Page 98 of How (Not) To Raise The Dead

“Eden, I’m stuck.” He coughs, a spray of red misting the shattered glass of the window. He tries to reach for the buckle, but his arms don't follow the command. His hands are dangling at wrong, sickening angles, the wrists shattered from bracing against the dashboard on impact. He thrashes, but his hands just flop uselessly against his chest like dead weights.

“My hands,” he wheezes. “I can’t use my hands. Eden, you have to do it. You have to press the button. Help me.”

Muscle memory tells me to reach for him. Matthew needs; I provide. But when I shift, the movement tears a scream from my throat.

“I can’t,” I gasp, the words bubbling up through the bloodied tide in my mouth. “Matthew, I’m… I’m hurt.”

“Eden, focus!” he snaps. “I can’t breathe. Just push the button! Do something!”

I am.

For years, I’ve cut him down. I’ve smoothed his edges, absorbed his anger, and broken my own bones to keep him whole. I’ve been his shock absorber, his audience, and his replacement mother. I’ve poured myself into the bottomless pit of his need until there was nothing left of me but a husk.

And now, as I measure the blood in my lap against the entitlement in his eyes. Something inside me finally snaps—the only thing in this car that breaks cleanly.

My hand moves—but not to him—to my own hip, my blood-slicked fingers fumbling blindly for the release button of my seatbelt.

“What are you doing?” he demands. “Eden? Eden!”

My thumb finds the button, and in one short, brutal fall, I slam onto the roof. The impact sends a white-hot supernova through my nerves, shattering my vision into a kaleidoscope of static and agony. A scream tears its way out of my throat, raw and animalistic, but I bite it back.

I lie there for a second, gasping in the broken glass.

Above me, Matthew thrashes in his harness, dangling like a pendulum, his face purple with the pressure. “Push the button! I can’t do it! Just reach up and push the button!”

That buckle’s too far away. My right hand is glued to my stomach, holding my insides in. My left hand’s dug into the carpet of shattered glass, propping me up.

If I lift my left arm—if I scream through the agony of twisting my torso and reach up—I could snap him loose.

But then he’d fall. He’d drop directly onto me. His weight would slam into my open stomach, crushing me.

I look at his face—purple with exertion, expecting me to cushion his fall just like I’ve cushioned every other blow in his life. He wants me to break his fall with my own broken body.

“No,” I whisper.

“Don't you dare!” He bellows as best as he can through his broken insides. “You selfish bitch! Come back here! Help me!”

Teeth gritted against the agony, I force my limbs to cooperate, slithering through the wreckage.

Shards of pulverized safety glass grind into my knees, a carpet of diamond-dust biting through denim and skin. The twisted metal of the dashboard scrapes against my shoulder, seeking purchase. But I don’t twist. I can’t. I keep my body rigid, a trembling statue of agony, hauling myself inch by excruciating inch toward the broken window where the rain’s pouring in.

“Eden! Get back here!”

The shattered window frame bites into my palms, slicing fresh, hot lines of red into my skin. But I push through. With one final, gasping heave that feels like it tears me in half, I tumble out of the metal coffin and into the wet, cold embrace of the gasoline-and-rain soaked mud.

I drag myself a few feet away, collapsing into the sodden grass, the torrential rain washing the blood from my eyes.

The world’s narrowing. The darkness at the edges of my vision is creeping in, soft and welcoming—a shutter closing on a lens.

“You did this!”

Matthew’s voice is shrill, echoing from the hollow, upturned belly of the car. It sounds frantic now. Closer to hysteria. The sound of a man who’s lost his audience.

“Eden! Do you hear me? This is your fault! Look at what you’ve done!”

My eyes roll back as the cold seeps into my bones, numbing the white-hot fire in my stomach. The last thing I hear isn’t the rain, or the wind, or the ominous, crackling hiss starting to spark from the engine.

It’s him. It’s always been him.