Lucky Me

Chapter 94


My life sucked.

Well, technically, my death sucked.

You know what's even worse than death sucking? The constant screaming and the fact that the pair of lungs owned a hand which was currently squeezing mine into numbness.

What death lacked in warmth and light it made up for in pitch blackness and searing silence.

Not saying that was a bad thing as the lungs with hand tightened to the point I thought my fingers were going to pop off and lodge themselves in the lung body (hopefully silencing it). The corner of my eyes twitched only a few seconds before I pried them open to have a better aim when my soon to be fingers turned projectile would launch.

"Oh my stars!" Et tu, Dr. Hank? Et tu?

I knew a half-dead person was supposed to be groggy and really passive, but I was also bitter and grumpy. How would you like your wake up call to be a vice-like grip and a scream that could wake the dead (no pun intended)?

And if one hand gripping mine like I was going to use it against them wasn't enough, I felt a furry handcuff take the other one and apply pressure.

I groaned.

Dr. Hank rewarded my hard earned eye-opening with a bright shinny light right in my eyes.

"Kookie?" Scott asked. I grunted weakly. Words just didn't want to form from a parched throat and sandpaper tongue.

I woke up before this, oh sure, plenty of times. Once when my teeth felt like they were being pulled out and another time when someone was peeling back all my fingernails (or so it felt). So excuse me if waking up in a bad mood seemed justified.

"Just tell me if this hurts," Beast said as he poked me in the shoulders.

Then it was my turn to shriek their eardrums into puddles at their feet.

Two days later and after tons of fluids down a raw throat that were accompanied by a large dish of happy piles equaled a highly doped up and out of it Kerry. Sadly, it reminded me of the 'good-ole days'. Darcy had nearly cried herself into dehydration and everyone else was happy when it was announced to the kingdom of X that I had revived.

I didn't feel happy.

Besides the fact I couldn't really feel at all because of the 'happy pills', I knew underneath it all something was wrong.

There was nothing but pure nagging darkness buried beneath the cloud of my hazy mind. Without the medications I could feel the sadness and anger lurking, patiently waiting to attack. Just like that nightmare of a mother. She was lurking around every corner of my mind with that knife and screaming at me.

When I closed my eyes this fear of waking up to her enraged, crazed face with the blood coated butcher knife raised to take another strike would jerk me back awake. Whenever I came out of that dream, I would flinch away from human contact. My throat would stick together and my screams would well up inside my throat before I pushed them down into my stomach.

There was no escaping the nightmare.

Not when it was part of my life.

I attempted, desperately, to focus on breathing, thinking, the visitors' obsessive ramblings, but all roads lead me back to the darkened path. Along the path I noticed something was missing. Something vital. It wasn't my heartbeat but it was something.

Every time I'd get close to figuring it out, the darkness of nightmares would grab me by my throat and drag me back into its fiery pits of oblivion.

My vision was blurred but I could feel the warmth of the sun, the breeze on my skin. I felt every strand of hair as the wind tossed it around my shoulders. I was standing, wasn't I? Yeah, I was. The pressure on the bottom of my feet was proof enough.

The light pierced my vision, forcing me to raise a hand to block it out. The light was only coupled with the normal blobs of colors. Darks and light forging some awkward, unidentifiable shapes. Something heavy was in my right hand.

Blinking back to clarity, I slowly looked around me. The surroundings seemed so familiar. I knew this place.

"Where?" My voice! I had it back! Since me screaming of bloody pain it had been out of service. There were trees above me, their leaves serving as some sort of protectorate against the hot white sun. Muffled pleadings captured my attention.

Studying the area around me, I pinpointed a human-sized blob. It seemed—familiar. This whole scenario was familiar. Deciding that checking out the foliage would only entertain me for just so long, I stumbled toward the voices.

One I recognized quickly. Darcy.

She sounded like she was in trouble. I tried to call out to the blobs, there were now two but neither acknowledged me. I grunt, and push off the tree I had been resting on. The unfamiliar weight in my hand caused me to bring it up to my face for inspection.

Over and over I tried to get my fingers to obey, to drop the gun I found in my right hand. My fingers were almost forged with the dumb thing. I couldn't drop it!

Then I heard Darcy scream. There was only one blob left in front of me.

Why! Why does it always come down to this!

I raised the gun, narrowed my eyes, and pulled the trigger in enough time to see the blob take a clear shape and form.

Darcy!

I shot Darcy!

I snapped my eyes open and attempted to sit up in the bed. But the grogginess and weakness I felt before was still with me. My heart pounded as cold sweat trickled down my face and coated my body.

"Kookie?" I nearly gave myself whiplash as I jerked my head toward the voice. It was just Bobby. I fell back on to the bed. "What's wrong?"

Some type of witty reply was what I wanted but instead, I started to silently cry.

Glaring contests with the weak and disabled shouldn't be allowed. But Julie apparently didn't operate on the same playing field that I did. I doubted she even acted like an earthling most of the time. How could a friggin' empath not be a bit more-empathetic?!

She leaned on the doorjamb and glared at me as Dr. Hank and Adam worked around the lab. She never changed her visiting habits, always just inside the room, arms crossed and giving me a nasty look.

When Jean came in the room she looked slightly happy and about one hundred percent unsettled. "Kookie, I have -good news. You no longer have to attend SCPS."

"I thought it was PSSC."

Jean glanced at Julie then turned back to me. "As I was saying, you'll never have to go to school again." She held up this flimsy folder. "You're free."

Oh right, like I was that stupidly optimistic to believe that there wasn't going to be a catch.

"Of course," here it comes. "You are now going to be home schooled like Daisy."

"That's unfair!" Julie yelped but something must have come to her messed up little mind because she perked up and muttered a 'never mind' as she exited.

"What's that all about?" Adam questioned. Dr. Hank gave him a level stare and a firm smack to the back of the skull.

Jean sighed and left, dumping the record in my lap.

Later that day, Chris came to visit.

Great, from one bitter, moody person to a male bitter, moody person.

"How are you feeling?"

I huffed and turned my face away.

"That good, huh?"

Oh, even better than that.

"Did you know Adam is going to college in the spring?" Chris asked, getting me to turn my attention to him again. "Yeah, and I think I'm going to go the next fall."

Something in me normally would have felt loss, pain, or something. Instead, I couldn't feel anything. College. Ha, what a joke. College was just an expensive excuse to suspend reality for four years. I'd be lucky if ever I made it to college.

"I know you have some of your verbal abilities left."

I have a whole lot of hand gestures in my corner.

I glanced away. "I don't want to waste them." I didn't mean to come off like I didn't want to waste it on just him. But, of course, he took it that way and stomped off.

Great, someone else in this world who hated me. What's he going to do? Fry me in the shower?

Xx

"Wow," Darcy commented a few more days later. "Your grades are pathetic." Matched my life. "Except for this one."

She pointed to a spot on the report card and shoved it in my face. My eyes bugged out and I ripped it from her hands to stare at it harder.

It read that I had a 'B' in Poovey's class from last year!

No way! I flunked the final (because the anal-retentive man refused to let me take it) and ended up with a D- for the year (because I also flunked the final project). And yet, there it was, plain as day.

B.

Darcy left a while after that, snickering to herself about something and going to call on Grandma who was recovering still. Adam came next with a clipboard and the ever clicking pen. "Hey."

I pointed to the report card (to explain why my eyes looked like softballs).

He laughed. He actually laughed at me. "Oh, so you finally noticed, eh?"

No, I was appalled that they printed my report card on non-recyclable paper. Hello!

"Chris and I did that last year. Loads of fun actually." Huh? Okay, you should not mess with a drugged girl's head. I shifted uncomfortably, trying to flex my wings, but they weren't responding. They must have really been banged up, I couldn't even feel them.

"Chris?" I croaked out dryly.

"Yeah, he knew you totally bombed the major parts of the grade." Pause to scribble. "So he recruited me and totally wrecked that bad grade into something a little more—presentable." Scribble again. "That decrepit system went down without much of a fight."

I blinked back in surprise.

I just couldn't think. Gah, why did Chris have to be nice when I didn't want him to be?

Then Jack came in, Adam left when he noticed how much I perked up.

They never told me.

Ice. I felt like ice.

I finally realized what it was that I was missing.

Why I had a feeling of wrongness lingering like a bad after taste.

It took me a week to notice.

They weren't showing me any mirrors. They weren't talking about it. All Dr. Hank could mutter was it was impossible to save them.

My wings.

My wings were gone.

Not hidden behind an image inducer, not under my shirt— they were gone.

Taken from me, without my consent. They were given to me without my consent, but I-they were a part of me but no longer a part of me. Where'd they go? Did they fall off?

No. They didn't fall off. I remembered someone in some place saying they were taken from me. Someone took my wings. Wanted to make me normal again. Someone wanted me to be normal looking. But it's in the blood. Why didn't they take the blood? Leave my wings and take my blood? It wouldn't have hurt so much.

I had forgotten how to breathe.

It was just too hard to think about how to do it, so I didn't try.

I just laid there, my vision blurring and my lungs no longer functioning the way they should.

There was something about this that could have been prevented. I just knew it but I couldn't do anything. I couldn't think, couldn't move, and I just could not breathe. There was oxygen blowing all around me, but I couldn't get it into my body. It was too hard.

My hearing latched on to a sound, one that didn't come from me. A distant drum that sped up and then slowed, then sped up again. Like a dull machine gun firing off bullets. It was my heart. The heart that was so pained with lack of air, with the disbelief of what I was seeing (or wasn't seeing), what I was feeling, and yet it still pounded relentlessly in my chest. The echoes it made where in my ears, damming out any outside sound.

The only thought my mind could grasp was that my wings were gone.

Murdered.

I had been murdered.