Iris

11 | confused

— E L L I O T ' S   P O V —

     THE LAPTOP screen casted a faint light across my face, its dull, sombre gleam slightly illuminating the darkness my surroundings had been engulfed within for the past hours. And eerie quietude enveloped my room, acting as though it were thin glass; it got shattered into hundreds of pieces as soon as a sigh escaped my lips.

My simple action sounded too loud; almost deafening to the stillness that had occupied my ears and almost a threat to the voice that had been unceasingly roaring within my mind, refusing to vanish or to disappear.

The words scattered across the screen were illegible scrambles that made no sense no matter the number of times my eyes scanned over them. They all sank into a chaotic jumble as soon as they reached my mind. One that they didn't succeed in resurfacing regardless of how hard they tried to and of how loud they pleaded to. And one that painfully fuelled the roaring voice within my mind.

A burning sensation emerged within my throat, clinging tightly onto its walls and refusing to move any further, as my gaze lingered on the letters that still made no sense — that still seemed so foreign.

This article was identical to every other one I had read. Tedious paragraphs, long phrases, and difficult terms that looked so similar. It didn't answer any of the questions I had been desperately attempting to find an answer to. If anything, it only led to new questions that were a complete mystery; their answers either hidden or unavailable.

And it only caused the roaring voice to grow wilder; its tone a commanding one that leaves no room for protest or denial. It threw whatever information it had failed to understand onto my mind and asked for explanations I was incapable of giving — ones I was too exhausted to find.

And despite that, I found myself obliged to disregard the confusion that had invaded my mind and to seek an explanation. Simply because that would be the only route to get rid of the deafening, roaring voice. And because it would be the only route to understand what had truly happened to our little sister.

I paid no attention to my handwriting as I scribbled down whatever phrases my exhausted mind managed to grasp onto and added a short note beside the ones I couldn't understand, mentally noting to ask my older brother or Lily about them.

When I finally gave up on researching — two hours later — I had two pages of barely legible scribbles, both loaded with the medical information I had gathered from the different websites I wandered through. I also had a few images stored on my laptop; ones I had miserably attempted to compare to the wound on Iris' abdomen.

My sore eyelids repeatedly dropped, my body screaming at me to get some rest. I was aware of how it had already passed midnight and of how I hadn't been sleeping well recently, but that was the last thing I could care about. Plus, there was no way I'd manage to sleep even if I tried to.