Page 57 of Starving Butterfly
I couldn’t hold it together.
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OH
Hands grabbed mine, walking me forward. A fuzzy face came into focus, if only for a second, before the haze resumed. The low hum continued as I watched lips move but without processing them. Maybe I had processed them, butthe words stuck in the back of my mind. No real reason to move them to the front. I didn’t care about the words.
Someone pulled my clothes off, or maybe I did. I wasn’t sure of anything. My body still breathed while hers didn’t. My eyes blinked while hers stared. Empty, abandoned, and alone. The coldness settled in; it amplified the hollowness in my gut. Everything moved on, but she hadn’t.
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HEAVY
Everything felt too heavy. Not just my body — my thoughts, my chest, the air itself. Even breathing felt like work.
I should have been screaming. I wasn’t. I had stopped crying as everything went quiet in my mind, like something took the noise and replaced it with static.
My hands were in my lap. I didn’t remember putting them there. I hadn’t moved.
Someone said my name; I knew it was mine, but I didn’t feel like it belonged to me.
They were talking again; I knew, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Was I supposed to care?
47
FROZEN
Istared down at her body. She looked to be asleep, but I knew she wasn’t. My hands brushed her hair as I looked at her angelic face. There was no changing it; I knew she was dead. I could feel my hand against her cold cheek as the color leeched out of her face.
The humming was back. Silence would have been better, but all I heard was the static. My hands brushed her hair again; it looked like I had been doing that for a while.
Time blinked, moving on while I stood there frozen like her.
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SILENCE NEVER SOUNDED SO LOUD
January 5th
Lucas leaned over the man, checking his pupils while I changed his dressing on his wound. He looked weary, as if he hadn’t been taking care of himself. Summer stood a few tables away, combing the dirty hair of the girl. She hadn’t spoken sinceshe’d been checked over. Lucky that she only had a sprained ankle when it could have been much worse. I glanced down at her round belly. She hadn’t registered that they were still there. That the twins needed her.
“Karter, check this out,” Lucas held the man’s eyelid open and shined the penlight into it. The eye looked damaged, but I couldn’t tell until I moved forward.
A hand shot forward, gripping Lucas by the throat as the man, disoriented, growled out. I turned toward the cabinet, grabbing a syringe and the vial of ketamine.
Lucas stared back, his hand prying against the man’s grip. The lack of air and circulation leeched from Lucas as he looked in my direction. I approached him slowly, the needle ready when the doors opened and the biker came near.
“Let him go Ethan, it’s not him.” Her hand gently pressed his arm, and there was a moment of confusion, then recognition as he dropped Lucas.
Lucas clattered to the floor, coughing.
“You don’t need that doctor,” she whispered, and I set the syringe on the tray.
Ethan’s eyes latched onto Summer and then to the dead girl. He ripped the IVs out of his arm and stumbled toward her. Summer hadn’t moved in the chaos, didn’t even look up as he stood there next to her. Both were caught in a trance.
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