Vein Fire

by Adams, Lucia

  “Hannah. Hannah. Hannah…” Matt kept saying her name as he uncovered her.

  Hannah began to cry as he brushed dirt from her face.

  CHAPTER 44

  Fore-Rests

  Pain sleeps. When it’s too bad, it becomes a blinding white light. Shapes and sounds fragmented into trickles of things Hannah could not comprehend. Either Matt or Jared was there—she didn’t know which, because they were really just different version of the same perversion, so she couldn’t have told them apart even if the dirt wasn’t in her eyes.

  Through the breaks in the trees, he came to her on a night-colored magic carpet. He wore a turban with a syringe where the jewel and feather should have been. As though she was weightless, his carpet swooped beneath her and she rose into the sky with him. The wind on her skin chilled her enough to extinguish the pain. It blew the dirt out of the corners of her eyes and she could see stars—thousands of them waving tiny hands at her, like they were tossing light colored flowers at her feet.

  Her hair trailed off of the edge of the carpet and was combed by the air. A spare twig of lavender blew loose and fluttered downward. Hannah watched it descend back to the ground, landing in the black spot in the woods where she was almost swallowed.

  The smell of something musky pinched her cheeks. She wanted to say it smelled like frankincense and myrrh, but she didn’t know what they smelled like.

  “Is it Christmas?” she asked, but no one answered. The carpet felt like moss under her fingers and she rhythmically stroked it.

  “Where are you taking me?” she whispered.

  He didn’t turn around. His back was towards her as he steered the carpet by holding the front upturned corners. “Heaven. You’re going to Heaven so you can be a real carpet angel.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Cement

  “I didn’t want a hole in the dirt to be the end of my story. I chose to live, even if it meant I had to break to do so.” Hannah grimaced as she sat up in her hospital bed. The Assistant District Attorney came to interview her before Jared’s arraignment hearing.

  The woman’s tears formed. “You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met.”

  “Thank you, but not really. If I were brave, none of this would have happened. I would have been saying ‘no’ since the beginning.” Hannah fiddled with the edging on her white hospital sheet. “I’m just glad they didn’t have to pin my leg back together. A cast is bad enough, but pins are even worse.”

  The woman nodded her head as though she understood, but she did not. “If the psychiatrist suggests Jared go to prison instead of a mental hospital, how do you feel about that?”

  “Jared in jail—a real jail, not a psychiatric hospital? I think he belongs there. He gives mentally ill people a bad name. He doesn’t want to get better.” The woman scribbled as Hannah looked at the cast on her arm. It had to be redone a third time because there was so much dirt between her skin and the cast.

  A few of her ribs were broken, and her shoulder had been dislocated. She couldn’t remember if this was from the fall, or if it was from being dragged through the forest by Jared. They shaved a small spot on her head where they needed to put in three stitches—Hannah itched her bald spot.

  The Assistant District Attorney left and Hannah was alone. Her family and Donna were frequent visitors, but Hannah suggested Matt not come because he might run into her parents. Instead, he called her several times a day.

  Iris worked part-time at the hospital, so she stopped in almost daily to speak with her.

  “I have caverns in my mind, and I don’t want to crawl into them anymore.” Hannah winced as she tried to adjust her leg. “There are silent places too, but I don’t mind them so much. I don’t want to be quiet anymore. Maybe if I can scream in the silent place now, someone will find me. Being alone is overrated. I’m not better—don’t get me wrong—an act of violence turned me inside out, but another one didn’t flip me right-side-up. I’m still broken, but the difference is, I don’t take comfort in being broken anymore.”

  “You have hope,” Iris said.

  “Hope? Can I hold something like that, or do I need to put it in a glass jar so it doesn’t evaporate?” Hannah laughed.

  “I think it’s more like a friend who wants to be with you—no need for the jar.”

  “That’s lovely.”

  *

  Hannah’s hospital stay was longer than expected because she was administered IV antibiotics for a few days. The dirt rubbed into her compound fracture might cause an infection, so the doctors insisted on the preventative medicine.

  Immediately after the accident, Hannah’s parents discovered she had been spending time with Matt. They were enraged and under the guise of them thinking she needed to live in a one-story home closer to them while her leg healed. They moved her belongings into an apartment outside of town, near to where they lived.

  The move upset Hannah, but she didn’t say no. The hospital gown didn’t hide her scars, and the revelations her parents were facing left her feeling defeated and unwilling to fight. When she was finally released, her parents took her to her new apartment and arranged things so she could manage on her own. She was fairly mobile on the crutches, but wouldn’t be driving for a long time.

  When they arrived at her apartment, there was something big in a wagon sitting in front of her door. It was poorly wrapped in pink wrapping paper.

  “What is that?” Hannah laughed.

  Hannah’s mother paused and looked at her husband. “Honey, I—I don’t know what it is.”

  “Well, can we take it inside and see?” Hannah was smiling. “If it’s on my porch, it must be for me—maybe a welcoming gift.”

  The three of them shuffled inside and Hannah’s father pulled the red wagon into the living room. Hannah had paused to look around at her new apartment, “This is nice, thank you.” She leaned down and tore the paper off of the gift to reveal one of the gargoyles from the top of City Hall.

  “Frank!” Hannah clapped as she tilted to the side from laughing so hard.

  “What do you mean, ‘Frank’?” asked her mother.

  “I love it!” Hannah exclaimed. “I have stolen property in my living room, but I love it.”

  Hannah’s father’s voice was stern, “Hannah, where did this come from?”

  “From in front of my door, of course!”

  “Does Matt know where you live?” asked Hannah’s mother in a lowered voice.

  Hannah sighed and frowned, “Mom! I can’t have this crazy stuff in my life anymore if I want to get better. Matt and I both naturally live in these chaotic circles, and when they overlap, it’s too volatile. Don’t worry; he’ll stay out of my life. I feel different now.”

  Her parents were quiet and exchanged glances.

  Hannah exhaled. She pulled at the fraying strings at the end of her cast on her arm. “I don’t want you guys to worry. I’m not going to be friends with him again—no matter what.”

  Hannah’s mother’s voice was small, “That sounds like a good start.”

  Hannah couldn’t wait for her parents to leave. As soon as they did, she located her purse and started preparing the heroin. It was a well-practiced method for her now.

  *

  Hannah was folded into an envelope and sealed. She could feel the paper turn and fold, turn and fold, as she was pressed gently into the warmth of the creases. When it cracked open, she was wearing a dress covered in white origami cranes, running through wheat fields towards a swing set on a beach. It was warm, but snowing and she caught snowflakes on her tongue as she ran closer to the swing.

  She sat on the seat and her dress crinkled, but she pumped her legs harder and harder until she was in the air. The high parts gave her a second of weightlessness and the backward swings blew her hair around her face. She was at the sea shore on a swing set, wearing a paper crane origami dress and she could smell the ocean salt. Her toes swung above the beach, and she knew that when she was done, the cranes would depart in a floc
k and she’d make angels in the sand.

  “Where are you at, Angel?”

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The most exquisite things Lucia has ever written have been on dirty napkins left in barrooms she will never return to. She spends her time:

  Contemplating the difference between want and need

  Staring at her palms, trying to rearrange the destiny lines with her mind

  Writing about the social consequences of being poisonous

  Lucia began writing as a child. Her work spans several genres, but frequently focuses on showing mental illness from the inside out. Vein Fire is her third novel and the first she’s decided to publish. Some of her writing appears in anthologies and in literary magazines. Lucia lives in Pennsylvania, somewhere between a forest and a river, with a cute potato and her beloved chi-spaniel.

  Lucia is a member of the Quark Paper Cutting Factory.

  VeinFire.net

  Acknowledgments

  I’m so thankful to Carolyn Violet for the use of her stunning photograph, which appears on the cover.

  I am forever grateful to Paul, for without his encouragement, Vein Fire would have remained a short story.

  A thousand thanks to my beloved beta readers for their feedback and edits, and so much more that I can’t even articulate (it would be a novella): Lorri, Jane, John, and Paul.

  Special thanks to my writing partner, Gerry, for taking the plunge with me; Tony, my professor, for convincing me that I’d save more lives as a writer than a doctor…Vein Fire started as a single thought in your class, many years ago; Sharon for always picking me up; Bill, for teaching me not to eat the free popcorn on the bar; Ross, Egads! Thenk ye fir bein’ ma chum; the lovely Sarah-Jean; Susan; and for Lee, who always believes.

  Sincere gratitude to Rosanna Weil for so many things.

  Eternal thanks to my family for their love and support—it humbles me every day how they help me, and especially to my beautiful sister, who continually invested in my talent.