Losing Your Life

When I walked into her bedroom, nothing looked out of the ordinary. Her curtains were open and the bright sun bathed the room in a glorious, angelic light. Directly below the window was a single bed covered in magazine clippings and poster board. Her walls were engulfed with these collages of advertisements and beauty. She was not here – and neither were her scissors.
“Hello?” I hollered; surprised at my shaky voice.
Silence.
I stuck my head out the door and looked both ways as if I were crossing a street. All of the doors were closed in an ominous manner. What lied behind them, I couldn’t tell. I stepped into the crushing silence of the hallway and walked past her brother’s room, her parent’s room, and her mother’s work room; she wouldn’t be in any of them. It felt like a scary movie as I walked to the bathroom at the end of the hallway. Time slowed to a crawl as I reached for the round, golden doorknob and noisily turned it.
The bathroom’s only window faced the setting sun, which momentarily blinded me. White light filled my eyes while I continued walking and stepped on something that made a metallic sound against the white tile. I knew what made the noise but I looked anyways. Her scissors shined even though they were spotted with a dark liquid. They were lying in a pool of the same liquid and its color clashed against the immaculate tiles. My eyes followed the stream of molasses while my mind screamed for me to run. There was another pool of blood with her beautiful wrist in it. There were multiple scars and scabs up and down her paler than normal arm with a deep gash running up the entire thing. I gazed without emotion as I absorbed all of the images: her bloody hands, her pale skin, her dead eyes, her blood covering the floor, her staring eyes.
She stared into my eyes like she never had before. She saw anything and everything she had never seen before and instantly understood it all. I felt naked. I felt exposed even though she was the one exposing her insides to me. She saw my secrets and I saw her biology—nothing more. We just remained—staring.
A car alarm went off down the street was all it took for me to be pulled back into the moment. Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. I fell to my knees and shook her body. There was no sound, no reaction, no response. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up! My instincts told me to find her pulse so I grabbed her sticky arms and when I felt what should be her wrist I stopped cold. My fingers weren’t touching her skin…they were wiggling around inside of her wrist. All of the blood I touched was old and dry; no new blood squirted out with the beating of a heart because her heart had long ago stopped.