pit of my stomach.
CHAPTER 54
It wasn’t not my lab that I was in. It was almost the furthest thing from it. Instead of the medical facility I expected to see, the entire scene had changed around me. Reconstructed from some memory that put it together identically to how it sat in my head.
I couldn’t believe I was looking at it, this time had come and gone and unlike the miscarriage, this memory was buried long ago, caged and forgotten. But, at the same time, here it was, in front of me. On display like it had never left.
Turning to push back through the door, I realized it was no longer there. The doors I had come through blended into the wall of the living room of a home I hadn't stepped foot in for years, if not decades. A home that was demolished after the court case had left the property in foreclosure and the foundation's history was enough to keep new buyers at arms length.
I looked at myself, a girl, no older than eight laying there in the corner, crying her eyes out. I could hear the sounds of my younger self, spilling her heart into her hands. One of them dripping with blood from the kitchen knife that was driven into her shoulder and the blade that slid against her elbow. Two scars I wear now, two of the most horrific scars decorating my body.
Slowly, through the darkness of the room, the only light that flooded through was from the streetlamp sitting outside and the gasps of light from the broken porch light that was still on, but barely worked.
I went to her, this version of me that shouldn't exist anymore, and I laid down on my knees next to her. She hadn't realized I was there, not even when I get down on my knees on the blood-soaked carpet next to her. The carpet that had drunk what's leaked out of her. The warm blood that she's lost breaks my heart because I knew the pain and the panic that she was in. Despite the years and the distance to those memories, they hadn't lost any of their strength.
When I put my arms on her shoulder, her face turned to me, she gasped in the fresh air. Blood coated her face, tears soaked the other parts of her and sweat beaded on her tiny brow. Her face held so much terror for a face that should hold only innocence and joy. I looked at her, analyzing what this day did to me so long ago. I wanted to protect her from it but I knew that it had soiled some part of her that was sacred up until this moment.
I looked at her and knew how much her life had changed from this day moving forward. I see her eyes, stained with red, tears had been pouring out of her eyes for hours now. She was too young, to stricken by fear and panic to do anything.
I knew what was on the other end of the room, it was the same thing she was looking at. I forced her to face me, whisper that she needed to keep quiet. I even held her face, that memory is something I can touch, something I can feel as her cheeks impress on my fingertips that this isn't just a memory.
My eyes faced her, and I told her that she needs to not make a sound. That to speak now would be dangerous and that I was there to protect her. To keep her safe because I knew the danger was gone, only the carnage stuck around.
I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close to my chest. I couldn’t help my eyes from wandering to the scene ahead of me. Seeing everyone that I loved. The family I was born into, laying there, massacred, their blood and bodies spewed everywhere. Their eyes wide open, their mouths ajar, their faces locked in the looks they’d had when their hearts went cold in their chest.
Even I had to look away from them as I pressed this younger me closer into my chest, knowing she could hear my heart trying to dig its way out.
CHAPTER 55
I held her and rocked her, knowing that it would be an hour or two before someone stumbled on the crime scene. When the little girl that I was holding would go into a shock so brutal it would last a year, she won't say a single word to anyone. Her language will disappear, and the inside of her body will turn cold because all the love she had ever known lay dead in front of her.
The metal smell was in the air, floating on the currents of air the central air system was breathing into the house. I heard her moans as she cried, muffled by the shirt and my body, wrapped in my embrace. I didn't let her go but soon enough I’d have to, I wouldn't have a choice. They'd come for her and I wasn’t quite sure how I fit there. How I was able to hold a thought in my arms, how I could be a part of something that had happened so many years ago.
Death had been such an intrinsic part of my life, it had never left me and I felt like it adored me more than most. There weren’t many people that I knew who had seen this type of horror packed so tight into such a limited amount of life. Knowing the terrible things that I’d seen, to stare at them again, I wasn’t defended, if anything I was weaker. It did more damage because it knew the routes to take, it had evolved for who I was, it remembered the body it had once traveled through.
I lifted her up, scooping her up into my arms as I stood, her limp body conformed to how I held her, like she’d fallen asleep. Wrapping my arm under her, my other around her side as she latched her chubby arms around my neck, her face still hiding in my shoulder, I started to back away.
I held her face and whispered to her to close her eyes. The only entrance and exit to the room were on the other side of the massacre and I would have to walk through it, I couldn't leave her in there. The scars from today would cut too deep into her and it would change everything.
“Are your eyes closed?” I asked her and I could feel her head nod in agreement to me.
I walked through the room, daring myself to keep my eyes ahead of me for now but knowing that my mind wouldn’t listen. It wandered over the bodies, studying the damage the knives had done to them and then the bullets once the knife was taken out of the equation.
I closed my eyes and exhaled a heavy breath that steamed in the air. A small cloud trapped in the air that I’d never felt before, spread out and dissipated.
It took me a second to realize that I was no longer holding the little girl. There was no weight in my arms, nobody tied to mine.
Instead, I could see her, in th
e darkness of the kitchen. Her body positioned in a place that the light didn't quite reach too. She was calm, her hands at her side, her face relaxed, placid despite what was sitting right in front of her. "Baby," I said to her, but she nodded her head angrily. It was not pure anger but rather the anger of a child that had just been denied something she wanted. A treat that had fallen out of her reach or a playtime when she'd been put on punishment.
I bent down to get on her level, knowing that I was still surrounded by aging flesh, bodies of my family that had already started their decomposition. I had to close my eyes and reset myself because despite how many corpses I'd seen, only this one time could take the definition of my family. All of them for a robbery that didn't quite work out right. For someone so desperate for drugs, they not only killed four people, but they also died in the process, chasing a high that would've lasted them no more than a few hours.
When I looked up again, it was no longer the little girl standing there, it was her watching me from that field of darkness. She reached a hand out to me but didn't move from her spot. Blood had charred to her skin, dried and coated, for now, the flow of those injuries had stopped. As she opened those cracked, peeling lips, it was no longer a low moan or shriek that was born but rather a voice, a tarnished and weak version of my own.
"Watch it," she said, and I fell to the ground, my temples feeling as if they were about to explode.
CHAPTER 56
It felt like there were drills being dragged through my head. I was down on the floor, my hands cradled my temple, trying to push back in the pressure that was coming out from them. My eyes were pinched shut, tears were still seeping through the sealed skin of my eyelids. My mouth was hunched open like the dead family that surrounded me but there was too much pain in me for me to make any noise.
I was on my side, my knees up to my chest, the small corner of my mind that still belonged to me, I begged to help me. To find a way to make this pain stop. To make it go away and what I’d trade to make sure that happened. It didn't it though.
