Author's Note: For those who listen to Creature Feature, you'll know this is from A Gory Demise. This piece of crap has nothing to do with anything (unless it counts that it references one of my other fics in a roundabout way). I was just listening to that song and playing My Candy Love at the same time so...La la la la la la la la la~
Hopping fences in the dark was not how Amber originally planned to get home. But her father hadn't picked up when she called for a ride, and the mall was closing, so she really had no choice but to leave.
Walking alone at night, in the deep inky black that changed familiar streets and houses into foreign territory and looming establishments, she was naturally unsettled. Her nerves were on high alert and the small hairs on her arms stood straight on end as her heart hammered in her chest. She wanted to get home as soon as possible, and hopping fences seemed like the solution to achieve that goal.
So she climbed over one after the next, taking special care not to snag her clothes or lose her shopping bag.
But on the final picket fence she would ever hop that stood just about half her size, the shopping bag slipped from her grasp like a knife out of a stick of butter. It tipped over and hit the ground with a soft crunch of plastic, her brand new clothes and bracelets spilling out onto the grass. Perhaps it was a sign not to enter the yard. Perhaps it was a warning. A bad omen. But if it was, Amber ignored it.
A hiss of a whispered curse passed her lips and she quickly gathered what the bag emptied. She pushed it all back in and stood up, brushing herself off and strenuously hoping there would be no grass stains. She'd kept the receipt of course, but one of the dresses she bought had been the only one in stock.
Her mind was on that dress and what she'd have to do if it was stained, when she took the last step she ever would.
There wasn't anything solid to carry her weight. She pitched forward, tripping right into her neighbor's empty, ground-level cement pool. Her gasp of shock was cut short as she fell through fifteen feet of nothingness to the concrete below. She belly flopped onto it with a forceful thud, no arms outstretched to break her fall.
A simultaneous orchestra of bones and cartilage cracking and crunching pierced the tranquil night air, roaring in Amber's ears but roaring in her ears alone. So agonizingly loud to her, but so unfortunately silent and nonexistent to the oblivious people in the surrounding neighborhood. Raw, blinding pain ripped through the fiber of her being, centered in her concave chest and flaring with each ragged wheeze. Her sternum broke upon the impact, her rips cracked and shattered and now turning her lungs into pin cushions.
She tried to scream in anguish, but all that left her throat were garbled noises and blood. So much blood. It turned dark purple under the light of moon and spilled from her torn lips like her brand new attire had spilled from her shopping bag. It rapidly filled her perforated organs to the brim and rose in her throat, choking back the pained noises and flowing over her tongue.
She could taste its salty, metallic tang as her head grew lighter and the agony began to diminish. She saw its brilliant crimson in her mind's eye, even though the night had turned it violet and her vision was quickly darkening.
A is for Amber, who drowned in her own blood at the bottom of an empty pool.