As she sat up completely, Erika found the black spots in her vision briefly give way to total darkness. When the light returned, she was bracing herself against the ground with one hand, and clutching the other close to her chest. Blood ran down her front, her shirt sticking uncomfortably to her skin as she felt the telltale pins-and-needles of her body telling her something was very, very fucking wrong.
Leaning onto her right side, she found out the hard way that the one gunshot wound hadn’t magically made the other feel any better, and barely was able to suppress the resulting muscle spasm. Almost feeling like the natural result of a repressed scream, she momentarily succumbed to a fit of dry heaves halfway through trying to stand. Her crumpled form knelt, shaking, as she heard Daria shouting for Kate.
the wreckage i leave behind
If all of her blood was still safely within her body, all of this still wouldn’t have felt much better. As much as she wanted to, she didn’t have enough hate and anger to make any of her physical agony diminish, even to the smallest degree. What was happening felt less like fighting, and more like enduring. She still thought of it as fighting in her mind. That was what she had to do. It was comprehensible.
Now there was time to collect what was hers. The pistol in her dominant hand, and the rifle slung over the shoulder that could still bear to carry a weight.
she can have the knife.
The seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days, the years. They had been fought for, and they belonged to her now. No one could take them away. Everyone who tried in this place had failed. They failed because she was still standing. Erika won.
this doesn’t feel like winning.
What she’d done already was enough. She looked between the two of them. They weren’t going to just walk away from this. They’d die here, and she’d survive because she was still standing, just like every time before. She’d keep going, like every time before. If she was lucky, if the others in the Inner Circle had all killed each other, this could be the last time.
Looking down, she couldn’t see the green and black pattern of her shirt all that well anymore. It was mostly red. Colder than she should’ve felt in the tropical heat. Nausea threatened to take hold of her again. Her wounds seemed no less severe.
they aren’t.
Yet she’d press on, there was no other choice, Erika wouldn’t allow herself anything else, she couldn’t allow anyone anything else, this was her world to face, her time, she still felt alive, death was the absence of all, and she wasn’t absent, she wasn’t gone -
yet.
It still felt like living. Sort of. She could still taste the air, even if it tasted like blood. There were still things to hear, even if it was despair.
There were still things to think about, even if all she could think about was how close the end of that and everything else was going to be, even if, even if, she could still, there still was, precious moments, memories, everything and anything, it was all still there, it made sense, it could be fought for, there was a story, it was hers and it would keep going, it had to keep going and I’ll live long enough to find out if I can heal and there will be a way, I’ll get out by going through.
Living was continuing to justify itself, continuing to ignore and rationalize and deny. Everything could come at any price.
please?
Erika started limping away, and stopped as she heard a voice behind her. Turning for a moment, she raised the pistol and fired a shot towards Daria. Without aiming, without much of a thought. Like it didn’t matter, like she was nothing. They were just shapes. Obstacles. Locks on a door. Silhouettes. Enemies. Assailants. Monsters.
Victims?
i’m not like you.
in a lot of ways.
in the ones that matter...
Victims.
She didn’t look back, limping single-mindedly up the path to the Cliffside. A few times she nearly lost her footing, but didn’t stop for a moment, worrying that she wouldn’t be able to start again if she did. All she knew to do was to reach the cliffs, to find safety, and time to wait out the rest of them. Time to heal, to mend, she could find it. There was still time left, time she’d bought for herself.
She remembered the view up there as kind of beautiful. Erika wanted to see something beautiful, again.
Drops of blood marked the path she took up the old road. The island’s insects quickly set upon them.
((Erika Stieglitz continued elsewhere))
