and a swelling rage + gabriel oneshot

swear that for a moment, I thought I was dead.

that night, when they were trying to bring me back, I remember waking up on and off, fading in and out like the way the television sometimes does when we're watching the games. The world was crackling like electronic fuzz in my ears and I was dead. I was dead and I knew it and it was the most awful thing I ever felt.

Mam says that they weren't sure I was going to make it.

I'd lost a lot of blood and if the woman who had a flower shop across the street from my grocery store hadn't decided to close up early that day, if she hadn't passed by my alley when she did, I would have bled out and died for sure.

Mam says she named me for an angel for a reason.

I somehow lived. Through bouts of infection, through fever and nightmares that turned my attacker into a monster, I lived.

The pain was something that I'll never fully be able to describe. It was more than just the blade, it was the feeling of my body shutting down on me, piece by piece. I could feel myself dying. I knew I was going and I didn't want to. I held on by the skin of my teeth but I did hold on, I did.

I remember sort of bumping along, like a boat on a lake. My nose kept hitting the waves but I cut through them and I was held in shaking arms but I felt safe. I counted the streetlights we passed under, concern barely dripping through me when I realized I wasn't being taken home.

The lights of the hospital were bright, glaring. I shut my eyes against them and somone shouted at me, another voice said I was going into shock. They stuck pins in me and they cut me open further so they could make sure nothing was ruptured. My liver had been cut into. They injected me with something to stop the bleeding there and it hurt. Badly.

My mam came and I was screaming. They put me under and sewed up my liver for me and then they wrapped up my wound. My mother told me that even though they kept telling her otherwise, she thought I was dead. My teeth were stained red with my own blood and she was certain that I shouldn't have been breathing so fast.

They told me when I woke up that I was lucky to be alive. My mother was holding my hand so tightly that I couldn't feel my fingertips. Her eyes were so puffy from crying that I don't think she could see me.

All I could do was cry. It hurt so bad and I was disoriented. I thought I was dying but I was living instead. Gramps and Gran were stood in the corner and there were tears in my Gramps eyes and he told me that even when he'd lost his pinky, he hadn't cried.

I'd scared them bad.

I hadn't meant to.

They kept me in the hospital for a whole week and then when they sent me home, my Mam had to push me in a wheelchair. I was so goddamned weak that I could barely walk. She had to go slow because if we hit a bump wrong my liver could open back up. Even when I got home, I was confined to three weeks of bed rest.

I spent a lot of it sleeping. Everything made me tired. Holding a conversation for too long even exhausted me. Mam said it was because I spent so much of my time being mad.

He gut me like a pig and left me in the alley like I was just trash.

I suppose that's what we slum kids are to the fancy careers though, with their rich houses and state-of-the-art training centers. We're nothing. We're ants.

Gran brought me flowers from the garden to show me how well our seedlings were doing. I couldn't care about them. I tried to. I tried to bring back that feeling of excitement I'd had when we planted them but I couldn't. During that time, all I could feel was that anger, white and hot all over.

That and fear.

I wet the bed often. Sometimes it was just because I was sick from my liver but I used those times to pretend that was all it was when I wet my bed in fear.

I dreamed about the boy stalking up my staircase at night to finish the job, his knife rusty and red from my blood from before. It scared the shit out of me.

Mam was nice about my disposition at first but after two months I could see her getting tired of it. I was back at school for three days a week in the last week of the first month after I died but anything else made me tired.

We argued more.

She told me that I had to put it aside and stop moping, that I had to thank god for what I had and live my life.

I told her there was no point.

Someone could come out of the dark and just take it, just like that. Because I am trash, because kids like me aren't worth it, because I am weak. Weak, weak, weak.

Well I decided to stop.

Being weak, I'd just stop.

As I grew stronger I began to exercise, taking the long way home, leaving class early as an excuse. I'd run and lift anything that I could get my hands on that was heavy. At first I couldn't lift much, I was already a twig before I died, weeks of nothing hadn't helped but I didn't give up.

I kept working,no matter how much pain I was in, no matter how much it exhausted me.

I wouldn't let it happen again, no one was going to take my life from me.

I don't think Mam liked my new pursuits. Maybe anything was better than me just laying around moping. There was a noticeable difference though after a few months. I had muscle that I'd never had before. I moved from the bottom of the class in Physical Education to the top. My grades didn't suffer for it either. I was never the smartest kid but I was in the top of the class.

All of myself was focused on finding that kid and confronting him. At this point, I know his features better than my own. He's in my dreams every night, brandishing a knife, a lie on his face.

The fault was mine for believing that people were inherently good.

It's all a lie.

We're all fucked up sinners, that's why there's a hell in a first place. We all belong there. Even good people will end up there.

I'm not good.

I'm poisoned.

Sometimes I think that I really did die and I'm in hell already.

My body is in pain a lot, I got bad cramps now and Mam says it's because of phantom pains. They are debilitating when they strike me, I am sent to my knees. Mam used to worry a lot but I got better at hiding the pain.

Now when it strikes I just lie down on my back, I pretend that I just needed a nap and I shut my eyes and pretend that I am a boat, floating out at sea, my nose breaks the waves. I am peaceful. Gran says that's meditating but I just think it's escaping.

If this is hell than it's far colder than I thought it'd ever be.

I can tell that Mam is worried for me, that she thinks I've changed too much It's true that I have, a lot. I can't bring myself to laugh. It always comes out flat when I try. Smiling is hard too because every time I try it feels like I'm trying to stretch a muscles that can't stretch like that.

The boy who was afraid of pain, who didn't want to hurt anyone, who was appalled at the idea of it. He's dead. He died. Someone killed him and I became like this, someone wiser. I became someone who won't be tricked again.

All I ever seem to do now is train. This is because I made a goal for myself. I want to meet with the boy who did this to me and I want to teach him a lesson and to do that I have to be able to become strong enough to beat him.

Mam says it isn't healthy, what I'm doing.

I can't bring myself to care.

I just want to know, I'm hungry for it.

I want to know why he killed me.