spine chill, [ white rabbits. ]
Jul 1, 2022 10:05:23 GMT -5
Post by 🌱 kaitlin. on Jul 1, 2022 10:05:23 GMT -5
ALICE
ballinger.
Everything is so loud in her ears. It's like she can feel every noise in the base of her neck, throat thick with feeling too much, too soon. December lugs Linnea over his shoulder and Alice doesn't even have time to question whether or not he is ally or foe. Niles had chose him. She hadn't, but she'd chosen Niles, and he's making a trail of Niles blood where his shoes meet the ground, so she follows him.
I can't breathe, she thinks she says out loud. It's like she can feel every muscle in her chest tensing, all at once, suffocating her. I can't breathe, she thinks again.
She's hopeless, confused, a girl with blood soaking down the front of her dress. She's still got tears trailing. She's got both of her arms tucked up under Niles armpits, and she pulls him backward. His body leaves a red slick across the ground and she tries really hard not to look at the places on his neck where her tears trail through the pooling blood at the base of his adam's apple. I can't breathe, again. And then again. And again. And again. And again.
"-cember," she stumbles out, feeling her body giving out under her. It's pathetic, how small she feels. She's never really realized before the scope of her self, the very little she knows about, well, anything. It makes her feel like she's going to vomit again. December is leading, stronger strides than hers and bloody footprints in his wake, but the image of him blurs strangely against the backdrop of the mountains as they loom closer and closer. The ground shifts underneath her feet, grass giving way to stray sharp rocks, broken bits of items she doesn't recognize, and stray animal bones. Some of them are picked clean, long gone and turning to dust, but flies circle around a carcass she spots at the base of the ridge and it's too much, all over again, and she slips. It's awful, toppling forward and landing on Niles body as it topples with her. Their bodies hit the ground with hard thuds. An elbow catches the rocks and she manages his full name this time—"December," she chokes out. "December, I can't breathe."
