Please Don't Make Me Cry ~ Finale

[Chase*]

The blood pounded in her head. Disgrace, public and private, all eyes on her. They hated her, he hated her. Everything she was… hadn't he helped her become strong? She fell onto her knees, shuddering, staring at her hands.

She was a murderer, all along. That's all she could ever be. That's all anyone thought she was. Her grandmother, her peers, her best friend.

Murderer…

What she had done to those she loved… was unforgivable. Her eyes were red from crying, her hands were red from his blood. What had she done to him?

She had chased after him, passing by house after house, ignoring everything but him. Her breathing was heavy in her ears, head in a vice, eyes fixated on Jack. How could he run away from her? He out of everyone was supposed to understand her. Jack was all she had now.

Catching up to him in the smallest house in the area, she unsheathed her jian and swung it. The blade connected with his thigh, slicing the back open, blood beginning to seep out of the cut. He went down.

"Why are you running from me?!"

Jack stared at his friend in the eyes and shook his head. Disappointment, fear, pain, mixed in his eyes with something she never imagined seeing him express towards her.

"I don't know you… what you did to Kim was sick. You can't be who I thought you were. You're nothing but a fucking murderer! Pathetic!"

"No," she murmured, her lip trembling, "Jack, no… you know me… you know who I am."

"You're nothing but a fucking murderer!"

"NO!"

She held him down, pinned him under her skinny body as she clutched her jian with trembling hands. To steady a smaller part of the blade, she holds the dull side of the blade and maneuvers it to his face.

"Take it back!" she sobs, "TAKE IT BACK!"

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a murderer. I haven't killed anyone! Kim wasn't important, she was nothing! I didn't—I can't be…no….

"Mommy, mommy, lookit!"

The chubby faced girl looked the opposite of her thin, dying mother, all the hope and excitement in her eyes ignorant to the struggle her mother went through to breath, tubes stuck in her nose and needles puncturing her veins. Mai lifted her hands to her mother's face, covered by knitted mittens, putting them close to her face to make sure she knew what they were.

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breathes as I said to myself that I'd already taken too much today

"You made them for me, remember? I wore them just for you."

"Nnngh…"

Mai traced Jack's hairline with the blade lightly, guiding the blade with both hands, but not piercing the skin. Jack shut his eyes tight, holding his breath in as she let tears fall on his face.

"I'm not a murderer…I'm not. I'm not…."

She kneeled on a waiting room chair she took from outside and watched her mother breathe through tubes, her chest rising slowly, mechanically, as her eyes followed Mai's mittens. Tears filled them. Mai didn't understand for a moment, and she placed on of her mitten clad hands on her mother's forehead, tilting her head slightly as if she was thinking hard.

"Mommy, you have a fever," she decided, "The doctor should come see you."

As each descending peak of the LCD took you a little farther away from me
Away from me

A sharp movement of her hands finally pierced his skin, near his cheek, and he began to scream, to move from under her. She stopped to slam the blade down on his arms, cutting them clear off, leaving two bloody stumps on the wooden floor. Her eyes narrowed on him as he screamed, and she moved the blade to cut the other side of his face, into the skin and shallowly cutting muscle.

Her mother lifted a bone-thin hand to her daughter's cheek. She was still quiet, talking was too hard for her in her condition, but her eyes fixated on Mai's and she gazed at her with all the love she felt for her child. Mai's worried expression faded.

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines in a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds
But I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground as the TV entertained itself

Mai screamed with Jack, as she stuck her fingers into the wounds. She screamed as she pulled the skin towards her, and she heard the tearing sound of his skin, the layers separating from the facial muscles. Leaning into him as he tried to kick out from under her, losing blood from his shoulders, it pooling down around them on the floor, soaking into their clothes.

"How could you? How could you?! I believed in you, I trusted you, how could you hurt me?! Why are you leaving me?!"

It was then that her mother's hand pointed to something on the wall, and Mai looked at it, confused. Her mother's finger pointed at it, then grasped Mai's hand and lifted it towards it. Mai's little hands went towards the plastic cord. Biting her lip, she glanced at her mother, who nodded at her.

'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room

She didn't understand what it was going to do, but it was what her mother wanted. Mai never wanted to disappoint her mother. Her fingers wrapped around the cord and she pulled.

Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said that "Love is watching someone die"

Mai's mother tried to inhale, her lips beginning to turn blue, and she wrapped her hands around the bars of her hospital bed, gasping. The beeping went off, loud in Mai's ears and she pulled away from the bed. Doctors and nurses rushed inside, snatching the girl from her mother and taking her outside to wait.

Before Mai knew it, her mother was gone. She had suffocated, unable to live without the machine that Mai unplugged. It had been too late.

She could feel the muscles relax as they lost the blood, and his struggling ceased. Before she knew it, his face was in her hands, skinned. Mai stared at it, then at his bloodied face, the bare muscles underneath.

"No…"

Unable to grasp what she had done, she tried to place the skin back on, but it didn't fit. She tried to move his head from it's turned position, to fit his face back on. She punched his chest in frustration, and his body reacted limply, like a rag doll. Her hands tried to shake him.

Her grandmother tried to tell Mai that she was gone. In disbelief, Mai ran back into the room and lifted herself onto her mother's hospital bed. She pulled down the sheet and tried to shake her mother, speaking to her in Japanese, begging her to wake up.

"Mama! MAMA!" her screams could be heard out in the hallway, where nurses and doctors shook their heads at the despair they could hear in her voice.

"Wake up…" she cried, holding her mother. No, it was Jack. Or both. Either way, she held them tight, but they were already gone. No one was left for her, no one understood her anymore.

MURDERER!

Jack was right.

She felt like she left her body, that she died. She was dead like they were. The ones she loved. Perhaps she had been dead all this time, the shame of her mother, and now Jack.

Her body grew too heavy to carry herself, and she crashed onto her knees. Her eyes were red as she stared at her blood-stained hands. She brought them to her face and caught the falling tears. There was no point to her existence, that was the truth. She was a stain on the human race, a murderer, as soon as she pulled that plug. As soon as she killed her own mother.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed.

The jian lay beside her, and she stared blankly at the floor for an hour. Finally, her hand reached out, and she lifted the blade. Her trembling hands held it tight, knuckles turning white against the handle.

Something she remembered when she studied her ancient history came to her. The women would redeem themselves from shame. She needed to do that, for herself. For the sake of others, she had to remove herself from this world for good, forever.

The blade slid across her skin and the sharp pain only lasted a second as she rested on her shins, torso erect, both hands on the blade. Right across the jugular. Her eyes felt heavy as blood poured out onto her clothes, on her chest and soaked in with Jack's blood.

She lifted her head for a moment with the last bit of strength she had, and for a moment she saw Jack and her mother… they were holding hands and staring at her. Mai let the tears fall, her body leaning forward, repeatedly mouthing "I'm sorry…."

Red puddles connected on the wood floor, and slowly Mai's body gave way to the eternal sleep. Her body fell into the blood with a soppy thud, and her gaze was cold. No more shame, disgrace, or guilt.

It was done.

…

So who's going to watch you die?

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Boy 91 and Girl 02- DECEASED