Chapter One-Half to Death
His body felt extremely tired, yet he could not sleep. He could not allow himself to return to that world and the images it contained. In fifteen years of military work, he ruthlessly slaughtered others; blinding them with his thumbs then snapping their necks, putting more bullets in their chests than necessary, crushing their skull with his boot so they would die slowly. But every time he closed his eyes and saw her, in that form, he could not bear it.
When they forced him to sleep, she was all he dreamed about. Every wonderful, beautiful moment he had with her played in his mind night after night, only to crash into a dark world he did not willfully venture in to. With his eyes open he could at least focus on something inside the room, something tangible and simple, instead of the terrible ones that haunted him.
They kept him in that nightmarish world for days. The funeral long-since passed, his daughter now permanently lived with her grandmother. Right now he could not look at her, could not see her face when she saw him. And what could he tell her? That her father tried to take his own life? That her mother died simply because he did not act soon enough? Above all he could not look at his own daughter and see every trait her mother also possessed. It hurt him too much.
Every so often, Salem wandered in and sat next to him, bringing dozens more memories with him. He never spoke, and stayed for only a few minutes at a time. Occasionally a quick breath indicated that he wanted to speak, but the words never came. Rios could see the frustration in his face, could recognize the sense of defeat Salem very seldom displayed, but there was little he could do about it. Communication required too much effort on Rios' part at the moment, and for at least two weeks he refused to say anything. Physically he could not produce more than a grunt.
His throat and his jaw ached in a rhythmic pounding that medicine tried to dull, but it could only do so much. The pins and needles in the side of his face kept him from moving his mouth more than a few millimeters, reconstructing whatever bone that was not destroyed. Every breath he took burned down his trachea and into his lungs as if hinted with fire, making his entire body scream in pain at times. It burned so much that he passed out from the pain, and the nightmares would begin again.
Physical pain was nothing compared to what he felt in his chest, the loss poisoning him. Samantha was no longer with him, with anyone. She was simply in the past tense, and that seemed terrifyingly permanent to him. Within just a few minutes his life completely about-faced on him and he lost too many people in the process. Though Salem was still alive, it would take months, if not ever, to fix the enormous rift that now loomed over their friendship.
On some days Rios felt so overwhelmed with memories that he could swear she was still alive, and then a few minutes later feel as if he were forgetting her somehow. He knew her entire body, every intimate detail, and they even created life together, but she felt so far away now. The only time he could clearly picture her face was in a series of hellacious memories that marred every positive image he had of Samantha.
If he stared at the bare walls long enough he could see her face again, twisted and broken with her lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling in pure terror. Rios tried to tell himself that she felt no pain in the end but he knew deep down that she suffered more than he could imagine. Her chocolate skin paled as all her vital processes stopped, and her blood saturated the sheets that they shared together for years, on top of the same bed that she brought their daughter into the world. Now it was gone as far as he knew, and truthfully he did not care anymore. After weeks in frustrating silence, he could not muster the energy to care about such little things.
Instead he focused on fighting sleep as much as possible, in order to keep the nightmares at bay. Inevitably, however, they would return and he relived every terrible moment again and again…