close encounters // kitty
Sept 6, 2014 16:22:29 GMT -5
Post by Onyx on Sept 6, 2014 16:22:29 GMT -5
Grace Young / 14 / five #496/ kittyoemily SHIN OF ADOX | My mouth tastes of iron and ash as I force my shuddering body at a run out of the District hospital and into the bright midday sunlight of the town. It's not an unfamiliar taste - rather, I know exactly what will happen next if I don't suppress my immune system and calm myself down. The back of my throat is raw and hot, and swallowing is so painful that I almost cry out into the air, syrup-thick with the low smog that always comes as noon draws on, but I don't - my breath is too precious right now to waste with wailing. It's more than a little terrifying that I'm reacting so badly to the most recent form of treatment that the totally incapable and ill-equipped doctors have attempted on me. I thought closing my eyes and removing my thoughts from the room that they pumped that blue-green gel into the crook of my elbow might help - perhaps it was me thinking too hard about all the reasons it could go wrong was why their cures had never worked in the past. Perhaps I'm cursed. But it seems like nothing will help me. Even though my parents still ignore the fact, I have embraced the thought that very shortly I am going to be dead. Not to say that, were the situation any different (had I not been so stupid the night I went snooping in my father's radiography lab) I would wish death on myself. The concept is entirely circumstantial, but because it's unavoidable, it's more calming for me to pretend it was always meant to be this way. However, as I keel over in an alley at the side of the hospital, where bins overflow with used equipment and dirty sheets for lack of a better place to dispose of them, one of my small, trembling palms spread on the bricks for support, the other tugging what's left of my thin, dark hair away from my mouth as I dry heave, I retract that last thought. I'm not calm at all. I'm not brave. My parents are still inside the building, but I know that when they're done talking to the doctors and then looking for me in the holding room, they'll come outside to comfort me. And I won't reject that comfort, either. I need it, need to be enveloped, swaddled in love and affection, persuaded everything will be okay. I need a friend. The shadow of a small human briefly eclipses the alley opening and I snap my head up to catch its owner. A small girl, a little older than me, hurries past. I can't help myself - I cry out "please help me!" before my body takes over and I double up again, gagging, trying to breath past the fluid rapidly rising up my throat, begging for some mercy - any mercy. All I can hope is that this child, whoever she is, can bring me that mercy I crave. |
