This is a continuation to my other story 'Once' in which I made up what I take to be Meg's backstory. She may seem a little OOC, as I'm taking into account...well...what happened in 'once' and why happens in this story. Thank you for reading!
Her mouth is…heavy.
Asleep. She's been asleep.
Odd. It's heavy. Weighed down. And her lips are dry…so dry they are cracking.
Bleeding. She can taste it on her tongue.
It's salty.
Her eyes are shut but there's a light making the lids red, revealing little splotches of colour dancing in the half real world of closed off vision. A burst of something – yellow, in fast dissolving pin pricks. Is she seeing colour? Or is it all in her mind? Blue bruising in a corner of her vision.
Blue. An important colour, she thinks. She remembers – blue.
Her eyelids are heavy. Too heavy. There is a pain in her finger – a small, infinite pain. A bite from a –
A what?
An…ant. Maybe. Yes, an ant.
She calls the image to mind.
An ant.
There's something brushing against her. Something around her. It makes her pant in sudden fear. All around her, crushing her, something sharp and rough. She moves in panic and feels a lance of pain in her belly. A sharp ache. And tender, flinching flesh on her cheeks, throbbing away from her movement. Bruises, maybe, and swollen lips. Cracks across her cheeks – from – fists?
The sun is hot.
She opens her eyes.
It burns.
'Hey - stop the car Alex!'
'What? Samantha, what-'
'In that field. There's a girl in that field.' Alex looks to where the other woman points.
'Christ.'
She stops the car and Samantha reaches for her handbag, with it's first aid kit, calling on all the training she can remember from that course back in uni. Recovery position, keep the neck steady, CPR if necessary, she's yelling at Alex to call 999 as she scrambles over the fence bordering the field, her girlfriend close behind her, already on the phone. Samantha skids down the slight slope, and starts to push her way through.
The girl is lying in the middle of the wheat field – Samantha wouldn't have seen her if it wasn't for the height of the Landrover Alex drives.
Even as she rips through the corn she's considering the odd position of the girl. Legs tight together, arms out on either side – almost as though she's been laid there. Deliberately. She is covered with a fine patina of…dirt? Dust?
And she's naked and there is blood between her legs and her face is covered with bruises and Samantha's stomach turns with the horrible implications of this grisly sight.
She expects the girl to be unconscious. Dead. But when she skids to a halt beside her and kneels down, the stranger's eyes are open. Panicked, they are fixed on a point in the brilliant blue sky, for all the sun's so bright it must burn blindness. The girl's chest rises and falls quickly… as though she's having a seizure. A fit.
'Are you alright?'
Samantha tries to make her voice sound calm.
But the girl doesn't respond, doesn't shift from her position, spread in that odd crucifix of bruised and battered limbs.
Samantha swallows.
'I'm Sam. Samantha.' She shrugs of her cardigan slowly, so as not the scare her, but the girl doesn't seem to notice. Gently, Sam leans over to cover her with the cardigan.
'Get away from me!' It's more a scream than words. Samantha leaps back as the girl writhes away, tumbling in the corn the same colour as her hair.
'Sam, are you ok?' Alex, coming behind her. The girl looks up, sees the taller woman, hisses almost like a cat and scrambles into the thick wheat.
'Stay away!'
'It's ok.' Alex says.
Samantha finds she can't speak. The girl's eyes –
Oh God, her eyes.
They are very large and very green. But the – terror. The fear.
The wounds. Inside that glassy pigment.
The girl pants, moves her head, panicked - more animal than human. She's muttering something.
'It hurts. Heavy. Heavy – attached.'
She stops her movements. Too suddenly. Almost like she's been hit. 'No.' She whispers.
Alex crouches down. 'Give me your hand, sweetheart.'
The girl ignores her.
'No.' she says again, and, oddly, looks down at herself. At the body covered with blood and bruises. Brings up her hands – and there is real, true, bone bruising horror in those eyes of her.
'No! No no no no no no no!' She touches her face, and the cry comes out again – as though it's tearing the lining of her throat. 'Not this. Anything but this! Not fucking this!' Then she's stood up – too too fast, for someone with flesh as mangled as hers, and she's running away from them, an off, lurching run, stumbling and falling and sprinting through the wheat
Samantha stands and takes a few steps – not sure whether to follow, what to do, how to help.
They watch the girl stagger away– clambour over the fence, fall to the ground and scrape the skin from her bruised knees. She gets up, and they see her legs bleeding – missing patches. They start to run, then.
The girl stumbles to their car, looks in the rearview mirror. They see her, even from their distance, touch her face.
There is a moment. An awful, mangled, mutilated moment.
Of silence.
She fixes her reflections eyes, and, with shockingly peaceful clarity, strokes her own cheek in horror.
And then she hits the glass. Once, twice, again, again, panicked, frenzied, smashing her fists against the little mirror as though she wants to pound it into fragments. Screaming.
But by the time they've reached her she's stopped, and she's lying on the ground, an awful, low moan sobbing out of her.
'Not this.' She gasps. 'Not this. Not this, please, father, my god, not this. Please.
Not this.'