I think I'm bleeding. I think I'm bleeding because I can feel blood running down my arms and smell it, it smells like rust and death, but my eyes have to be deceiving me because I can't see any cuts or any blood. I woke up late at night with nothing to think about and so my thoughts gravitated to work the next day. I hadn't thought about work in such a long time. I was no longer dead tired when I came home. I had a hard time remembering it existed. Because It would pass in a blur.
And I would come home to an android on my couch or at my table, sometimes with a casserole or a coffee or a mug of tea. I would ask, jokingly almost, what he was doing here, and he would just grin at me and say:
"This is your house, isn't it?" And I'd smile and he'd smile and he'd grab me by the arm, leaving lukewarm coffees on the table, drag me off to his new favourite swing set (it changed so often) or park bench. Once we took a train out to the sea and spent our time ducking under my umbrella from the quick bursts of heavy rain splattering us, walked with our shoes clutched in our hands on the wet sand, and then falling into a tiny diner booth almost identical to the ones all over the city (mine included) and staring at the people scuttling along the boardwalk with somewhere to go while I leaned on his shoulder and fell asleep.
I wished I could sleep so easily tonight. I closed my eyes, but a crack of lighting and a boom of thunder almost immediately afterwards made me jump and jolt up, hugging my pillow to my chest. Didn't that mean it was close? My heart was beating a tattoo on the inside of my ribcage. Maybe If I just… I eyed the slip of paper on the nightstand with a ten-digit number scrawled in big, loopy letters. I grabbed in my fist before I could reconsider, dialed.
Two rings and a chirpy voice answered:
"Hello!"
"Will you come?" I whispered, my tongue suddenly paper-dry.
"Oh! Y-yeah. Why? Are you okay? What do you need?"
"Just hurry,"
"I'll bring coffee." I could hear the understanding in his voice. The call ended with a click.
I tried to sleep again. But there was thunder still booming in the sky and torrents of rain sloshing through the gutterpipes and-
Somebody outside screamed. The sound was so loud it carried through my thin window and my curtain all the way from the street outside. I was too afraid to look.
Coward.
I huddled further under my covers when screaming came again. My eyes jolted open. I bit my lip, hard. My hands were shaking as I launched myself out of bed, feet slipping on the cool wood flooring. I slammed my rainboots on, Yanked my slicker hood up over my head, and bolted down the stairs. Adrenaline was pumping, and I could smell ozone and metal. My feet clomped on the stairs.
I hesitated at the door. The screaming had stopped. My eyes widened, and I wasn't thinking about me anymore. I ripped open the front door, towards where the screaming had originated, on the other half of the parking lot. I was breathing heavy, and looking, looking, searching for somebody, but all I could see was the pouring rain and the driving fog, and the wind driving half-melted pellets of ice into my hair. I took another step forwards and my feet slid. The ground was a red slick.
The air smelled horribly, chokingly of rust. I almost gagged and my feet slid on the bloody concrete.
"Are you alright?" I called, hesitant to move further. I was answered by a tiny whimper and a gasp. Footsteps. I turned the corner and a hand grabbed at my ankle, gripping tightly. The hand scraped at my ankle again, nails digging in, slipping and sliding and smearing red all over my boot. A woman lay at my feet, on her stomach.
Her hairline was all bloody. It made her dark hair stick right to her head. Red was dripping into her mouth. She coughed, and blood splattered onto the ground. I blinked, coughed, at the odor that permeated the air, making it nearly impossible to breathe. I wasn't aware a body could bleed so much,
I didn't hesitate this time. I leaned down and started to rip strips from my shirt when I was interrupted. "Stop." A voice called from the end of the alley. It was gruff, with angry undertones. There was a click of a gun being cocked, and I froze. The man across the alley, cocked, took aim, and-
"What in the bloody Hell do you think you're doing?" a voice rang out behind me as something hot burrowed its way into my ribcage. Something hot and indescribably agonizing, followed by another into my stomach for good measure. I stopped, coughed, fingers skidding and sliding in the fresh holes in me. I leaned over, sending a new brand of fire through my already burning brain, feeling it reach my fingers and toes in waves, and it didn't stop, it got worse and worse and I was coughing up bile and blood. I tried to hold it in but pure, hot liquid pain poured between my fingers.
There was a scream and a sob and a crack, but I couldn't look up from where my cheek was embedded in the concrete. The screech of metal bending, breaking, and the sound of flesh on metal, flesh on brick, smashing, smashing, and I vomited again.
"Hello? 911. We have an emergency-" I couldn't decipher any more of the words. They blurred together into an endless paste of red and I could barely breathe without coughing up blood again. Sticky red hands cradled my face, and I caught a flash of a hint of dirty blond hair and what might have been circular glasses.
"What were you-" His voice choked off.
"No, don't close your eyes. The ambulance will be here in a few minutes. You'll be okay. You'll be fine. Just don't sleep."
"Come on. Shhh." He started to murmur vague encouragements, stroking my hair. I coughed again.
"Please, please. Don't go to sleep. Please. Please be okay. Please." I nodded, a jerky, painful motion that set my ribs on fire.
I has almost fell asleep when the roar of a siren reached my ears. I was yanked away from his sticky hands and the doors were slammed on his blue eyes and it was all red and white and I had to keep my eyes open and the world was spinning around me and I could hear bickering from outside the ambulance, a high-pitched yelling, and finally he bent his long legs into the seat next to where I lay as the vehicle took off, siren making my ears ring. He sat next to me, stroking my face and hair and whispering to me.
He might have been crying. Or, as close as a mechanical body could. He was making dry weeping noises. That grated on my eardrums. They sounded real.
Too real.
A perfect machine, indeed.