Burn

Thirty

Free

I'm being strangled by the Monster, its razor-blade claws digging deep into my throat. Blood is gushing out of me, pooling underneath the back of my head as I stare up into the familiar black eyes; I'm too tired to fight back, my arms and legs laden with concrete and reinforced with lead.

My vision starts fading. Every breath is crackling and popping in my frost-bitten lungs.

Lauren's hands are shaking as she dials the six numbers she hasn't touched in years. Three rings as she stumbles down the stairs.

"Hello?"

That familiar voice…

"Ben, Ben, it's me, Lauren. Something—something's wrong. It's Chloe. I think—I'm not sure. I can't find her..."

A loud sigh crackles through the line. "Whoa, whoa, slow down, goddamn it! What's wrong? What happened? I don't understand, Lauren," her brother says quietly.

She swallows hard, tasting bile burning at the back of her throat. "Ben, something...something's wrong. Chloe...something's happened to her."

The Monster is shifting, its features changing, morphing. My mom's face, my dad's face, Royce, Rae, and then...Derek.

Hot tears burn my eyes, roll down my temples, and they keep going until I'm drowning in them.

I'm gurgling, choking on my own blood, feeling it bubble past my cracked, bleeding lips as the hands close tighter around my throat, my vision darkening.

They look in the woods.

Ben's sunburned face is grave and harsh, his steps quick and heavy on the wet leaves layering the floor as the other cops he's asked to help fan out, canvasing.

Lauren can't stop crying, her eyes stinging as she holds her brother's hand tight enough that she's certain it's hurting him but his grip is just as tight, a vice. He's anchoring her.

"Chloe? Chloe? Can you hear me? It's Lauren! Please, please, baby!"

I'm drifting away, I can feel it. My lungs stutter and slow, my breath rattling between my blood-crusted lips. The Monster laughs, a deep, throaty dark sound that flecks my face with tar, and then I see it. Something silvery, gleaming in the low light. Is it daytime? Is it night time?

My hand is moving on its own, my arm heavy, and I clasp that little silvery gleam. Piping-hot metal burns my fingertips and fingerprints away but I hold on; I have to or I'll fade away like everything else. The Monster starts to scream; the forest shakes and shudders, pine leaves falling down like a cascade of rain, and my blurry vision focuses enough to see it's a ring. It's his ring.

Royce's.

Another glimmer, this time in the Monster's chest. It's still screaming and crying as its form stretches and contracts, changing, shifting.

My bones drag across the forest floor, my skin along with them, and I find the small piece sticking out, my fingers yanking it out of the chest of the Monster with a spray of sour, acidic, hot black that hits me across the face.

A bullet.

"Lauren!" She wheels around to spot Derek and Kit, their faces dark with concern.

"Where is she? What happened?" Derek asks, his glassy green eyes staring at her. Lauren's throat closes up.

"She and I...had a fight. She stormed out. She's not well. I don't know what to do anymore." Her voices out weak and thin, little girl trapped in that house tiny, and hot tears run down her face until she's dry-heaving; she hasn't cried this much in so long. "And that girl...Rachelle...she's behind this, I know it!"

Ben shoots her a look. "How?"

Lauren swallows a fist-sized lump. "Chloe...Chloe was writing and I found it in her room. Ben, I think Rachelle had something to do with the fire and with Chloe's—" Insanity, she wants to say but the word is a knife in her mouth.

The forest is screaming along side the Monster, screaming my name in a desperate, howling wolf and witches chant. Wind whips my face, stings my eyes. Debris rips my flesh from my bones. I can't be bothered with that now.

Blood-red eyes glare into me from within the Monster's face as the black mass finally melts away, darkness giving way to crystal skin that glimmers and shines. Blonde hair hangs down the familiar girl's back as her eyes meet mine, the same shade I have.

I'm looking at the past-me, the little girl who was swallowed by the fire and her screams lost to the sound of flames, the same one who had two friendly and happy parents.

"I thought she was just crazy," Derek whispers finally after explaining to Lauren about how he'd visited right before she vanished. "Or maybe, just maybe, she was telling the truth."

Lauren is watching him closely, seeing the deep lines in his young face, how cagey and dodgy he is. His eyes are scanning the woods as he nods once and sets off, pushing past them. Watching him walk away into the forest is like watching Chloe stumble away.

She should've seen something was wrong. Her baby wasn't herself, she knew.

Little Girl-Me: Hi, Chloe.

Me:

Her, bouncing on her feet like a ballerina made of glass: You're so difficult. I love this game.

Me: What game?

Little Girl-Me, smiling like a predator: The one that ends up with you gone.

She stalks forward and I squeeze my hands around my magical objects, a cacophonous of oh my god oh my god ohmygodohmygodidon'twannadie running through my head like a dog chasing its tail.

Me, blood running down my face: STOP!

She becomes a statue, her body trembling, her eyes wide. She looks at my mystical objects and I pinch them, grinding the bullet into dust. Her screams echoes off the empty space and scare the birds. The sky turns into a kaleidoscope of sunset.

"Down here!"

Lauren is stumbling, running, pushing her way to the cliff of the ravine that slops down. Ben is holding her, Derek's hand comforting on her back as the sobs escape her like little slivers of glass.

Surrounded by officers the crumbled, half-hidden figure is far too familiar. Her stomach drops.

Her, black streaming from her nose, her eyes, her ears, doubled over: You can stop right now, please.

Me: Why? So you can keep tormenting me over things out of my control?

She trembles a frightened rabbit tremor, her little mouth pinched like a raisin, fire in her eyes. She clutches her Sunday Best white dress she bought with her mommy and daddy the year before Rae started getting mean, the kind of mean where she'd fuck her best friend's boyfriend behind her back.

Me, the ring boiling in my fingers: I'm so tired of this, so fucking sick of this…

Little Girl-Me, looking through me: This isn't a fun game anymore.

Her white dress starts to turn dark. There's no script anymore, no more words. My eyes are stinging like glass is being stabbed into them as she looks at me, really looks at me, my little bird body standing there, Royce's ring clutched tightly.

I don't want nay pieces of him anymore. My body doesn't sing when I think of his fingers between my legs or his lips on the crown of my head; it crawls and my skin tries to peel away from my bones.

A torrent of black vomit spews from her lips. The ground is shaking, the world quaking. She screams, a long, drawn-out sound that you hear in horror movies when the main character stumbles across someone getting killed, and the earth opens up with a loud crack of thunder. The bones of the dead gouge into her legs, fire licking up, and she screams again, louder this time, making my ears bleed.

Chloe's heart is beating and she's breathing on her own and that's enough for Lauren right now. She's clutching her baby girl's hand tight, watching her with burning eyes, thinking of everything. Rae, Royce, Derek. Meals that turned into screaming matches, Weightless, baby fur on Chloe's skin, the long, black weeks that bled into months of Chloe being a broken, soulless doll that merely gazed back at her.

Chloe is banged up. Sunset bruises across rice-paper skin. Bones poke through at every angle. Her hair is thin and lank, clumped with dirt and grease. They sewed her wounds together with glossy black satin thread and it's the only thing holding this poor girl together.

A knock on the door, quick and staccato. Lauren barely lifts her eyes. "Hey, I brought coffee."

I look at the ring, Royce's family crest he'd so proudly displayed not unlike a peacock, my last reminder of him, of that deep, rich past that is continuously making me a sick puppy, and walk towards the crack where Baby Me is being swallowed like a bunnyrabbit in the wild, gulped down whole by the big bad Wolf.

Her hands are blood paws flailing desperately as she sinks down to her hips. Her hair, spun gold, is flapping in the wind. She looks up at me with unfocused, blood-shot eyes and opens her mouth to scream again. I pinch the ring to dust and cram it down her throat, where she gags and howls and wails, an animal on all fours, crying at the moon.

The world

stops

and I

RESTART

With a low moan of pain, Chloe's eyelids drag themselves up. The ceiling is blurry and her head is heavy, full of steel and bad dreams. Every inch of her hurts, every joint screaming. She's dying. A cloud of a person hangs over her.

Talking.

"Chloe, Chloe! Oh my god, Ben! Ben! She's awake!" Her aunt's voice is too loud, too loud, way, way, way too loud, and makes her cringe into the bed that crackles and hisses in her ear like a monster. The air that slips between her dry, crusted lips hurts her throat.

There's millions of people in her room. Heat washes over her, thawing her piece by frozen piece, and her voice is soft and thin like a baby bird's skin. It's hard to talk, her tongue thick. "I hurt," is all she can say when the doctor peppers her with questions.

The drugs pull Chloe back under, in a deep sleep where monster boys and fire girls don't haunt her every step, and when she wakes up, she hears the voices, the quiet whisperconversation.

"They found Rae's body?" A man's voice.

"Overdose." Aunt Lauren.

Chloe holds her breath until her head swims, until the shadows cower away from the light that's leaking into the room where her aunt cracked the door, until the heart monitor starts shrieking. She draws in a deep breath and says, "Aunt Lauren?"

The door opens, flooding the room with light, and she can see for the first time.

Chloe talks a lot. She talks and talks and cries during her therapy sessions with Dr. Davidoff. They write notes when she talks about Royce's ghost crawling into her body and pouring acid down her throat at the nut house. She has to take a lot of breaks because she gets so tired but finally she's talking.

She talks about the house fire she's certain Rae started. She talks about how the pain seemed to go on for eternity, even after they arrived at the new hospital house, and it seemed like it would never end.

She has to clutch herself, touch the scars on her arms where she sliced herself open like a Thanksgiving turkey because Royce told her to, when she talks about the fuzzy long-ago night. It's called the Incident. She doesn't know what happened or how she got there.

Maybe it's for the better.

Maybe it's the restart she needed.

Either way, Chloe's burns are finally starting to heal.