Dark Flashes, Pure Love

I smell bleach and pine. I feel the humming of a monitor. I hear a sharp beep alerting me every other second. I flinch. I feel a cool breeze move strands of my hair into the cracks of my crow’s feet, the corners of my mouth, I…

I begin to open my eyes. My vision is blurred, it almost hurts to see. I squint, blink a few times, before trying to rub them with the back of my hands. That’s when I feel them. Something tugging at my wrists. It feels like rubber, almost, as it burns my skin the more I try to rip away.

I shake my brain loose, feeling the craziness of my curls dart in many directions. This works as my vision begins to clear and the first thing I notice amidst the ugly, white walls are blinds, swinging and flapping because of the cracked window. I breathe deep breaths, feeling the outside air attack my insides. I clench onto the metal railing beside me when it almost burns to breathe. My chest is on fire. I immediately feel my eyes shoot around the room like pinballs. I feel my pelvis tighten as my body slips into panic-mode. That’s when I look down and see I’m in an ugly, white dress. I tug at my wrists again. They’re tied by ugly, white straps with a padlock keeping them shut. I kick and I scream and I wrestle and yell, but as I fling my shoulders in a motion similar to an exotic dancing shimmer, I notice one of them aches. It’s my left. Every time I move it, a terrible, clawing pain shoots through my body. I wince, almost drowning in my hair as it swims all over my face. It uses the layer of sweat my body oozes as a sticking solution. I scream and I kick. I yell and I thrust. I throw my body forward and backward, slamming myself against the ugly, white cushion that lays beneath me. I wish in this moment that it is rock. That way I’d be dead by now.

I scream for someone to let me out. I scream for him to give me their money. I scream for someone to let me go home. Just let me go home.

But nobody comes.

Nobody came.

Something pricks me in my aching shoulder. And I breathe through my mouth when I notice breathing through my nose makes it leak a lot of mucus. I feel myself slowing down. The tornado in me, simmering to a tiny spiral of dust. I stop screaming and yelling and kicking and fighting as I feel myself deflate. My body, spinning with the room like a balloon letting out its gas, deflates.

I finally surrender. I surrender to the winds breeze slithering through the flapping blinds. I surrender to the breeze stroking my hair away from my face; my crow’s feet, the corners of my mouth. I surrender to the breeze drying my stringy saliva; my noses mucus to a crust.

And I suddenly feel no ache. I feel no breeze.

But then something flashes, and I see the woman on the mattress on the floor again. I see her face, lined with dried tears, while she cradles her child as they sleep in their quiet. A bag lays next to her and the child. A black duffle bag. And in between her arm, she protects a small black notebook.

I see myself, almost from outside of myself, walking to her bag. I see myself lifting the bag and crossing its strap over my body. I see myself, as I am about to leave, going back to the woman and her child. I crouch over them and ease the small black notebook from between the crease in her elbow. I see myself walking back to the door when something shuffles behind me. It’s the child, perked up and reaching his hand out to me. I see my chest rising and falling in quick motions, afraid I am about to get caught. I begin to tug the bag from my body when he shakes his head. I frown, and I see myself ponder. I swallow – even now, I feel the ball of nothing trailing down my throat – and I offer him the small black notebook instead. I see him nodding, almost thankfully. I hand him the book, and be on my way.

Another flash. I see the woman’s bag in the arms of him, now. I see the crooked smile on his face. The same smile that drowned me the first time, in a sea of lust. And light. And love. I see him opening the bag. I see a grin on his face that doesn’t echo my frown when I notice the cash of twenty-thousand dollars. It shouldn’t have been twenty-thousand dollars. That wasn’t the plan—

Flash. I am staring down the barrel of his gun before I feel its cold metal pressing into my forehead. I see his crooked smile, now a wicked one. I flinch as I see his arm jolt as he shoots the sky, a threat, before running off with the money.

Flash. I see me, in a pool of misery. Swimming in the feeling of stupidity. Gagging from the nausea of heartbreak, aching, as he runs and leaves me with not only a lie, but with my organ, bleeding.

There’s...another flash. What feels like the final flash.

I see me again. But this time, it is dark.

There is blackness under my eyes. My bones reveal under my thin skin. I can taste it. A flavour of craving, digging inside of me. I taste its bitter. I yearn to feed it. I need to feed it—to feed this craving of a high.

The same high he fed me that gave me so much love and even when it didn’t, it still tasted so. Felt like so.

So I close my eyes and inhale this darkness. And this breeze.

And I inhale this love…until I feel it no more.