Whapp!
Whapp!
Fwappp!
Shard was watching it happen over and over.
Whapp!
Whapp!
Fwappp!
She wasn't trapped in the swirling sand anymore… she didn't know where she was. All she knew was that she was watching Bryce get shot, over and over and over.
Whapp!
Whapp!
Fwappp!
Watching him die.
Something was making this happen, showing it to her again and again, showing him his face as the bullets slapped into him, chest, heart, shoulder, watching him spin, a loop of slick, crimson blood flying outward…
Shard tried to close her eyes, but couldn't- it wasn't as if they were open anyway. Yet she found herself staring into his soft, clear eyes, as they snapped open in surprise and then faded as blood dribbled out of his mouth.
Shard remembered the first time she'd seen him naked; the shockingly white pale skin, with whiter scars, pencil thin, carved through out his body- one white curving horizontally across his chest, another cruel slice through his abdomen, more around his hips and armpits. He never talked about them, not once and Shard never asked, never stared, never spoke of them. Late at night, in the faint blues and shifting shadows of their bedroom, she'd wonder at them, the scar tissue seeming to glow as they sighed and sank with his slumbering body, wondering what could do that to a body, and how a body, how a mind could endure such pain, and yet carry on. And still remember how to smile, how to laugh.
It was probably, possibly, due to a car accident, but Shard couldn't imagine what kind of collision could do that and still let a human survive. Lying there, waiting for sleep to take her deeply into her dreams, she'd wonder if perhaps it had been something more exciting: a skydiving accident, cliff jumping… or perhaps these were the scars that gave him life, correcting multitudes of birth defects.
Whapp!
Whapp!
Fwappp!
And then she was back, staring into Bryce's dead eyes again… to have survived so much pain to end so young.
Shard felt it boiling up deep inside her, as the images flashed faster and faster before her eyes, as her lover become best friend died again and again, spinning, coughing, crying falling, over and over, she could feel it spilling out of her, swelling up through her chest and raging out of her lungs as she raised up her hands, her mouth dropping outward to yell, to stop it, to end it, to bring Bryce back.
To give him life.
Back in the hospital, dark monstrous shadows fell against the door of her room where she lay still under the bed sheets, the transparent green mask still nuzzling her face.