The Air Out Of [Wattys2018 shortlist]

34

This chapter is not suitable for young audiences for the purpose that it may scare or make them feel uncomfortable. If you consider yourself a young audience, please skip this chapter.

This chapter doesn't tread the line between gory and sanguinary, I just thought you should be informed. If I were to rate this, this chapter in the text would be PG, but if it were a movie, R-13.

ASPYN COULDN'T MOVE, or at least, bring herself to move. Her mother was still within her grasp, although most of their slightly accumulated audience was now begging her to finally let go as they tried to pull her limp mother out of Aspyn's grip. She didn't budge, sending a rock flying in their direction.

It missed, for the most part.

She refused to see her mother go. It was the most heartbreaking thing since losing her father. Great, just great, she thought.

Although well aware that she was hugging a corpse, her hand dipped in a pool of red blood beginning to diffuse within the surroundings of Covia, it was not her place to let go. The corpse lost entire conscience when Luphoria's hand, which held Aspyn's finally dropped over the edge of the bed. Aspyn let out a shriek.

The blood had stained her palms red, and her mother's lifeless, and partially deathly expression was enough to continually haunt her, and soon enough, she began to see faint hallucinations of Luphoria speaking to her. It mirrored the appearance of horror films, when a woman stood, hair covering the full entirety of her, she would speak in a monotonous, ghastly accent, as her arms hung stiffly over her sides, the pale skin overcoming any sense of color in her body.

Like she was trying to say something.

"M-mom." she whispered, "Please." The tears streamed out of her face as she continued to cry. Her hands fidgeted to touch a final figment of her mother. She was fine with anything, really. But a doctor strode in and pulled her off softly. She could only curl herself up in a ball, and do the one thing she promised herself not to do.

Wait.

It was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen in her life. Firstly, the doctor hadn't bothered to place her mother in an anesthesia. Instead, he took a pair of scissors smashed in straight her mother's skin.

The collision was unbearable.

Then, without any hesitation, the doctor took a sterilized pair of medical scissors and cut a straight line through her mother's body. If she still wasn't dead from the bullet, she would most definitely be dead by now.

"Okay, crew," he noted after a while, of cutting through her abrasions like some sort of deity. "We need to extract this bullet as soon as possible.

What came right after, she was unprepared for. More blood. Oozing out of the corpse like a drainage system, the doctor's gloves carried the blood, occasionally extracting blob-like substances. Eventually, the next time Aspyn dared to glance back at the action, they had managed to push through so many layers of protection that she could see the heart.

The bullet had gone right through it.

Avine knew what he was doing.

The doctor pulled a pair of tongs and lightly tugged the bullet free, while the remnants sifted through the Covian waters. It already seemed like her mother decomposed on the spot due to the fine art of diffusion, and now that she was cut open, well, by the time they managed to finish, they would notice her severe loss of red blood cells.

Aspyn didn't like it one bit. She had hemophobia. She didn't appreciate the way it oozed down the tip of the metal railing her mother's body laid nearby, the heavy gushes wrapping itself like a second layer, or more so, took a step closer to coming in contact with her. It reeked of an abattoir. If not for her mother, she would have fled the room long ago.

Then the doctor had pulled up a needle and began to sew. Sew her mother's body shut, like nothing happened. At least he was trying to be careful. He had instructed another doctor to continually check the pulse. Of which was none. It wasn't beating.

Finally, she sealed her lips shut and made her way to the room parallel to this one and began to take her refuge.

Pressing her fingers against the now mangled flesh of hers, Aspyn let out a yelp of pain. Everything hurt. Her heart, her head, and her in general.

Jess put her arm around Aspyn shoulder without a word and simply smiled. "It's going to be alright."

"Of course it is," Aspyn sighed, flickering her gaze towards the brown-haired girl sitting next to her, "Avine will die, even if I must do it myself." she declared, pausing for emphasis. "It'll be alright, we'll cope, and possibly recover, but it will never be good."

"It will never be the same."

"What, Aspyn. What stays the same." Leo pointed out, "It hurts unbearably, but we all know the cycle. It's the truth, time stops for no one."

She took a shaky breath and controlled herself. It was always the same reason she always presented the perfect Aspyn: she was vulnerable, and now, Avine had ripped off the bandage, exposing the scars that she should've been proud off.

But the problem with ripping it off? Avine's crucial mistake. There was a side effect, a sting. One that would enrage Aspyn so much she would not stop until she avenged her mother, and her kingdom. In this case, Aspyn was ready for the hurricanes to come.

More than ready, in fact.

"You're right." She nods to the lavine's who look at her with only compassion. In such a short time, they've begun to actually seem like a team. Sure, there may be secrets, but no betrayal and that may have been fine, but to take Avine down, everybody needed to come clean.

And fast.

It was time to create a goal that everyone was going to pitch in. She knitted her eyebrows together, bringing her chin up while straining her neck muscles. "We need to talk."