Wraith ; Semblance

by Riley Mason

  My face twisted, there was panic in me and I could feel my lungs racing like pistons while my heart forced my entire body into a state of hyper-alert and fear.

  I got up and ran to the sink, twisting the knobs for water until it was plunging down into the empty basin and I ran both my exposed forearms against the currents of the metal tap, letting the water glide against my skin.

  The water came out frigid before the heated water warmed and it was like sliding needles against the open scrapes on me. My face grimaced as the water soaked into the gashes on my body, pulling blood out and spitting it into the drain. I heard a sound, the knock of hard current falling into the wide-open sink like drums, knowing that it was pulling blood that I had bled nearly two years ago down into the drainage system. Blood that had long dried, blood that shouldn’t exist anymore from cuts that had long healed, the skin, my skin, sutured itself a long time ago.

  The pain was brutal, like small, sharp needles raced up and down my arms, the water touching the cuts felt like alcohol was being poured into them. The burn was surreal, like I was setting fire to each and every one of them.

  I didn’t know what to do, my hands were open and then I clenched them shut, biting down on my own teeth as the pain cut through the nerves of the skin that was being molested, ravaged.

  It was like the old scar tissue that had formed and dried had decided that it was no longer needed, it had served its purpose over the last two years. That it was time for new flesh to take the position of hiding old mistakes, protecting them from the world.

  When the blood had stalled and the water running against my skin was no longer pink, but clear again, I turned off the faucet, staring at the abstract painting of striations against reddened, pale skin. I had no time to think, I couldn’t afford for the blood to start seeping through again, floating to the surface where it had no business.

  I couldn’t wonder how it had come through after being sealed up for so long, like it had never closed, like it forgot how to stay locked up. Like these wounds weren't attended to, like hospital employees hadn't seen to them when the cuts burrowed too deep into me when my own triage training just wasn't enough to keep me safe.

  One of the medical cabinets had rolls of gauze. I went to it, unhinged the cabinet, and started to strangle my arm with padding and gauze to lock it into place, to stop the bleeding.

  I spun the meshed fabric around me as tight as I could to make sure that the bandages were pressed tight into my skin, it could leave impressions, wrists that have marks I’d prefer not to see.

  I moved quickly, knowing there was no reason this blood should arrive again. The actions that produced it were so long in my past that it was forgotten as much as the memory of performing the surgery was. My eyes snapped a picture of the woman there in the stall, the woman dripping blood onto the floor, sliding down her limp fingers, splashing onto the floor.

  The dressings were wrapped so tight, they were almost stopping the blood flow to the rest of my arm, it hurt, aggravating those old injuries. I moved my fingers to make sure that enough was still getting through to the other end that I hadn’t stopped my blood flow entirely.

  I couldn't help but turn back around, my eyes latching onto the doors to my lab, waiting for them to swing open, for someone to see me. I couldn't explain this, why my arms look like I’d dragged them through a field of broken glass, why my blood was everywhere, why my face had gone pale, why I was terrified.

  There was no shaking this feeling of being watched, that someone was out there, eyeing me through the view plate in the door. That Luke was out there, watching a woman he despised, watching her fix another mistake, another way she ruined her own life. His eyes had changed in that Starbucks, something I had never seen before. I knew them as loving, gentle, soft. Today they’d become cold, judging, like he was disgusted with what I had become in spite of him, in spite of my own failure.

  My eyes were bloated, my face was swollen, and my insides felt raw. I went back to the mirror to study the crime scene that my face must look like.

  I stared at the woman who looked back at me, not impressed by her appearance but deeply concerned for what’s going on with her, inside of her. I saw a change in there, a change that was hidden below the surface fighting violently to get above it. This mask I dressed with, the one the outside world got to see was starting to grow old, to decay, to fall apart so that the broken woman underneath was slowly being exposed.

  I knew it was there, I’d put it on when I wanted to forget, to become something different, to change the person I had become. I had delicately crafted the woman I was now because I was going to kill myself if I stayed the woman that life had made me, when hurting myself had become second nature.

  I studied those old features, the ones that were bubbling up to the surface. I trusted this ocean inside of me, this vast landscape of black, inky water, to swallow these thoughts and memories, drag down to depths I could never reach.

  There was scarlet stretching into my eye, my skin had developed these explosions of red from underneath my cheeks and bleeding into my forehead. My lips felt dull, weak, but my eyes burned the most, dehydrated from the tears that I’d parted with. Breathing heavy, my mind slipping back into that footing, the path carved by that old woman that my pace was slowly drawing me back to.

  CHAPTER 41

  I looked at the dressings again, expecting to admire my handiwork. The professionally laced fittings of someone who was medically trained only to find that they were soaked. The blood never stopped, the bandages in between the cuts and the open air had slowed it but it had stopped nothing.

  The fittings were soaked, even with the tape, I could peel blood-logged sheets of medical fabric off my skin and watch it slop down to the floor, drenched in what was pouring out of me.

  I ran to the paper towels hanging from the wall, peeling several handfuls off the roll and pressing down as hard as I could onto the drawing of scars. Trying to cut off the oxygen feeding the cuts, to get them to clot, to allow my skin the chance to scar again.

  A sound burst through the room, my voice leapt out of my lips and I think that’s it, that Luke had decided it was time to kill me. That he’d come here to do just that, that he’d lost the last bit of sanity he was holding onto, he had finally fallen off the deep end.

  I was vulnerable, weak, standing there stopping the blood, trying desperately to keep it welled up inside of my body where it belonged, where I needed it to live.

  Then I looked again in the mirror and I saw it, it was a silhouette, its image painted in the darkness, staring at me.

  The girl.

  The one who watched me from the tiled shadows of the bathroom. The girl I was, blood trickling from her wrists and ribs and stomach, stood there. Her thin, anorexic features stared at me through cloud white eyes, her dead skin clinging to her bones, a feral, high-pitched moan creaking out of her dead lips. My hands smothered my mouth and I screamed.

  CHAPTER 42

  There were hands around me. My entire body shook while the hands that grab me tighten to try and keep me still. The sounds that escaped me was blood-curdling, brutal. It ripped my throat raw as it exploded out of me.

  “ALY!” a voice says, it sounded like a whisper over my own voice though I know it was screamed into my ear.

  I felt the arms embrace me, they no longer wanted to stabilize me, they wanted to control me. The tenderness evolved into submission, I was more of a danger than I thought.

  I didn't know who it was, who heard my shrieks into the stillness of the facility, breaking the quiet. How far those sounds must’ve traveled for someone to feel the need to come to my aid, to save me, just to learn I was a danger to myself, to call for help. To make sure that I was okay, knowing full well I wasn’t.

  I tucked my head into their shoulder, nestled it there. It was a man, but honestly, I didn’t really care who it was. I wanted to be held, I needed this embrace, this human comfort because my entire body was shaking, and I couldn’t find the
fault that was causing it. I had no idea where any of this was coming from but I was starting to think I was powerless to stop it.

  I felt the body around me, the soft, gentle breath against the side of my face, the shape of the lips that pressed down on my head, gently placing a kiss there.

  It was comforting, a reminder of what I used to have, what was given away without my knowledge, against my permission. It was a taste of what I missed so much. I already knew who it was before I had to look up, the embraces, the feelings, it wasn’t the man who’d tried to kill me. It wasn’t the person who wanted to punish me, this was someone else, someone different, a man that I actually remembered, a man that I actually missed.

  It was Luke.

  “It’s okay,” his voice whispered into my ear.

  My heart was so shocked that it was hard to hear the words drained into my ear. That soothing gift that was supposed to make me feel better, that was supposed to momentarily pause everything that wasn’t right, but it didn’t. It didn’t make it worse, but it certainly didn’t make it any better.

  I felt the hug wrapped around me, that warm embrace, like my body was whole again. I could tell it was genuine but to remove myself turned another reality into stone, I wasn’t not entirely sure I could handle that.

  When I peeled my head back, stared at him, his eyes connected with mine, I realized that he was covered in my blood, soaked by it, but he didn’t care. “I missed you,” he said to me, pulling me closer, drawing my lips as they pressed against his, and my heart jumped and squirmed so fast that I felt like I was having a heart attack.

  CHAPTER 43

  I was pulled back and I could see it was Dr. Neymar caring for me, my boss, the head of my department of the hospital. He was someone I freely referred to as an asshole, was here, in the walls of my own privacy, and now, he was tending to me, not knowing what was wrong with me or why.

  “Are you okay, Aly?” he asked me, his voice concerned and curious.

  I saw sympathy bathed in his eyes, but he was looking, scouring my face and visible flesh to find something that was wrong, anything that he could identify or diagnose, for my behavior make some sense. As a doctor, he needed that, he couldn’t treat what he couldn’t see or at least understand.

  “I’m fine,” I told him with a bit of conviction, biting my tongue because I didn’t exactly believe it, how could I? None of it made sense to me.

  Neymar stands first, his hand was offered for me to take. I did, and he assisted me up, his hand on my elbow for some extra support. “What happened?” he asked me, I looked down to see his finger pointed at me.

  Starting to prepare a lie, I suddenly realized I don't have to. I looked down at what his attention was on and see only a single gauze wrapping instead of its twin on my other forearm, nothing was covered because there wasn’t anything there.

  Memories wash back over me like high-tide crashing into a tranquil, forgotten beach. Everything that’d happened suddenly was put back in place for me to read and interpret and recall.

  “A cab caught me as I was crossing the street,” I said, words that sound to me like I’d never used them, are as convincing as truth to Neymar. The strange thing was, they were convincing to me as well, I knew they were real as I spoke them. I didn’t have to lie because I found I was telling the truth.

  My mind found this new block of memory it hadn't seemed to have before, unearthing itself at the moment I needed to remember it. It was there for me, me crossing the street after the indicator on the crosswalk had told me not to. Its timer countdown expired, a cab that didn't see me not quite on the curb and my arm caught by his side view mirror as he drove by faster than I could grab his cab number.

  Neymar held my forearm in his experienced hands, hands that have more than likely performed thousands of hours of surgery from the most mundane to severely complex. He drew his finger on the thin red string of blood that’s bubbled to the surface. I kept my wrists faced down, the dressing is on the back of my forearm, hiding the scars I didn’t want him to see, when he went to turn my wrist over, I twisted it back and told him I was fine again.

  “Are you sure you’re alright, maybe you should go get this X-rayed,” he advised me, his thin, sharp eyes on me, he was insistent, he was not used to being ignored, his words falling on deaf ears.

  “I’m fine, really,” I insisted, though that was more of a lie than what I had already told him. I’m wasn’t, I could feel it in my bones that something was wrong with me.

  I wanted him to suggest taking me off the viewing later, but he didn’t. He was so preoccupied with the injury I’d taken on that I think he’d long forgotten the agenda for the day let alone my personal schedule, what he’d asked of me.

  Neymar told me if I needed anything that I should reach out, whatever it was, whenever the time may come that I find I do need something. It was gentle and sweet but what I really wanted I didn’t want to ask for. I wanted it to be offered to me and it wasn’t. Another thing that was taken from me before I had a chance to receive it.

  CHAPTER 44

  I had nearly an hour before the family showed and it was hard for me to put two solid thoughts together. Instead, I was left with a haze in my mind, a blur that seemed to hang over everything. Nothing seemed to go together, not a single set of thoughts lined up perfectly. It was like nothing up there had any straight lines anymore, everything was so scattered, crooked. I tried to follow one thought clear to its end but couldn’t seem to get there, it just stopped, like it had reached some kind of dead-end.

  The time had nearly come to make myself presentable, to clean up the havoc I’d bathed in. To be the woman who displayed dead flesh to a grieving family, a representative of the hospital, a statue of the medical profession. To face something I’d been shying away from for as long as I could, keeping myself from even the idea of a child who didn’t make it.

  I knew it was harder on her, I couldn’t imagine what she had gone through in her life since the moment this happened. Knowing she had moments of precious memories that she now had to carry with her, memories that I’d never gotten a chance to form. Only pain exists in the path I was meant to walk while she, at the very least, had something to preserve and protect.

  I'd read the file over, I knew the story about the child. Born with a rare sickness, I knew she'd spoken to Neymar as well, he'd taken a personal interest in this case as well knowing that the CDC would have questions about the sickness, how it progressed, how effective the treatment went.

  I knew the child had little to no chance, that despite the gallons of medication that were injected into his tiny body, his body had failed, rejected the medicines and had given into the sickness. It choked me up to think about it, to know what those months of that baby’s life had been like, how little he was able to enjoy.

  CHAPTER 45

  I made a mental note that after the viewing I needed to spend some time with the new body that had been brought in. The NYPD was going to want some information if not the case entirely solved by the morning. They’d never had patience and I knew that was why Neymar assigned it to me, he had faith I could discover something, even with minimal time.

  There was more than a chance that once I was in there, her body opened up, I would find pollutants, toxic introductions into her body that she’d placed there or that was forced down her throat. Either way, I needed to operate, to start the examination.

  I left the room, this time for a small break room two floors above where my lab was, I needed a change of scenery, a different type of solitude. I was starting to feel like I was the only one there, that everyone had abandoned me. It was so rare to have such a feeling of isolation in a hospital enclosed with so many others—patients, doctors, workers.

  I stepped into the breakroom, knowing in some way no one else was in there. I needed a coffee but with the hideous weather and a nightmare still sticking out of my mind like a splinter, I had no desire to venture out. The coffee in the breakroom would suffice, despite how little
I cared for it, how bitter it was.

  I dropped a pod into the machine, tightened it down, added water, and placed a cup underneath while it percolated. I waited for it to huff steam letting me know it was done. My mind was somewhere out venturing about, too distracted to make any sense of anything. I couldn’t help but feel like I was being watched, analyzed for all this craziness in my mind. That Luke was somewhere in the building, trying to finish what he’d started, that my mind simply created the fabrication of the cab hit and run. That this girl was there too, this perception, this version of me that shouldn’t have been alive any longer, she shouldn’t have been there at all.

  I looked over at the windows, trying to stare through the frosted sheets in the panes, filthy on the other end from the pollution carried on Manhattan’s air, through the mesh of grating that sat over the window. I wondered why it was in there and then I realized it made more sense to be on all the windows, why we were locked in there, behind the prison of mesh, why there was no way out.

  I looked down at my forearm, tracing the bandage the same way Neymar had, trying to feel something. The memory was so vivid, I wasn’t sure how I’d forgotten it now that it had come back around, now that it wanted back in. I didn’t know how I could’ve done this to myself, hurt myself like this, chased pain to fill a void inside of me.

  I drank the breakroom coffee, my face puckered at the unpleasant flavor washing down my throat. I couldn’t help but look at the time, knowing that the moment was coming, approaching fast. Soon, it’d be here, and I’d have to do something that terrified me, something that was bringing back all this pain inside of me.

  CHAPTER 46

  I reminded myself that I didn't have to say anything, I could keep my mouth shut. That there was nothing really required for me to do except to stand there, to pull the sheet back at the appropriate time and then to cover up the body when the family was through. It was just knowing who would be under that sheet, hiding something so innocent.