Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
WITH THE TOUCH OF COLD against my tender neck, I sat with my spine pushed on the back of a tan linen couch; placed in the living room of our group's home.
Carl knelt beside me, pressing the pack of ice on my recent bruising. His hand was cautious in using the right amount of pressure, as If I were glass. To him I must have been something along those lines. His mannerisms told me he didn't expect to see me again, or just maybe not this soon. I think we may have both been in a bit of shock — hence the silence coating the room in a thick blanket. The only audible noise came from the ice crackling against the heat of my skin, and our unmatched breathing.
We didn't have to say much. Without speaking, we still knew. We understood the weight on each person. There were certain things each one of us weren't sure how to verbalize. See; we were never quite good at that part. It was always actions over words.
Looking to the hand Carl had kept on his knee, I could take notice of a splinter that had run along the side of his index finger. The wood itself was a thick slanted piece, planted deeply along the very tip. The point of entrance seemed scabbed over now, but still irritated — as if he had been picking at it for quite some while now. I wondered how it happened. If it hurt, and how long it would take for the skin to push the splinter towards the surface. The thought made me cringe, for some unknown reason. It was stupid. A splinter, really. The least of our worries. Somehow it still bothered me.
A pang forming from my abdomen left my body to softly jolt, my neck breaking contact with the bag of ice. My back hurt. My legs, neck, body. My head. All at once, only increasingly. There was nothing much any of us could do. It was still unsafe outside, from what we knew. Enid, who had been occompaning Carl in the house before my arrival, was now gone. She had left a note in place of her presence; "Just Survive Somehow", signaling she was leaving once again. Now, it was just the two of us laying low behind the couch, plus Judith who still slept soundly in her crib.
